Where we stand on the first night of the DNC

Check that.  I should have said where Trump stands as Democrats gather in Chicago to anoint his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, as the party’s nominee.

It doesn’t look good for Monsieur Cantilevered Pompadour.  A new national poll out yesterday from ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos has Harris ahead of Trump by six points, 51 percent to 46 percent among likely voters.  Morning Consult is out this morning with new poll figures showing Harris ahead by four points over Trump, 48 to 44.  In addition, Morning Consult reported that Harris has a record-high net-favorability of 50 percent over 45 percent.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo wrote an entire column today on Harris’ movement in favorability, making the point that favorability rating is just as important if not more important than polls showing one candidate over another in terms of voting.  Marshall reported that the FiveThirtyEight polling average has Harris at a net favorability rate of minus-three, meaning that her unfavourability is three points lower than her favorability rate.  Marshall goes on to remind us that her net favorability in July before Biden suspended his campaign was minus 17.5.  “Shifts like this are simply unheard of,” Marshall wrote.  “They don’t happen. And in today’s dismal politics, you often get less popular with more exposure, not more popular.”

That means Kamala Harris has become more popular in the month since she took the reins of the Democratic ticket, and more popular by a lot.  This has to do with Trump’s utter and complete failure to “define” Harris since July 21.  On that day, Harris was something of a blank slate for most voters.  If they followed politics at all, voters may have been aware of her reputation inside the Beltway among the class of political professionals who dominate Washington chat.  She was said to have had a hard time holding onto staff in her White House office.  Her reputation inside the White House was mixed at best, especially when she and Biden first took office in 2021.

But Vice President Harris over time shrugged off Washington gossip and did her job.  She went to ribbon cuttings and funerals as all vice presidents do.  She raised money.  She gave speeches.  But what went unnoticed in Washington and unremarked on by the national political press was an under the radar campaign by Harris to build support within the Democratic Party around the country.  When she was out there cutting ribbons and shaking hands, she was meeting with the kinds of party officials who make a difference when elections come around.  Those were the connections she drew on the morning of July 21 when she made her now-famous 100-plus phone calls after Biden dropped out.  It was the groundwork Harris quietly laid over the previous three years that resulted in party chairs from all 50 states endorsing her within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement that he was suspending his campaign.

All of this happened just three days after Trump accepted the Republican nomination in Milwaukee.  When he was supposed to be riding a wave from his convention “bounce,” news about the transformation of the Democratic Party by Kamala Harris dominated the headlines.  This was when Trump and his minions should have been out there labeling Harris and “defining” her.  Instead, she was able to define herself.  Every time she got her picture taken or gave a speech or held a rally, the images that hit the airwaves were of her smile and energy.  Where only days before, the image of the Democratic Party was a hesitant and halting Joe Biden, now it was Kamala Harris striding in low heels and an attractive pants suit across stages waving and taking the cheers of audiences that materialized as if by magic but were actually the product of a lot of hard work she had put in over three years as vice president.

Going into the first day of the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Harris hasn’t had to “define” Donald Trump because he’s been doing it for her.  He has been holding rallies where empty seats were shown in images of him speaking in the foreground.  Responding to questions from reporters, Trump had to assert that he is “entitled” to attack Harris, essentially because he is mad at her, he doesn’t like her, and he is “a better looking person than Kamala.”  In a single speech at a rally over the weekend, Trump claimed she is a “communist,” “Marxist” and “fascist.” 

It ain’t working.  The day after that speech, the ABC/Washington Post/Ipsos poll showed Harris with a 45 to 44 percent favorability rating, while Trump’s favorability was “underwater” at 57 percent unfavorable to 35 percent favorable.

The poll numbers are all over the map.  Harris is up four points here, six points there, even with Trump in this battleground state, lagging him by a point or two in that state.  And there is the old saw that poll numbers don’t decide elections, votes do.

But with the Democratic National Convention now underway, Trump has missed the best chance he had to “define” Kamala Harris before a national television audience sees her triumphant as the Democrats’ nominee for president in Chicago.  Harris and Walz did a bus tour of Western Pennsylvania on their way to Chicago yesterday, greeting voters along the way.  You won’t see Donald Trump out there shaking hands at diners and municipal parks in small towns.

In fact, the only images voters have had of Trump over the past couple of months have been of him ranting and raving at a rally somewhere, or they may have occasioned upon a video of him driving a golf cart at his Bedminster golf club responding to a query from a club member by calling Harris a “bitch” on camera. 

The cantilever hair-crew and pancake smear specialists are going to be working overtime in the coming weeks attempting to make the oldest man who has ever been nominated as a candidate for president look younger than his 78 years.  The pundits have hauled out the word “sprint” to describe the race between now and election day.  Donald Trump over the weekend used AI-generated images on his social media platform to try to imply that mega-superstar Taylor Swift has endorsed him, reposting one fake image of her fans wearing t-shirts emblazoned with “Swifties for Trump,” and another fake image of an Uncle Sam figure with Swift’s face saying “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump.”  He posted a reply to that image reading “I accept!”  NBC News reported that fifteen images of women allegedly supporting Trump were faked using artificial intelligence.

That’s where Donald Trump is as Democrats gather in Chicago – faking support by women he doesn’t have and an endorsement by Taylor Swift that he will never get.  Meanwhile, Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, JD Vance, went on Fox News yesterday to take care of Trump’s problems with the polls, claiming that “the media” is using “fake polls to drive down Republican turnout and to create dissension and conflict with Republican voters.”

Fake polls, fake supporters, fake endorsements:  that’s where Trump stands as Joe Biden readies his wholehearted endorsement of Kamala Harris that will be seen by millions tonight on television.  Just a month ago, all we could see were dark clouds on the horizon going into the rest of the summer and the Democratic National Convention.  Chicago could suffer a hurricane followed by a tornado followed by a freak summer snowstorm, and it would be sunny for Democrats in the Windy City.  That’s where we’re at.