Cullen Granzen/Sipa USA via AP Images
Attendees cheer at a Democratic Party rally in support of Kamala Harris’s campaign for president, in Madison, Wisconsin, October 22, 2024.
The Harris campaign had been moving effectively into at least a 3-point national lead, with impressive margins in the key battleground states, until it stalled and slipped into an effectively tied race. Knowing why will enable Democrats to close the high-stakes 2024 campaign with a focused campaign that engages voters and wins.
Election margins shift on this scale when the competing party bases get more people united, registered, and turned out to vote.
Biden was slipping to at least a 3-point deficit when he passed the torch to Kamala Harris. I was sending daily emails to the Biden team. The reason I was confident she would reverse the slide and move into a big lead was because Biden was underperforming with the young, millennials, unmarried women, Blacks, and Hispanics. Three in five Democratic base voters thought the country was on the wrong track. She was looking at a base that was discontented and wanted visible change.
Over the next three months, Harris moved inexorably, it seemed, into her strong lead. A good part of the reason, I wrote in the Prospect, was her middle-class message and policies.
[They] are running as candidates of the middle class. That is their main message and identity. It infused her campaign launch and the selection and introduction of her vice-presidential selection. Their ads re-enforce their shared biographies growing up middle-class … It has been a long time since voters have seen leaders who they think are authentically battling for them.
Three years ago, I titled my piece in the Prospect “Democrats, Speak to Working-Class Discontent: It’s the one way to mobilize Blacks, Hispanics and Asians, not just white workers.” Harris and Walz were doing precisely that.
Major speakers at the Democratic convention took up corporate greed, the hardships from high costs, and the current battle for the middle class. They pointed out what Harris said in an economic speech on August 16: “Donald Trump fights for billionaires and large corporations. I will fight to give money back to working- and middle-class Americans.” Base voters made the cost of living their very top concern, and she was finally telling them it was her top priority too.
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The convention and subsequent ads educated voters on her plans to introduce a $6,000 first-year payment for newborns and make the Child Tax Credit permanent, reduce housing costs, and help first-time homebuyers and small businesses. And they hit Trump for cutting taxes for billionaires.
Then, as Mike Tyson said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
Trump decided to make immigration an issue that would consolidate and motivate his base. Trump and Vance accusing migrants of eating pets, raising the cost of housing, and raiding FEMA’s financial reserves worked. For the first time in a long time, Republicans were now more motivated to vote than Democrats.
Voters heard weeks of ads building the case that Harris was a radical liberal to the left of Bernie Sanders. They hit Harris for open borders and allowing illegal immigrants to get public benefits. They hit her for supporting sex change operations for transgender prisoners. And they certainly stalled the rise of Harris’s favorability. Her increased negative branding probably created problems for Democratic Senate candidates in key races. Some began to voice concerns: “She’s underwater.”
How did the Harris campaign react to these punches?
First, they misread them. They thought the immigrant attack was so extreme that it would hurt Trump. It didn’t.
They thought the promised mass deportation would hurt, even holding a press event to call attention to the policy. Sadly, a sizable portion of the public, including Hispanics, supported the policy.
And second, they failed to punch back. The cost of living was the Democratic base’s top issue by far, and their own strongest ad contrasted Trump’s $4,000 sales tax with the help Harris offered middle-class families.
And for reasons that I still can’t understand, they dropped the middle-class message and voicing its discontent.
And they went back to identity politics by talking about the need to raise support with Black men. They announced a new agenda that included providing one million fully forgivable loans for Black entrepreneurs to start a business, and support for training for good-paying jobs, including pathways to become teachers. And it included protection for cryptocurrency investments. Black men apparently disproportionately make such investments.
In this group-by-group targeted approach, they didn’t mention her plans on the Child Tax Credit. Harris cleaned that up in recent interviews on addressing Black men.
To be honest, I thought the campaign staffed by part of the Biden team decided to take this new course. I couldn’t come up with any other explanation.
On hearing Walz’s closing statement in the vice-presidential debate, I began to ask: What had changed?
And I’m as surprised as anybody of this coalition that Kamala Harris has built. From Bernie Sanders to Dick Cheney to Taylor Swift and a whole bunch of folks in between there. And they don’t all agree on everything, but they are truly optimistic people. They believe in a positive future of this country. And one where our politics can be better than it is. And I have to tell you that, that better than it is is the sense of optimism that there can be an opportunity economy that works for everyone, not just to get by, but to get ahead. And the idea that freedom really means something. Not the freedom of government to be in your bedroom or exam room, but the freedom for you to make choices about yourself.
I wrote immediately that he made no mention of the cost of living, the base’s top issue. No more being a voice of working-class discontent. No more voice of change.
I now realize the “optimism” was mainly communicating satisfaction with the status quo at a time when two-thirds said the country is headed in the wrong direction. President Biden interrupted the White House press briefing to talk about the strong economy. And Harris struggled on The View to say what Biden policies she disagreed with. They were communicating more continuity than change.
