A Reality Check for Delusional Dems

Before Joe Manchin ruled himself out as a possible replacement for Joe Biden, I recall a feeling of near-relief: As not-great as Manchin would be, at least I could vote for someone who wasn't nuts and could cause the Republicans to back off from finishing the destruction of their party as a home (however makeshift) to pro-liberty voters like myself.

Then Manchin ruled himself out and the Democrats went all-in on far-left flibbertigibbet Kamala Harris.

So long, relief.

I recently heard that Peruvians joke about their elections offering the choice of cancer -- or AIDS? As tasteless as that joke is, it's on point: At a certain point, two choices can be so bad that there's no rational way to decide between them.

As far as I'm concerned, we're back to Square One with this one, only rather than possibly have a dementia patient in office who will be replaced by a vapid follower of far-left fashion, we'll just go straight to the latter if the Democrats win.

Otherwise, we get the un-principled, unpredictable incoherent old man who jokes about not needing to vote after he's done -- and whose chosen successor is influenced by alt-right nuts who think we "need" to overthrow the Republic in favor of a dictator or even anoint a king.

From where I stand, there is nothing to be excited about, and it is puzzling that, while each party is raving over its champion, neither seems to understand the need to persuade voters like me of anything. The cockiness and obliviousness to the nature of elections has me wondering what country I've woken up in almost as much as the authoritarian candidates on offer do.

In any event, it is a small relief to see a calm head, even if it is from the left in the form of Ruy Teixeira, who seems to be one of the few in that camp to realize just how off-putting its establishment is for ordinary Americans.

Here's a sample of him discussing whether polling data for Harris is good news for her cause:

Which party will emerge from its cocoon to taste defeat come November? (Image by Charles J. Sharp, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)

These deficits have been driven by worsening performance among the white working class (recall that Biden in 2020 actually did a bit better among these voters relative to Clinton in 2016) and much lower margins among nonwhite working-class voters.

It is difficult to see how Harris prevails without strong progress on this front.

Can she do it? Sure, anything's possible. But Democrats would be well-advised to be clear-eyed about the challenge.

What Harris has to overcome is illustrated by an early July Pew poll that had a large enough sample size (N=over 9,400) to allow blacks and Hispanics to be broken down by working-class vs. college-educated.

Both racial groups show strong educational polarization that is much larger than what was observed in 2020.

Hispanic working-class voters in this poll preferred Trump by 3 points over Biden, compared to a 22 point margin for Biden over Trump in 2020.

Among black working-class voters, Biden was leading by 47 points over Trump, compared to an 82 point lead for Biden in 2020.

A working class-oriented campaign would appear to be in order. But so far there is little indication that is what the Harris campaign has in mind. [links omitted, emphasis in original]

All things being equal, it would appear that the party that wants to put the lights out will lose to the party that wants to bring back the Dark Ages.

-- CAV