Polls showed Harris had problems — media and Dems didn’t want to face them

We went through dozens of swing-state polls over the last few months, and there was something for everyone in the stories, as readership metrics and fierce debate around the surveys showed.

There were plenty of polls reflecting the mainstream media consensus and bias, suggesting Kamala Harris had the secret sauce and would be powered into the White House by women, by young voters and by a diverse coalition that represented a generational choice.

The high point of Harris hysteria was obviously that career-ending Selzer poll that showed her flipping GOP stronghold Iowa, with the women who elected conservative Kim Reynolds governor apparently ready to turn on a dime and vote for a candidate whose policies and presentation were diametrically opposed to the values of the Hawkeye State. 

Why were Dems and their media adjuncts so willing to buy in? Because they had a blind spot their policy positions were so “correct” that they never had to be explained, much less challenged, and bet on vacuous narratives rather than clear exposition of the way forward. 

Harris supporters react on election night at the vice president’s Howard University watch party. AFP via Getty Images

Harris and the soon-to-be-repudiated Tim Walz painted themselves as the avatars of Generation X, setting a direct contrast to Donald Trump and the boomer mentality. And in that context, they didn’t need to talk much to political media, avoiding adversarial gaggles and press conferences with people from across the political spectrum in favor of scripted interviews with friendly podcasters.

Months ago, I wrote about Harris’ effort as a “vibes” campaign. But the trouble was it stayed there, with much of her support not predicated on what the Biden-Harris administration has done in the last four years but rooted in the hypothetical call for “what can be, unburdened by what has been,” as vapid as a “Live, Laugh, Love” sign in an Airbnb.

That aspirational vision required voters to memory hole the reality. That for four years, the Biden-Harris administration owned “what has been.” Everything from currency devaluation and diversity, equity and inclusion pushes that elevated certain connected marginalized people to the winners’ circle at the expense of the middle class to a miserable, inchoate foreign policy that drove escalations in the Middle East and question marks throughout Asia and Latin America. 

Did voters notice?

Lots of polling said so, pointing to the real possibility Trump would increase his vote share at Harris’ expense, driving what the president-elect rightly calls a “historic realignment.”

Trump and his allies were dismissed, for example, when they targeted support of black men — a group ignored by many previous GOP candidates to their peril. 

Atlas Intel polling showed Trump above 20% and even 30% with black voters in some swing states a few days before the election, numbers that may have seemed like an outlier to some readers a week ago but are validated now in the wake of the GOP candidate likely sweeping the swing states.

Trump’s appeal to Hispanic voters likewise was discounted because many mainstream observers couldn’t reconcile themselves to the reality that many Latinos want a strong economy and a border that doesn’t allow criminals from around the world to cross it and establish themselves permanently, living off taxpayer largesse while contributing nothing but menace and mayhem. 

And Muslim voters — there’s another group Trump targeted, amid a historic weakness from Harris among it. Polls showed Harris had work to do, but what her campaign and the Democratic Party did was attack Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Cornel West as GOP plants while clumsily triangulating on Israel and Hamas. That’s the sort of thing Bill Clinton may have pulled off in his prime but Harris, a maladroit and workmanlike politician by comparison, never could figure out.

But here’s the bright side: She doesn’t have to think about the issue again.

Democrats, on the other hand, have plenty to think about. Including the very existential question of what they stand for beyond “Well, we’re not Trump.”

Sen. Marco Rubio put it succinctly: “The Republican Party is now a multi-ethnic, multi-racial coalition of hard-working Americans who love their country.”

It’s not because they don’t know what’s going on; rather, it’s because they see it clearly. They trust Trump to undo the damage of the last few years. And they didn’t trust Harris or the party that installed her without a primary fight to do it.