Today I used the Hurricane Kamala analogy, and the same "stalled" verb that Axelrod used. Last night I thought of a football coach (both analogous subjects foremost in my mind this week). The football analogy may be more apt. There's human agency involved.
In the football analogy the Harris campaign had a brilliant first half game plan and executed it to perfection, jumping out to a propitious lead. It was only, to continue this analogy, maybe a 7-0 lead at the half-way point but they had Big Mo. The campaign was hailed, rightly, and trumpie was taken by surprised and bungled his way to an effective, or any, response to this new, unwanted opponent. "trumpie sad miss joey" was my ubiquitous tag line for this period.
Then, after the break, the Harris coaching staff seemed not to know what to do. They seemed confused that there even was a second half. Thought it was effectively over, that they could play ball control to November 5. They lost their dynamic, whirlwind edge. The peripatetic duo all of a sudden stopped holding their effervescent rallies. I noted at the time, "Where is she? What happened to, 'We have 100 days, we'll sleep when we're dead.'?" Now trumpie has been holding more rallies.
I disagree with David Axelrod that trumpie's campaign was more disciplined in its messaging painting Kamala as an exotic, too liberal alternative. My sense is that all of that crap didn't stick. And disciplined in their messaging? You mean, "They're eating cats and dogs" was a good message? I disagree. But the game wasn't over and Harris-Walz lost the third quarter and momentum. If it was, say, 7-0 at half-time, it was 7-3 at the end of the third quarter and now, in the early fourth quarter it's 7-6.
In the second half the Harris-Walz campaign clearly, to me, gave up on appealing to "all Americans" and doubled on Blacks and women. "White Dudes for Kamala", what ever happened to them? I haven't seen, heard, or felt, an appeal to white dudes. The appearance on Oprah Winfrey solidified this feel and actually annoyed me. As a white Boomer, I have almost never felt ignored my entire life. I have felt a little ignored in the second half.
It may well be that this is deliberate strategy by the campaign, that their internal polling shows that Jamaican-with-white-woman-hair-south-Asian, wife-of-a-Jew, Kamala Harris cannot win over the quantum of white males, and to a lesser extent white female votes, that they need to win. I can sort of understand that if they're not making a dent in the white male vote, why spend much time beating your head against a solid White Wall. "If Walz couldn't do it, we give up." I can understand that if that's what it is. Thus their increasingly desperate appeals to women. Memo to Kamala HQ: American Blacks, men and women, don't consider "Island Blacks" the same as themselves.The Harris-Walz standard could be re-written Roe-Wade. It is about all I have heard. Thus also, Liz Cheney appearing side-by-side with Kamala in Wisconsin. Thus, Barack Obama standing in for Kamala in Pittsburgh last night and directly messaging Black men and looking and sounding concerned, imploring, angry. Kamala doesn't have the support among Black men even that Joe Biden did!
To me, it's probable that the campaign has made this a strategy of necessity. It's also a strategy laid down by their earlier decisions, like at the DNC. I wrote, in real time again, that the convention did not look like America to me. If any open-minded white voters in Pennsyltucky or the Upper Peninsula, or Wisconsin tuned in to the convention, I could hear in my mind's ear, the click of the TV channel changer.
And if it's a strategy of necessity it is nonetheless a hopeless strategy. If every Black man and every Black woman and a low majority of white women in America vote for Kamala, she loses. That's just math. She has to get a decent share of the white male vote to win the election. What a decent share is, I don't know, but more than she has now.
White voters, especially white XY chromosome pairs do not feel Kamala, that's apodictic. This is not: I don't feel that Kamala feels white voters. She seems not totally comfortable to me, out of her element, with whites, again, especially white dudes. I am probably wrong. For godssake she's married to a white guy. It's just the feel I have of her feel around white men. She went to Johnstown, Pennsylvania. I thought the idea of that trip was inspired. But she was there for a nanosecond and looked like she wanted to leave in less than a nanosecond. With Trump 2024 banners hanging from every lamp post on the streets of Johnstown her way from the airport, I can understand that. I don't feel comfortable in Johnstown, either.
But I'm not running for president. Kamala has got to go into uncomfortable territory and get comfortable with white men there (if I am correct that she does not feel comfortable) and make white guys feel comfortable with her. John F. Kennedy appeared before a Baptist convention in Houston in 1960, went right into the lion's den to show that he was standing tall as a Catholic and was appealing to their sense of fairness. His candidacy also only gained plausibility when he won the West Virginia primary. For that matter trumpie appeared before the understandably hostile National Black Broadcasters convention. It didn't do either of them any good with those specific audiences, but both appearances got huge play. It takes courage to do what JFK did. It takes courage to do what trumpie did.
Kamala still has the slightest lead in the polling. She is still forecast to win even in the Electoral College. It is not too late. Those blue and red dots may flip tomorrow or the next day. It still will not be too late--but it is getting close to too late with only 25 days left. She has to change the momentum that trumpie has; she has to seize the race once again. It is extremely close but the bettors' sentiment has moved decisively against her and the polling and forecast lines are converged to almost a dead heat. If she doesn't shake up her campaign strategy and shake up the race those trend lines will flip with the red dot on top. It is not too late, but it never was the time for a strategy focused solely on XX chromosomes of both genders and fickle young people of both genders with a higher than average melanin concentration.
Kamala has lost momentum and trumpie has it; she has lost her way, and must find it NOW. If she doesn't change change NOW, she will lose, the American experiment will end, women will be rightly blamed, her career in politics will be over, proof once again that until a woman wins the presidency no woman can win the presidency.
