Why this interview scared me!

When Democrats start talking this way, it is really worrying.

Whenever a parent suspects that their child has done something wrong, they can always tell by the number of reasons (or really, excuses) the child gives. If there is spilled milk on the floor, and the parent asks the child “did you do this?”, the child will give every reason from the dog running into them to a space alien coming down to try to steal their milk. Either way, the parent knows that the child is shifting the blame away from them.

This is what I have seen from the Harris campaign and Democrats over the last few days.

Instead of talking about how well they are doing in general, people like Jen O’Malley Dillon, Tom Bonier, and others have been quoting certain numbers and statistics, many of which go over most people’s heads. It gets to such an extreme, the reader or the listener not only doesn’t understand what is being said, but just assumes it’s good based on who is saying it. The best example of this is of Bonier constantly talking about the cannibalization of Republican Election Day voters who are voting early, and how that is good for Democrats. Now, I can poke tons of holes in this argument, but the lay political observer might not understand why this is important, but just assumes that it is.

But watching Jen O’Malley Dillon’s interview on MSNBC really scared the hell out of me! While many lay observers said, “she says everything is great” (well, yeah, that’s her job), the words that she was saying didn’t instill me with confidence. This is where the child mentioned above becomes the metaphor, with many parents falling for the kid’s story.

The problem with O’Malley Dillon’s interview, as well as that of Democrats on television and online, is that it seems like the Democrats’ “strategy” is based on things that we have never seen happen before. Now yes, this could be widening the electoral base of the Democrats by targeting these voters. However, when O’Mally Dillon said that she is “very confident” of winning a “close race”, it doesn’t seem like this would be an election of electoral base expansion.

So, what are some of the things that worry me about the Democrats.

Republicans Voting  for Harris

The first is that Democrats think that there will be a significant number of defectors from the Republican Party to Kamala Harris. Now, I wrote an entire article about that, and I will link that here, but the topline polling data also doesn’t support that theory. Assuming that “traditional Republicans” are solely against Trump, and switching to Harris, then one could assume that those same voters will revert back to the GOP in the US Senate, House, and down-ballot races. However, we are seeing the opposite, that the Democratic US Senate candidates are outperforming Harris in the polls, indicating that people are voting for Trump at the top and then switch to, for example. Ruben Gallego or Colin Allred for US Senate.

Low Propensity Voters

In her interview, O’Malley Dillon talked about how non-super voters were part of their campaign as well (super-voters being those who are usually identified as voting in the last four elections, presidential and midterm). Yes, that could be a strategy, I guess. But all indications are that Democrats haven’t turned out in early voting, as in three of the battleground states (Nevada, Arizona, and North Carolina), the Republicans are ahead (which, hopefully, could change this week). At this point, the Democrats should be ahead in both in-person early voting and mail-in ballots in all of these states, and Pennsylvania is lagging behind previous trends. Jon Ralston has talked about the previous trends in Nevada and how it is much more Republican than before.

Younger Voters

I know this always comes up in every election, so why not now. Time and time again, we hear that ‘young voters’ are going to save the day for Democrats. And when Election Day comes around, young voters don’t. Yes, there might be some cases where younger voters do make a difference, but they haven’t nearly turned out at the rate as older voters.

And this is another problem with the O’Malley Dillon interview. She stated that the youth vote turnout in Clark County was higher. However, as Jon Ralston has been reporting, Clark County isn’t nearly doing as well for Democrats as it had in previous elections. Both Ralston and O’Malley Dillon are giving vastly different accounts as to who the turnout benefits in Nevada. Based on purely raw voter turnout data and experience in the state, I’m going with Ralston.

Election Day Vote

The biggest justification for the lackluster performance in early voting so far (and I stress so far, back to that later) is that “Democrats are going to vote on Election Day.” This is another thing that is not borne out from any data and is purely speculative. Also, this narrative of “Election Day Democrats” didn’t start coming up until it was known that the early numbers weren’t looking good for Democrats. Yes, it’s an assumption, but also seems to be a CYA (cover your ass) narrative to justify underperforming early-vote turnout.

Also, if we look at polling, there just doesn’t seem to be any evidence in this “Election Day Democrat”. According to the most recent Economist/YouGov poll, only 33% of Democrats are planning on voting on Election Day, with 52% of Republicans and 37% of independents doing so. Overall, the only evidence that we hear is anecdotal.

Super-voters

I’ve heard a lot about the Republican super-voters voting early. I’ve heard a lot about “low-propensity voters” voting early, as well as “young voters”. What I haven’t heard from the Democrats is that OUR super-voters are voting early. If we can’t get our super-voters off the couch, especially if they had voted in-person early in the past, then that doesn’t bode well for Democrats. The Harris campaign hasn’t given any good reasons as to why they haven’t given us any data on Democratic, traditional early in-person super-voters. Is the data worse than we think? I don’t know. I hope not, but they aren’t telling us much.

So yes, O’Malley Dillon’s interview put a bit of a panic in me. Granted, the numbers early in Michigan and Wisconsin look good. But as I said earlier, the Democratic performance has been lackluster so far. This last week of early, in-person voting is usually substantially stronger than all the previous weeks of early voting combined. This week is where the Democrats will make up a lot of ground. Also, if this week is mega for Democrats, that will probably stop the “Election Day Democrats” talk, basically calling out BS on that whole theory.

It's a close race, it always has been. We have eight more days.