The Amazing thing that’s happening in the US Presidential Election

This is the fifth of a series of posts on the US elections following on from Hitler with Nukes? (July 21^st.), A Dead Bear Bounce for Kennedy? (Aug. 5^th.), The Tipping Point: Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump (Aug. 12^th.), and Kamala Harris Surge? (Aug. 21^st.) Most of the titles had question marks as the precise shape of the campaigns had still to emerge, especially after the withdrawal of President Biden from the race.

But the campaigns have now settled into a pattern and Kamala Harris and her Vice Presential nominee Tim Walz have been building on an ecstatic reception at the Democratic National Convention which focused on a positive and euphoric message of joy. There were ringing endorsements from former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and their spouses, Hillary and Michelle, in stark contrast to the failure of former Republican President GW Bush, Trump’s own former Vice President Mike Pence, and 40 out of his 44 former cabinet ministers to endorse Trump.

There was no repeat of the rioting seen at the last and disastrous Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968 when Mayor Daley’s police went on a riot and attacked peaceful demonstrators against the Vietnam war leading to the defeat of the Democratic Candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, by Richard Nixon a couple of months later.

Harris and Walz then went on to a triumphal traditional bus tour of Georgia which is a state which until recently wasn’t even considered a marginal battleground state, so conservative were the majority of its voters. Biden won the state unexpectedly in 2020 by 11,779 votes and provided she doesn’t lose in Pennsylvania (more anon) Harris doesn’t even need to win the state to win the electoral college and the Presidency in 2024.

Harris and Walz have also answered criticism that their campaign has lacked policy content by doing an in depth interview with CNN’s Dana Bash where she brushed aside Trump’s claim that “she’s always grabbed onto her Indian heritage, but she’s suddenly become black. That is just a lie. That is not true” in an opportunistic move to try and capitalise on the black vote. When asked by Dana about her racial background she just smiled and sighed “Same tired old playbook, next question please.” Unlike Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, she is not campaigning based on her race or gender, but on her merits to be the next President of the USA.

Meanwhile the Trump campaign has had a disastrous week. The plan to hold a Gala Fundraising event for the Jan 6^th. Rioters with Rudi Giuliani at Trump’s Bedminster Golf resort has had to be postponed for a second time ahead of Trump formally becoming a felon later this month. The Republican presidential candidate will be sentenced on September 18 after being found guilty on 34 felony counts in the Stormy Daniels hush money case in New York in July. Once he officially becomes a felon, the former president will be legally prohibited from associating with other felons.

Perhaps there weren’t enough takers for tickets at $2,500 for an individual and $50,000 for a table of 12, but it means supporters will miss out on an opportunity to win a “Justice For All’ Donald J Trump & J6 Prison Choir” plaque. Giuliani, meanwhile, has filed for bankruptcy after he was ordered by a court to pay nearly $150 million to two Georgia election workers he defamed. Giuliani’s spokesperson accused the women of bullying Giuliani.

Trump also ran into trouble when he and his Tik Tok team held a political campaign event on the hallowed ground of the Army’s national Arlington Cemetery to commemorate America’s fallen heroes. When Cemetery officials tried to enforce federal law prohibiting such events they were verbally abused and brushed aside, and the event went ahead anyway. The Trump campaign claimed that the cemetery official trying to enforce the law had suffered “a mental health episode” forcing the army to issue an official statement condemning the event.

Apparently, the plan was to depict the event as a formal official ceremony and criticise Kamala Harris for refusing to attend it to honour America’s fallen heroes. When MSNBC’s Dasha Burns asked Trump directly: “Should your campaign have put out those videos and photos?” Trump answered: “Well, we have a lot of people. You know, we have people, TikTok people, you know we’re leading the Internet. That was the other thing. We’re so far above her on the Internet…”

The Washington Post also noted that, in the space of 24 hours, Trump had posted about Harris engaging in a sex act, promoted QAnon slogans, and called for prison for his political opponents. His Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance attacked Harris by saying that he had an early version of Harris’s CNN interview and then posting an old meme of a young Miss Teen USA who appeared to panic when answering a question and produced a nonsensical answer. When Berman told him that the young woman contemplated self-harm after becoming a national joke and asked if he would like to apologize for bringing up that old video, Vance declined to apologize, saying “we should try to have some fun in politics.”

