SHORT STROKES IN THE HOME STRECH
Keith Boag
Donald Trump rallied in Latrobe, Pennsylvania Saturday evening, a town famous as the birthplace of both children’s TV star Fred Rogers and “The King of Golf”, Arnold Palmer — meaning it was literally in Mister Rogers’ neighbourhood that the former president decided to throw open the adolescent locker room of his mind and share a vulgar riff on the golfing legend’s private parts predictably graced with a tawdry appraisal of the Palmer endowment.
“When he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, 'Oh my God, that's unbelievable,” Trump beamed.
Thankfully, some sort of end to this farce is finally in sight.
We still call it “Election Day” but of course millions of votes are already in the ballot boxes, millions more are in the mail and total early voting could add up to around half of all ballots cast.
We are told the result won’t be clear until long after the last polls close on November 5th — which could mean the counting and recounting goes on for days or weeks or longer.
Still, here's how it looks from here:
People have no natural instinct for probability — which is why casinos thrive—but for what it’s worth, the most famous US election forecaster, Nate Silver, gives former President Donald Trump an insignificant edge over Vice President Kamala Harris — in other words, the race is tied. There’s roughly a 50/50 chance either could end up president.
In 2016 Silver gave Trump a 30% chance of winning and in 2020 he gave him about a 10% chance. So another way to look at the current race is that 50/50 odds are the best odds Trump has ever had. And he’s already won once.
Which means everything counts: Every speech, every interview, every endorsement, every TV ad, every bit of good luck or bad. Any of it could make the difference between winning and losing.
So it’s worth notice that ten days ago the Democrats did something that is reportedly unprecedented for their party. They began a multi-million dollar television ad campaign in three battleground states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — against a third party candidate: the Green Party’s Jill Stein.
The ad features a portrait of Stein morphing into a portrait of Trump and warns that she drew enough votes from Hilary Clinton to help Trump win in 2016 and will do the same this year, unless people wise-up that a vote for her is really a vote for Trump.
The American Arab and Muslim Political Action Committee in Michigan endorsed Stein, referring to her as their only option considering the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which they consider is sustained by the Biden administration. Democrats need to win those votes, even as the war splits their base.
The Trump team is making changes to its own “air war” according to AdImpact, a company that tracks broadcast political ads. In the first couple of weeks of October a full third of Trump’s TV advertising paid for ads about transgender issues, reminding voters that Harris has spoken in support of publicly funded transition surgery for detained immigrants and federal prisoners. That’s a significant course change for the Republican attack.
It could mean that the Trump team believes it’s wrung almost everything it can out of scaring people about immigrants and the border and is trying a new tactic to get those natural Trump supporters who never vote in elections, to turn out for this one. Or it could be a play for the not-quite-Trump-friendly-yet, who might be persuaded Harris is a transparent cultural Marxist who will turn their little boys into little girls.
In any case, even though it’s not a top twenty priority for voters, binding Harris to her comments about transgender surgery is now a central part of the Trump attack as illustrated last week by the media wing of Trump’s campaign: FOX News. FOX interviewer Bret Baier tried to goad Harris into sticking her foot in her mouth and spitting out a controversial sound bite about transgender surgery. She declined.
Her FOX interview was just one stop on a safari Harris is making through the studios of unfamiliar media, dropping in on popular but eccentric shows including Call Her Daddy, Charlamagne Tha God, and The (no-longer-particularly-edgy) Howard Stern Show. Look for her next on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast sometime later this week.
Meanwhile, Trump’s been providing fodder that only sustains anxieties about his age, stamina and mental fitness. That includes unpredictable performances such as a forty minute “dance” segment last week where he and his team stood on stage swaying gently to a medley of his favorite tunes seemingly because he’d lost the energy for the question and answer bearpit he’d promised and was hoping to just run out the clock by reassuring the audience he still showed signs of life.
The home stretch seems to boil down to this:
In 2016, Trump got 46.1% of the vote against Clinton. In 2020 he got 46.8% of the vote against Biden. He is on track to get something like that share of the vote against Harris. His ceiling seems fixed — just above his floor.
Harris has more room to grow but she faces headwinds — high prices, the border, the sense that things might have been better when Trump was in the White House. Trump is a convicted felon, a sexual predator and incited the January sixth attack on the Capitol. Yet it could all come down to a relative handful of voters in just a few states and how they feel about Israel, Gaza, transgender surgery, Jill Stein and maybe that thing Trump said about Arnold Palmer’s business.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Keith Boag - The US presidential ticket is set: Trump + Vance versus Harris + Waltz. And to cover that election, we're bringing our readers and listeners a brilliant journalistic mind and political correspondent legend, Keith Boag! Keith was with the CBC for more than 30 years, including as Chief Political Correspondent. His career included work for many years in Washington, D.C., and as Ottawa Bureau Chief. Keith covered seven federal elections in Canada, ten party leadership campaigns, as well as several US elections. Keith will regularly offer his written analysis via "QUOTES" at Air Quotes Media.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Air Quotes Media. Read more opinion contributions via QUOTES from Air Quotes Media.