I know.
Progressives do not easily lend themselves to hopeful thinking. It’s one of the great asymmetries of our time that Democrats can look at a four point lead in national polls and dwell on what can go wrong, while Republicans can look at a two point advantage and declare the election all but over.
I’m not suggesting we should adopt their blind faith. After all, Donald Trump had a two point lead before things fell apart for him. I’m not suggesting we should take our eyes off what matters most, which is preventing the rise of an authoritarian regime. Above all else, we have to win this election. But cautious, realistic optimism is healthy and beneficial.
And this Labor Day, as we enter the final stretch of the campaign, there are reasons to be cautiously, realistically optimistic.
The fundamentals of the election have aways favored Democrats and still do. And now we have a campaign that’s positioned to take full advantage of them.
Democrats went into 2024 with inflation stabilizing, wages rising, job growth continuing, and markets soaring. If you plugged this economic data into a predictive model of election outcomes, it would forecast a Democratic victory. Joe Biden never realized the political fruits of his record, but I believed the statistically strong economy would eventually exert itself on the election, which is why one of my concerns about his departure from the race was forfeiting the advantages which have historically worked to re-elect incumbents.
But Harris is managing to benefit where Biden could not. As a fresh and exciting voice, she has been able to speak to a restlessness in the country that hungers for something new, but as part of the administration she has been able to take credit for selective accomplishments of the Biden years while avoiding the president’s personal baggage. It’s remarkable positioning that affords her something of an incumbency advantage while claiming to be the change candidate running against an old opponent who’s already held the job.
And that’s not the only thing Harris has done right.
She has been on offense from day one. With humor and ridicule, she has diminished Trump and his hapless running mate. She has infused the campaign with joy and excitement. She has refused to engage the racial and gendered attacks against her, despite pressure to do so. She has been both fearless and approachable, a warrior and a favorite aunt.
She has set the agenda and left Trump flailing for a response.
The Trump campaign can’t function if people are feeling good. Harris knows this and has used it to keep him off balance.
Voters have no use for a strongman when they’re not angry, but how do you make them angry once they’ve found something that makes them happy?
Trump needs to be viewed as dominant and inevitable, which is why he continues to long for the days when Biden was his opponent. He needs to be perceived as strong to deflate an opposition that is larger than his base. But how can he be dominant or inevitable or strong when he’s behind in the polls and drawing smaller crowds than Harris?
Trump’s MAGA base is indeed angry, but there are not enough of them. And as we discussed on Friday, Harris has room to build on the small but tenacious lead she has amassed since she entered the race, powered by a surge in voter registration among groups likely to support her.
So perhaps it’s time to imagine what’s possible. Perhaps it’s time to press the advantage Harris has established.
For almost a decade, our politics has been dominated by a fearful and angry reaction to the emergence of a diverse electorate with different values and ideas than any that has come before. Quite predictably, we are at a flashpoint today because that emerging electorate—the one now expressly represented by Kamala Harris—is on the cusp of overtaking the receding electorate in size and political power.
It’s one of the great asymmetries of our time that Democrats can look at a four point lead in national polls and dwell on what can go wrong, while Republicans can look at a two point advantage and declare the election all but over.
A Biden victory would have preserved the republic but would not have brought the emerging electorate to power. A Harris victory will dramatically accelerate the pace of the transition—which means it will most likely intensify the resolve of those who oppose it.
This is why it is as important to puncture the political capabilities of the reactionaries as it is for Harris to win. Those who are unwilling to accept the future will continue to fight against it, but they will be at a disadvantage if they no longer have a political party willing to do their bidding.
Democrats were unable to accomplish this in 2020. Yes, Trump was defeated unambiguously in the electoral college, but by narrow margins in swing states. He attracted 11 million more voters than he had in 2016. Republicans picked up 13 House seats. And his loyal base—without whom Republicans knew they couldn’t win anything—rallied behind him after the failed insurrection.
That can’t happen this time if we want to finally put an end to Donald Trump’s electoral power.
MAGA is not going away if they lose. But to limit their ability to contest future elections, Republicans who cling to Trump because they fear they cannot win without him need to be confronted with the reality that they also cannot win with him. Only then will they begin to make the hard choices about their future that they should have made a decade ago, when it was clear the country was changing.
And that means winning unambiguously.
It means sweeping the swing states by margins large enough to make claims of fraud look silly. It means expanding the map to places like Trump’s home state of Florida, where a popular ballot measure to expand abortion access has tied him up in knots. It means taking back the House, holding the Senate against long odds, and winning state legislative seats across the country.
These are aspirational objectives. They will be hard to achieve—and polling suggests we are not there yet—but the components of a sweeping victory are within reach. The first weeks of the Harris campaign have been close to flawless despite having to manage a more challenging set of obstacles than any modern presidential candidate has faced. She is putting Trump on the defensive in a way that he has never experienced, and has tapped into a voracious appetite for ending our long era of hate and division.
If Harris successfully presses this advantage for the next two months, a scenario like the one we experienced during the realigning election of 1980 is possible, when people had given up on Jimmy Carter but weren’t ready to take a chance on Ronald Reagan. That election was close until the last few days, when the electorate succumbed to the sentiment they had been telegraphing all along—that they just wanted to move on. It resulted in a permanent shift in the direction of American politics.
Harris has galvanized the massive appetite for moving on from a decade of Donald Trump. She has left his campaign looking defensive and depleted. The pro-democracy, anti-MAGA majority in this country has been awakened by a candidate they are eager to vote for, and they are telegraphing what they want to do.
Now we have to make it happen.
It is natural to fear a Harris loss because so much is on the line, but it is more productive to visualize how the energy and momentum she has unleashed can power us to a transformational outcome.
Wishing everyone a relaxing and rejuvenating Labor Day holiday.
Harris is sensibly withholding details of her aspirations for a Democratic agenda, and she knows she will need a great majority of congress to enact truly progressive laws that can withstand reactionary courts. Yet for the past twenty years a progressive movement has been building, as shown in the new book, The Guarantee: Inside the Fight for America's Next Economy, by Natalie Foster. The next two months of the Harris-Walz campaign and those of other Ds nationwide will bring more people, including growing numbers of young and women voters, to make the win possible and impressive.
The electorate should be less white than 4 or 8 years ago. Given current enthusiasm among Black and Latino voters, this should means that Harris just has to match Biden's performance with white voters (42 or 43% depending on source) to do better overall. Nudge those percentages up a bit and it could be - I hesitate to use the word landslide, but hopefully very numerically convincing. If voter suppression efforts can be overcome, that is. Even highly accurate voting models can't account for people who fully plan to vote but are prevented from doing so.
Like all who want to finally put MAGA behind us, I want a convincing victory to show that the movement has lost its grip on the voting public. But I’m conflicted about the belief that we need one *in order to stop claims of cheating.* We cannot have a system where Republicans can win a swing state by 1 vote but Democrats must win by tens of thousands. Democratic candidates are already at a disadvantage because of the Electoral College. They shouldn’t be put in even more of one. The message needs to be clear that rules are the same for both sides. A win is a win, full stop.