The Great Basement Campaign 2024, Version 2.0
As the Harris-Walz continues on its glide path to the 2024 election,
isn’t it time that the mainstream media start to do their job?
As the Harris-Walz campaign continues to avoid discussing any specific policy issues that they would implement, the collusion between legacy media and the campaign to prop up the ticket’s popularity is reaching its apex. That is, public opinion polling numbers that are not manufactured out of whole cloth have nowhere to go but down.
Democrats are historically overrepresented in most national polling. We saw this in 2016 when Donald Trump was polling double digits behind Hillary Clinton and was given a 90 percent probability of losing leading up to the first polls closing on election day. Four hours later Donald Trump became the president-elect, much to the chagrin of Hillary Clinton.
We are having difficulty understanding the complete reversal in the public polling since Kamala Harris was anointed the Democrat presidential nominee and her selection of Socialist “Tampon Tim” Walz as her running mate. Remember, just a month ago, before President Biden ended his reelection bid, Harris polled well below Biden in popularity and competence. And now she’s polling at or above 50 percent in the national (meaningless) polls. How did she shift almost 20 percentage points from the low thirties to where she is polling today?
It’s because the mainstream media has gone all in to prop up her candidacy while not holding her accountable for her far-left policy positions as she attempts to tack to the center as the de facto nominee of her party. And you’re supposed to believe that the economic and societal troubles foisted on America over the past four years did not happen.
It’s laughable when Harris claims to be tough on border issues when as the Biden administration’s purported “Border Czar,” more than eight million uninvited migrants have flooded the country since 2021 (some say that when you factor in the got-aways, the number is well north of 12 million but we have no way to ascertain that number). And don’t buy the media line that Harris was never Biden’s “Border Czar;” her title was entered into the Congressional record.
This shift occurred as poll after poll was released, most taken more than two weeks ago, showing that Harris had closed the gap with Donald Trump. Quite possibly the worst was the New York Times/Sienna poll that showed Harris tied or leading in most of the crucial battleground states. When you look at the crosstabs of these polls, especially on immigration and the economy (which are interrelated), there is no way that this can be true unless Democrats are oversampled in relationship to Republicans and more importantly, independent voters.
A much better barometer to see where the electorate lies is the Rassmussen Reports polling taken after Walz was chosen as Harris’s running mate. Rassmussen Reports polling is often denigrated in the mainstream media as a “Republican” polling organization. But in both 2016 and 2020, of the best-known polling organizations, Rassmussen came closest to predicting the outcome of both elections and is the best predictive indicator in 2024. Their polling is so much deeper and is taken every evening, that it is by design, so much more accurate than their competitors, especially the New York Times/Sienna and 538 post-Nate Silver.
To give you an idea of just how quickly polling is moving, polling as of Friday shows polling moving back towards Trump, especially in almost all the crucial swing states. A few savvy polling analysts like Rassmussen have noted that by this point in 2016, Trump trailed Hillary Clinton by six points. In mid-August 2020, he trailed Joe Biden by three to four points in the national polling, even more in the all-important swing states. If you apply this historic polling error, where Trump typically overperforms the polls, Harris’s small current lead will not hold up. This is especially true in the all-important swing state of Pennsylvania as YouTubers Real American and Depressed Ginger point out in their in-depth analysis.
Now that Kamala Harris has replaced Joe Biden as the presidential front-runner, what we have now is a statistical dead heat according to most of the polls. If we consider that pre-election polling of likely voters is only marginally indicative of actual voting behavior, and considering that this is as much of a kitchen table election as we have ever seen, it stands to reason that much of the hype surrounding the Harris-Walz campaign is due to what former Obama advisor David Axelrod calls “irrational exuberance.” What he means is all of the “joy” and “cool vibes” touted by the media aren’t being bought by enough voters as a reason to continue policies that have decimated people’s quality of life for the past four years.
It can be confidently stated that we are in the midst of “peak Kamala.” No matter how much effort is made to prop up the campaign—and we expect an effort by the legacy media on a similar level as that of a military invasion—reliable polls will crest and a notable decline will be inevitable.
Once the Harris campaign’s internal polls land at a negative point outside the margin of error, the campaign will have no choice but to present their policy platform and put Harris in a position they absolutely dread: An unscripted Q&A session with journalists who are tired of being ignored. Just this week we saw CNN, of all media organizations, express frustration that Harris is ducking accountability on her policy positions. Even Democrat activist CNN water-carrier Jim Acosta expressed obvious frustration with Harris-Walz campaign communications director Michael Tyler when he declined to commit the vice president to holding a formal press conference.
The Harris campaign is putting this off as long as they can. The campaign knows that Harris is categorically incapable of speaking without a teleprompter and pre-screened questions. Her word salads are legendary, her childlike giggling at inappropriate times suggests a lack of confidence, and her incisive lack of seriousness when discussing important issues makes her the last person you want in the room with world leaders leveraging the U.S. on behalf of their own best interests. And it will all come out in front of the world during even the most softball unscripted interview.
We predict this polling crash could happen before the first debate with Donald Trump on September 10. If so, and Harris is obligated to actually deliver an interview or press conference, the disaster of it will likely cause the campaign to pull out of the Trump debate on the notion that Harris, as a past prosecutor, “will not debate a convicted felon.” The irony here will not be lost on anyone; the empty pantsuit of Kamala Harris and her abject lack of qualifications to be commander-in-chief will be outright proven by her fear of debating against her rival for the presidency. And that right there is a disqualifying factor among the voting public as if the Harris train wreck of a platform isn’t enough.
Here’s one example of why the Democrat’s platform is one that voters should reject. Harris is now on record as saying she favors giving taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegal invaders. This while we have over 35,000 Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans, American citizens, homeless and sleeping every night on park benches and under freeway overpasses. How can we condone this travesty?
Once people understand the radical and reckless governing platform being presented to them, they’ll realize a vote for Harris-Walz is completely unconscionable. In the meantime, the Harris campaign will keep their candidate visible only at tightly scripted rallies and will work hard to keep policy specifics hidden for as long as possible.
In fact, we think the Harris campaign would like to keep their stealth agenda in place until after early voting begins (Pennsylvania starts September 16), thus preventing millions of voters from making educated decisions on their next presidential administration just as was the case in 2020 that resulted in Biden’s victory. If the campaign is allowed to get away with that and the legacy media misleads the public on how a Harris administration would govern, it will constitute a bait-and-switch unlike anything we have seen in history.
***
Richard Truesdell is a former consumer electronics retail executive and automotive travel photojournalist. In the last 25 years, he has visited more than 35 countries on six continents. A former high school history teacher with a BA in Political Science from Waynesburg University, he is a lifelong Conservative moderate who has turned his thoughts and keyboard to political commentary and popular culture. A cross-section of his writings can be found here.
Keith Lehmann is a retired consumer electronics industry executive who has written extensively on technology, transportation, and international travel. Living in Southern California for over fifty years, he has first-hand exposure to societal and cultural happenings of the left and submits decidedly realism-based, Conservative viewpoints, much of which can be found on his Substack.