Based on the campaign’s current strategy, there is good reason to believe the campaign believes there is an “anti-MAGA majority,” a concept developed by Michael Podhorzer.
In this new period of high-turnout elections since Trump, “more people are voting not because more people believe one or the other party will make their lives better, but because more people are convinced that one or the other party will make their lives worse.” Or simply, “for many, voting has become an act of self-defense.”
Podhorzer was one of the Democratic analysts who thought Biden could win. He attacked the hysteria around Biden’s polling. Eventually, he predicted, the race will be shaped by this new MAGA reality and intense campaigns in the battleground states. The election results will look very different from that polling.
Reportedly, President Biden changed his mind on deciding to run for re-election after Democrats did surprisingly well in the midterms. Podhorzer also embraced the midterms. He felt it showed Democrats could win nationally running on abortion and democracy, while touting the strong economy. I tried to remind Biden’s team and the public in my writing that Democrats lost the midterm congressional total vote by two points. Not dealing with the cost of living leaves you painfully short.
You can see why the Biden campaign team liked Podhorzer. He thinks the media polls are “opinion journalism, not science.” Their narrative earlier focused on Biden’s age, but now it’s about a race that is too close to call.
Podhorzer says the only electoral dynamic that matters is opposition or support of Trump. And he uses Lake Partners Research polling to test which attacks on Trump are the most effective. He doesn’t ask which of Harris’s plans are most important. So, it predetermines he will recommend being negative.
After we were on a panel together at the Democratic convention, I asked Michael about my polls for Democracy Corps, and he said, they are pushing “corporate interests.”
“My polls?” I asked. And he responded, “Yes.” [Editor’s Note: Michael Podhorzer disputes that he ever said anything about corporate interests; he says that he merely offered “a bit of rebuttal” about the importance of polls and message testing.]
In a recent piece, he writes that the most important thing is to educate less-frequent voters who are “insufficiently alarmed given what we know a second Trump Administration would mean.” Perhaps that is why the Harris campaign has turned so negative and so intent on attacking Trump.
This week culminated when Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly said, “He’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators.” And Harris jumped on Trump saying, “The worst enemies are from within,” and launched an ad:
Donald Trump is more dangerous and radical than ever before, echoing fascist rhetoric. He says, “The worst enemies are from within—more dangerous than Russia. We have some very bad people, and it should be easily handled by the military.” I remember the day he suggested we shoot people on the streets. A second term would be worse, there will be no one to stop his worst instincts. It would mean unchecked power, no safeguards. If we elect Trump again, we’re in terrible danger.
I am worried that Trump’s statements are so damning that the campaign closes on democracy.
My polls tested the best attacks on Trump, of course, but they examined so much more. The working majority is feeling pain and embraces most of all Harris’s plans to address the cost of living. They are paying close attention, waiting to see whether she will help.
In reports on ad testing by an independent firm called Blue Rose Research incubated by the super PAC Future Forward, The New York Times reports the most effective ads were the ones that educated viewers on her economic plans. Specifically, she said, “When I am elected president, I will make it a top priority to bring down costs. We should be doing everything we can to make it more affordable to buy a home and more than 100 million Americans will get a tax cut. I will help families; letting you keep more of your hard-earned money. As president, I will be laser focused on creating opportunities for the middle class that advance their economic security, stability and dignity.”
In other words, It’s the Middle Class, Stupid!, the title of my book co-authored with James Carville. And it’s also the cost of living, stupid!
I believe the Harris campaign will pay a lot of attention to a new poll from AP/NORC to shape their own close. Perhaps it will empower others in the campaign to get the priorities right. It shows Harris with a big advantage on “abortion policy,” “election integrity,” and “climate change.” Importantly, it has an 11-point advantage on “natural disaster relief.” But the economy is the top voting issue, and Harris has a 12-point lead on “taxes on the middle class” and 5 on the “cost of housing.” She trails by only 2 points on the “the cost of groceries and gas.”
Closing positive with Harris battling for the middle class and helping everyone on their very top issue will engage and unite the Democrats’ base. That will shift the trajectory of this race.
UPDATE: The Biden team, many of whom now remain with Harris, believed in its soul that voters, when faced with the prospect of putting Trump back in office, would pull back. But my poll in June asked simply, “Thinking ahead to when the election is over, what do you FEAR most, Donald Trump returning as President or Joe Biden continuing as President?” A minority of 47 percent feared Trump’s return, but a majority of 53 percent feared Biden continuing the most. That deep conviction puts them out of touch with the country and the base that is desperate for change.
I believe the Harris campaign will look closely at the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that shows her trailing by two points. In their prior poll, Harris had equal numbers viewing her favorably and unfavorably. Now, the unfavorable is up to 53 percent, 8 points above the positive. Her attacks are hurting her more than Trump.
