Anyone who has spent anytime watching the media for the past few months since Joe Biden “stepped down” as the Democrat presidential candidate has heard the familiar refrain about the presidential race being too close to call with the margins between the two candidates, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris being “razor thin”. Being a contrarian, I don’t usually buy into conventional wisdom on political matters, and I certainly don’t buy into it this time.
The race isn’t that close. When I write this, I’m fully aware that we are well past the era of political landslides, such as occurred in the Reagan/Bush decade of the 1980’s but compared to the last two presidential elections of 2016 and 2020, November 5th could be a short night for most of us.
I’ve been watching the polls since the Democrat party coup that replaced Joe Biden with Kamala Harris in July, and there has been a gradual but inexorable eroding of the “sugar high” poll numbers that gave Harris a lead over Trump. The RealClearPolitics (RCP) average, which is an average of a mixture of good polls and bad polls, has, in the last month, gone from showing Harris ahead by 2.2 points nationally to a mere 0.9-point lead, but the last four out of five national polls are showing Trump with a lead of 2 or 3 points. Keep in mind these are nationwide popular vote numbers, and not the all-important state by state numbers that affect the electoral college vote. The RCP average numbers for the crucial battleground states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada, and Georgia are now all in Trump’s favor. The latest State by state polling is showing Trump pulling ahead in these important states.
The betting markets have now also gone in Trump’s direction, and the underlying sentiment powering a stock market rally is that Trump will win on November 5th.
The RCP Electoral College Map now shows Trump with 219 Electoral Votes to 215 for Harris with 104 tossups, but the version of the map without tossups now shows Trump with 312 electoral votes to 226 for Harris, with 270 needed to win.
It’s no mystery why Harris is on a slow glide path to a not-so-good landing. If you’ve seen the woman and her weird running mate, Tim Walz, perform in public, they are nothing short of pathetic. Harris and Walz remind me of a football team that starts playing a “prevent” defense in a tied game early in the fourth quarter. They have no policy and can’t conduct a single successful interview even when appearing on a friendly venue like “The View”. Kamala’s brief foray into FOXNEWS to be interviewed by Brett Baier was so disastrous that her staff shut the whole thing down ten minutes early.
The whole Harris campaign is based on hatred of Donald Trump. She has also attempted to assemble a number of bitter, disgruntled Republicans to repeat the whole “Trump is a threat to democracy” mantra to the point where no one even listens to it anymore. Call me crazy, but most people actually go to the polls to vote FOR something, and not against something, and that’s why Harris is sinking faster than the Titanic. It’s been said that her collapse is typical of her: peaking early and then crashing, just like she did in the race for the 2020 Democrat nomination, when she was the first to drop out, even before any primaries had occurred.
Now, is the race over? Certainly not, with a couple of weeks left and the Democrat propensity to lie, cheat and steal to preserve their power, so don’t let the good numbers tempt you to stay home on November 5th or to not mail in your ballot. Get to the polls and make Trump’s margin too big to steal.
I’m going to try to write another column to give you all a more concise election night guide to this election when we get closer to “the day”.
Dwight Weidman is a resident of Greene Township and is a graduate of Shepherd University. He is retired from the United States Department of Defense, where his career included assignments In Europe, Asia, and Central America. He has been in leadership roles for the Republican Party in two states, most recently serving two terms as Chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party. He has been an Amateur Radio Operator since 1988, getting his first license in Germany, a past volunteer with both Navy and Army MARS, Military Auxiliary Radio Service, and is also an NRA-certified firearms instructor. In his spare time, he dabbles in genealogy and learning new languages.