Trump was, however, forced to over-rule Vance’s claim that he would oppose Florida’s proposed 6 week abortion ban and restore Roe vs. Wade style to rights to Floridians. After flip-flopping on the issue, Trump sided with the anti-abortion lobby, highlighting how divisive the issue is for his MAGA base and the American electorate.

So, what’s the amazing thing that’s happening in the US Presidential Election?

The answer is, if you look at the polls, almost nothing. It is a story of the dog that didn’t bark.

Despite all of the above, and Robert Kennedy Jnr. withdrawal from the race and endorsement of Trump, Trump’s support has remained absolutely consistent in the 43 to 44% range with barely a ripple. Kamala Harris’s surge from Biden’s final 40% nadir in July to 47% two weeks ago, has flatlined and remained absolutely constant since.

It must be remembered that US presidential polling can be very volatile. In 1992 Bill Clinton surged from 24% support in June to 57% in July partly due to another third party candidate, Ross Perot, withdrawing from the raced. He eventually won the election with only 43% of the vote (after Ross Perot had re-entered the race).

So, the point is, for all the major events of the campaign – the Trump assassination attempt, the Biden debate performance and withdrawal from the race, Kamala Harris’ emergence as the replacement candidate, the party conventions, the Robert Kennedy Jnr. withdrawal and Trump endorsement, and subsequent campaigning triumphs and disasters, virtually nothing has changed in voter preferences in the past two weeks.

There seems to be two almost totally distinct and hermeneutically sealed political universes in the USA with virtually no cross-over and very few persuadable voters left to mop up. People have made their mind up about Trump, and nothing he does seems to be able to change that one way or the other. Ditto for Kamala Harris. It would appear it would take an absolute meltdown by either candidate to impinge on voter consciousness and behaviour now.

That means the election remains on an absolute knife edge.

Al Gore and Hillary Clinton beat GW Bush and Donald Trump by half a million (0.5%) and almost three million votes (2.1%) respectively but lost because the Electoral College favours smaller Republican leaning states. Biden beat Trump by almost 7 million votes (4.5%), but only won the electoral College by a little over 40,000 votes in the three most marginal battleground states of Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin. Changes to the electoral College since have, if anything, made it even more biased towards Republicans. Kamala Harris’s lead of a little over 3% in the polls may not be enough.

The one thing that has changed is that Kamala Harris’ personal popularity has soared since she took over from Biden, from -17% in July, to less than -1% now, while Trumps popularity remains deeply underwater but still very constant at about -9.5%. But Harris’ rise in popularity may simply reflect her rise from a low profile role in an increasingly unpopular Presidency, to the limelight now. Being slightly more unpopular than popular over a month into her campaign is hardly a ringing endorsement.

The lack of change in the polls is also reflected in the key battleground states. Other than Georgia flipping to Harris and North Carolina flipping back to Trump, there has been very little change. Pennsylvania’s crucial 19 electoral college votes are even more on a knife edge.

The election is still too close to call.

The next major campaign event is the televised debate on September 10^th. where it will be interesting to see if Trump uses and gets away with his usual Gish galloping* technique. Harris will have to use all her skills as a prosecutor to keep the focus on the actual evidence before the electorate. Trump, who is older than former Presidents Bill Clinton and GW Bush may not find it quite so easy to appear to be the more energetic candidate in the race as he did in his debate against Biden. He has continued to complain that it is so unfair that Biden is no longer his opponent.

*The Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm an opponent by confronting an opponent with a rapid series of specious arguments, half-truths, misrepresentations, and outright lies that makes it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of the debate. Each point raised by the Gish galloper takes considerably more time to refute or to fact-check than the amount of time taken to state each one in the series.

Frank Schnittger is the author of Sovereignty 2040, a future history of how Irish re-unification might work out. He has worked in business in Dublin and London and, on a voluntary basis, for charities in community development, education, restorative justice and addiction services.