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    • Harris’ charge on Biden; Vance wins either way
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    Harris’ charge on Biden; Vance wins either way

    Sakege Posted on

    Voters who see the opposition as dangerous and dystopian, as a threat to democracy itself, will not see a loss as a national consensus. They are likely to see it as the starting signal for the next campaign.

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    It’s not just about winners and losers.

    He amazing 2024 election has featured the incumbent president who stepped back and the former president who returned. The innovative contender that seized the moment. The third party candidate with a famous surname who rose and fell and then began to emerge as a player again. Two assassination attempts. AND the nearest polls in American history.

    This year’s race will have considerable repercussions on the country’s political landscape.

    To start, here are five of them.

    The national debate? It’s not done.

    Winning the elections will not resolve the argument.

    For the past three elections, the divide in American politics has been very narrow and deep — a combustible combination that complicates the winner’s efforts to claim a mandate.

    How divided are we? In 2016, Republican Donald Trump won the Electoral College count but lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton. In 2020, the race was so close in key states that determining that Joe Biden had defeated Trump took the rest of the election week.

    This time, final surveys nationally and in the seven major swing states showed that neither Trump nor Vice President Kamala Harris had a clear lead anywhere, a lead outside the margins of error that reflect polling uncertainties. (The states considered most crucial are Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona.)

    A sign of that turmoil: Except when presidents have died in office, since the late 19th century the United States has not elected consecutive presidents for a single term, as we have now done with Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020.

    In exit polls conducted by Edison Research, 7 in 10 Harris supporters said they would feel “scared” if Trump won another term; Nearly 6 in 10 Trump supporters said the same about a Harris victory.

    Today’s voters who see the opposition as dangerous and dystopian, as a threat to democracy itself, are unlikely to see a loss as reflecting a new national consensus. They are more likely to see it as the starting bell for the next campaign.

    The Latino earthquake shakes racial politics.

    The coalitions that make up the two major parties are changing, and none is as momentous as the shift of some Hispanic voters toward the Republican Party.

    Democrats’ primary support has long depended on voters of color. But in this campaign Trump has done significant increases among Hispanic voters and others more modest among black voters, especially men.

    What that means: Gender, education and class are joining race and ethnicity as important factors influencing which party and candidate Black and Latino voters support.

    In 2016, Trump won about 28% of Hispanic voters, 40 percentage points behind Hillary Clinton.

    This time, in the battleground state of North Carolina, Trump came close to splitting the Latino votes, according to AP VoteCast; carried 6 out of 10 Hispanic men. While 9 in 10 black women voted for Harris, 20% of black men supported Trump.

    In Pennsylvania, 3% of black women but a surprising 23% of black men voted for Trump.

    Those trends, if they hold across the country, would increase the diversity of the Republican coalition and force Democrats to appeal to more white voters to win nationwide.

    The ranks of Hispanic voters, already large, are growing rapidly.

    An estimated 36.2 million Hispanics were eligible to vote this year, according to a report by the nonpartisan Latino Donor Collaborative, and they represented 50% of newly eligible voters since the 2020 election.

    In the battleground states, Hispanics make up 27% of the electorate in Arizona and 21% in Nevada.

    His political influence was highlighted by the furor after a comedian made fun of Puerto Rico as “a floating island of trash” when addressing Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden last week. Harris trumpeted the insult on the stump and her campaign cut an ad using the clip.

    Trump and his campaign disavowed the comments. “I love Hispanics,” he said at a rally in Albuquerque last week.

    Speaking of swing states, nearly half a million Puerto Ricans live in Pennsylvania, the most crucial of all.

    Biden’s burden?

    President Joe Biden was not on Tuesday’s ballot, a decision he made after a disastrous performance in the June debate. But he created serious obstacles for Harris, who replaced him on the Democratic ticket.

    Nationally, exit polls showed that only 41% of voters approved of the job Biden had done as president; 58% disapproved. In some swing states, his rating was even worse, with 38% approval in Wisconsin.

    Seven in 10 voters nationwide said they were dissatisfied or angry with the state of the country.

    Biden’s initial decision to seek a second term has been critically scrutinized, although he has been praised for ultimately deciding to step aside. Her latest gaffe when she appeared to characterize Trump voters as “trash,” though she said that’s not what she meant, led Harris to have to say that wasn’t her opinion.

    In a campaign appearance on ABC’s “The View,” he struggled to explain any way his presidency would be different from Biden’s, the subject of one of the television ads the Trump campaign aired. That could have left a damaging impression among the 8 in 10 voters who said they wanted “substantial change.”

    It’s raining (invisible) money.

    The burgeoning way of financing elections is in the dark.

    The 2024 presidential campaign has set fundraising records, including $1 billion raised by Harris in the first three months of her truncated campaign. Under federal law, contributions to campaigns and political parties are limited in amount and are publicly disclosed.

    But the biggest boost in election spending in 2024 came from super PACS and other outside organizations that face no limits on spending and are increasingly using ways to protect the names of those who give the money.

    Independent spending groups have spent at least $4.5 billion, according to OpenSecretsa nonpartisan group that tracks campaign finance. That’s more than $1.5 billion more than the 2020 campaign.

    Although foreign spending favored Democrats in 2020, it is leaning toward Republicans this time.

    Super PACs are required to disclose their donors, but nonprofit groups called 501(c)(4)s are not. Those groups can funnel money to super PACS and be listed as contributors, a way to avoid identifying the original donors.

    The amounts involved can be staggering. chicago business executive Barre Seid donated 1.6 billion dollars to a 501(c)(4) group led by conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo in 2020, believed to be the largest political donation in history. This year, billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg has reportedly donated not only $19 million to the main super PAC backing Harris, but also another $50 million to her 501(c)(4), Future Forward USA Action .

    Efforts to clarify who spends what on campaigns were undermined by the 2010 Supreme Court decision called Citizens United. The court ruled 5-4 that corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts on elections regardless of campaigns, saying it was political speech protected by the First Amendment.

    Since then, spending has increased and disclosure has been toned down.

    Win or lose, JD Vance wins.

    Trump has reshaped the Republican Party in your image. With your choice of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance As a running mate, he has also anointed a political heir to lead the MAGA movement, sooner or later.

    With that election, Trump rejected the advice of those urging him to broaden the appeal of the Republican ticket to voters who were not already on his side; for example, choosing former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, who posed the strongest challenge to his nomination.

    Instead, Trump chose a fellow populist and pugilist, defiant of the old-guard establishment and the media. His best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” chronicled a poor childhood in Kentucky and Ohio and made him a cultural hero to some.

    There is likely to be an ideological battle over the post-Trump Republican Party, fought between establishment Republicans who opposed Trump and populists who aligned with him. But GOP operations nationally and in most states are now controlled by MAGA supporters, people who will presumably heed Trump’s views on what should come next and by whom.

    To remember: Vance is 40, about half Trump’s age (he’s 78) and a generation younger than Harris, who is 60. In the year 2060, nine presidential elections from now, Vance would still be younger than that Trump is today.

    Sakege
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