If you haven’t stumbled across Peter Hamby’s writing in Puck, an online newsmagazine aimed at urban Lefty news and cultural commentary consumers or Vanity Fair – ditto the
target audience – you may remember him as one of the top political reporters for CNN back during the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns.
Mr. Hamby has a very insightful column up on Puck detailing in surprisingly honest fashion the challenges facing the Kamala Harris campaign. The headline “Three-Pronged Kryptonite” is too meme-worthy not to steal, or rather quote with proper attribution.
The three prongs of Kryptonite, or Bear Cases in Wall Street parlance Mr. Hamby identified – and with which we agree wholeheartedly – are Bear Case No. 1: The Economy Goes South, Bear Case No. 2: This Ain’t Obama’s Party Anymore, and Bear Case No. 3: The Black Voter Variable.
We would probably amend Bear Case No. 1 to say The Economy Goes Further South because voters already think that the country is on the wrong track and the economy is in the tank. As Mr. Hamby points out:
While inflation and unemployment have been coming down, that positive statistical news still has to compete with the salty economic vibes and wallet-busting grocery bills of the Biden era. In polls, two-thirds of the country believes the country is on the wrong track, a number that has barely budged in two years. Independent voters have an even dimmer view.
However, the most important point in Mr. Hamby’s Bear Case No. 1 is this gem that was quite honestly news to me:
Two recent polls, from YouGov and Morning Consult, found Trump with about a 10-point lead over Harris on the almighty question of economic stewardship. That’s better than Biden was doing on the economy question, sure, but no Democrat has won the presidency in modern times while losing on the economy question by that much. Not one. Republicans typically have a built-in advantage on the economy, but in past campaigns, Democrats only won the White House when they got to parity on that number, like Biden did back in 2020. (Emphasis by CHQ.)
Having been working at the White House during the Bush-Quayle campaign of 1992 I can attest to the power of the economy as an election-deciding issue and to the fact that it is the voters’ perception of the lived experience of the economy rather than economic stats that count.
In Bear Case No. 2 Mr. Hamby offers another insight that conservatives instinctively recognize, but may not have quantified as precisely as does he:
…the “Obama coalition” does not exist anymore, and Harris isn’t likely to put it back together. That’s because the Obama coalition included many white working-class voters who have since abandoned the Democratic Party, thanks to Trump. Remember: In 2008, Obama won Indiana, he won Ohio, he won those blue-collar river counties in Eastern Iowa. But with the class realignment that has defined politics since Trump came along—non-college whites vote Republican, college-educated whites vote Democrat—Harris has almost no shot at peeling off meaningful margins among those voters.
Conservatives for the most part have looked at that “class realignment” in terms of the politics of the Right – Country Club Republicans vs. the MAGA Movement – but it is much bigger than GOP primaries and who runs your local county Republican Party organization. Trump has effectively democratized the Republican Party, ending the lock on the GOP leadership of the old Bush-aligned WASP elite.
Whether this democratization has been good for the Republican Party, or the conservative movement, is a subject for another column, but its effects cross party lines and have most likely taken white blue-collar workers out of the Democrat coalition permanently.
Summarizing an analysis by political scientist Ruy Teixeira Mr. Hamby concluded:
Obama lost white working-class voters by 20 points, which is pretty good for a Democrat—and in hindsight, pretty remarkable for the arugula-shopping Black law professor with the middle name Hussein. Today, Harris is losing those same voters by a whopping 34 points. She has a much narrower path to the presidency this year, which depends mostly on reassembling the Biden coalition of 2020: college-educated voters, suburbanites, Black voters, and hopefully winning at least 60 percent of the youth vote. Anything less and Harris is toast.
Did the GOP come out ahead trading pro-Trump white blue-collar workers for Trump-skeptical college-educated suburbanites? If Messrs. Teixeira and Hamby are correct, the answer would appear to be YES.
Finally, Mr. Hamby offered-up what I find to be the most interesting, and what for Democrats should be the most alarming of the “Three Prongs of Kryptonite” for Kamala Harris – Bear Case No. 3: The Black Voter Variable.
Mr. Hamby reviewed and summarized some very solid polling data and analysis and found:
She [Harris] has improved on Biden’s numbers against Trump among young voters,
Hispanics, and independents. But she has also lost incremental Black support—down 5 points among Black voters in New York Times polling when compared to Biden’s position in the race earlier this summer. Another Democratic pollster, Adam Carlson, averaged the crosstabs from five high-quality national polls since Biden left the race, and found Harris “making next to zero progress among Black voters.” In 2020, according to Pew’s validated voter survey, Biden won Black voters by 83 points. Today, in polls, Harris is only winning them by 53 points.
In some sense this should not be that surprising, during the 2020 Democrat primaries Harris received very little Black leadership support, which for the most part went to Joe Biden, especially after the late Rep. John Lewis and Rep. James E. Clyburn endorsed him and saved his candidacy in the South Carolina primary.
Some of it may be pure antipathy for Kamala Harris, but unlike most Republican candidates for President (save the late Jack Kemp) Donald Trump has actually worked for Black votes.
While Trump is never going to peel-off Black leaders from the plantation politics of the Democratic Party his “what have you got to lose” appeal to African Americans who are not getting paid by the Democrats, or Democrat-run governments and NGOs resonates as they look at the toll Biden-Harris policies have taken on their quality of life and economic future.
And there’s another element to Trump’s appeal to Black voters – Trump’s long association with Black entertainers and athletes. These non-political opinion leaders have been more willing to come forward this year than they were in 2020, as evidenced by rappers Kodak Black and Fivio Foreign linking up with Trump for an endorsement and rap track promoting his candidacy.
As we pointed out in yesterday’s CHQ Fivio Foreign and Kodak Black dropping a Trump song is a big deal. People who aren’t aware of hip-hop culture won’t understand the significance, but these are not washed-up rappers or weird wannabes, they are chart topping artists whose support means it is more socially acceptable now than ever for Blacks to openly support Trump.
The bottom line in Mr. Hamby’s analysis:
Black voters are no longer the reliable Democratic voting bloc that they were with Obama, or even Hillary Clinton, when they delivered 90-10 margins to Democratic candidates. In current polls, almost 20 percent of Black voters say they’re voting for Trump over Harris, and those numbers are usually higher among Black voters under the age of 40.
No doubt Kamala Harris will come out of this week’s anointment ceremony with a bump in the polls, and she will also no doubt lean hard on Trump’s own vulnerabilities, but a week’s worth of TV, even with the best writers and production values Hollywood has to offer cannot shield her from the fundamental “Three-Pronged Kryptonite” now casting its deadly rays on her campaign.
George Rasley is editor of Richard Viguerie's ConservativeHQ.com. A veteran of over 300 political campaigns, including every Republican presidential campaign from 1976 to 2004, he served as a staff member or advance representative for some of America’s most recognized conservative political figures, including Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin and Jack Kemp. A member of American MENSA, he served on the House and Senate staff and on the staff of Vice President Dan Quayle. Rasley is a graduate of Hanover College and studied international affairs at Oxford University's Worcester College.
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