Did Kamala Really Have a Chance to Beat Donald Trump?

I was one of those who thought that Kamala Harris would win because in all the previous elections since the overturning of Dobbs by the Supreme Court, the Democrats had a pretty impressive winning streak driven by women who were mad about losing their right to reproductive freedom and making their anger known at the ballot box. But in this election, neither abortion nor saving our democracy as offered by the Democrats were the primary issues. It turned out that inflation and the border as pushed by the Republicans were by far the most deciding factors.

Most observers felt that she ran an excellent campaign and crushed Trump in the debate when he was babbling on about Haitians eating the dogs and cats, a groundless claim based on a Facebook post which neither Trump nor his VP pick JD Vance ever retracted. But it didn't really make any difference to the media or voters any more than the quote from Trump's Madison Square Garden rally calling Puerto Rico an island of garbage. On the other hand, when Harris said in an interview that she couldn't think of anything she would do differently than Biden, this was viewed in itself by many as disqualifying. The double standard between the media coverage of the two candidates was appalling.

While Harris ran on an upbeat message, Trump ran a campaign of demagoguery that apparently was more effective in getting support.

Demagoguery is a manipulative approach — often associated with dictators and sleazy politicians — that appeals to the worst nature of people. Demagoguery isn't based on reason, issues, and doing the right thing; it's based on stirring up fear and hatred to control people. For example, a politician who stirs up a fear of immigrants to distract from other issues is using demagoguery. Demagoguery is one of the most negative aspects of politics, but it's also one that's all too common.

Trump is easily the most hated politician in America. But at the same time, he is the most beloved. With Trump as a cult of personality his supporters feel that he can say or do no wrong. Their devotion to him is unconditional. To his opponents, he is a pathological liar incapable of shame. But more importantly, tribalism instills loyalty that he is one of them and not the enemy Democrats as shown by some people wearing this t-shirt at Trump rallies (of course available from Amazon). So when running against him, you have a candidate with a vote floor of a solid 47% which leaves very little headroom for squeezing out a margin - especially if there are third party candidates who may each take a percent or two. His fiery and bombastic rallies are primarily aimed toward his base voters, seemingly not trying to expand to others. But this time, he did attract voters from just about every social category leading to an unexpected popular vote majority (the first for Republicans since 2004) along with the all-important decisive Electoral College victory sweeping all 7 swing states.

On the subject of popular vote totals, check these out:

Trump 2024     76.4 million    Harris  2024    73.7 million 

Trump 2020     74.2 million    Biden   2020    81.2 million

So a big mystery is how Trump got about 2 million more votes in 2024 than in 2020 while Harris actually got 7.5 million fewer votes than Biden in 2020. People were apparently dissatisfied with Harris but couldn't vote for Trump. Why this happened is anybody's guess. Did her gender or race possibly figure into this?

All of this is formidable enough. But when you couple this with the propaganda from right wing media such as Fox News and Newsmax along with disinformation widely spread on Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter) that he bought awhile back, instead of blaming Democrats for mistakes, it needs to be acknowledged that with all of his built-in advantages, Trump may still have won even with a perfect campaign waged against him. At least in America, there has been no other presidential candidate like him.

It is easy to understand how the Republicans seized the issue they thought would be most effective - inflation. After all, incumbent leaders throughout the world were booted out over the issue of inflation.

Discussion about economic issues generally requires some nuance because of their complexity. But when a consumer sees the price of gas or eggs go up, there is an understandable urge to vote their leader out. Having said that, in a free market economy, does the president really have control over prices like for eggs and gas? if the answer was yes, couldn't the president simply cut the price of these and other items? Of course he can't!

And then there was the complaint that interest rates have been too high. But interest rates were raised by the Federal Reserve Board to fight an inflationary economy - and it does not answer to the president. Inflation has now been brought under control to a low of 2.4% and the Fed as it's known is now lowering interest rates. Indeed, by most measures, the US economy is the best in the world.

Having said all of this, most Americans were still sour on our economy. There are two reasons for this I believe. One is that those on the right were relentlessly and falsely telling their audiences that the economy is a disaster. A prediction that can be easily made: Once the calendar turns to Inauguration Day on January 20th, our new president will pronounce this to be the best economy in the world. He did the same thing when inheriting President Obama's strong economy back in 2017.

But in fairness, there are Americans at the bottom of the economic ladder who are struggling, many living from paycheck to paycheck on fixed incomes. Any price increases are understandably sources of concern. It is safe to say that many of these people were tired of the status quo and wanted to try their lot with Trump.

So does this mean that Trump was unbeatable? No, Joe Biden beat him in 2020 but this was a result of Trump's major mismanagement of the pandemic resulting in countless unnecessary deaths. In this election, if Biden had withdrawn earlier leading to a primary, would that candidate have done better? Maybe, but it still would have been an uphill battle.

There are of course, major areas of concern when Trump takes over. If he does mass deportation of undocumented workers as promised, major disruptions of the economy will take place - especially agriculture, restaurants, and hospitality which will have unpredictable effects on employment and pricing in those industries. Perhaps even worse, Trump is advocating tariffs on imported goods which will certainly raise prices everywhere.

Even worse, the first couple of weeks have revealed Cabinet choices that go long on loyalty but appallingly short on relevant experience. Even many on the right are quite concerned. Will the Republican Senators have the backbone to reject any of his nominees? Stay tuned.

The midterm elections are only a couple of years away. If he really does most of the things he is threatening to do, he and his party will get a stern rebuke from the voters. It is one thing to be entertained by his rhetoric, but when many of his supporters finally suffer the consequences of his actions, I think the love affair will come to an end!

Should Joe Stay or Go?

I remember even at the start of the debate, I was getting some bad feelings. President Biden was walking slower than usual to his podium. And then I noticed his voice was so hoarse and faint. Trump did his usual practice of bombarding us with a torrent of bald face lies. Biden couldn't keep up with it all. I was yelling, no screaming at the TV screen, saying "Don't let him get away with that!" He tried but just couldn't put up any resistance. Biden was making truthful arguments in his faint voice but Trump was delivering one lie after another in a powerful, commanding voice. In a battle comparing substance, Biden won with his truthfulness. But Trump delivered his lies forcefully and effectively so it was no surprise that Trump was easily declared the winner of the debate. So much for the value of substance when it comes to debates.

Clearly, Biden was off his game but the format of the debate (agreed to by both sides so not an excuse) gave Trump a tremendous advantage while Biden's handlers thought the present rules would give Biden an advantage. In previous debates, Trump gained an advantage by constantly talking over his opponent. With the microphones being shut off while his opponent is speaking, this was thought to be assured of giving Biden an advantage.

But Trump masterfully used a known debating technique called the Gish gallop. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about it:

The Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm an opponent by abandoning formal debating principles, providing an excessive number of arguments with no regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments and that are impossible to address adequately in the time alloted to the opponent. Gish galloping prioritizes the quantity of the galloper's arguments at the expense of their quality.

During a Gish gallop, in a short space of time the galloper confronts an opponent with a rapid series of specious arguments, half-truths, misrepresentations, and outright lies that makes it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of the debate. Each point raised by the Gish galloper takes considerably more time to refute or to fact-check than the amount of time taken to state each one in the series. 

The technique wastes an opponent's time and may cast doubt on the opponent's debating ability for an audience unfamiliar with the technique, especially if no independent fact-checking is involved or, if the audience has limited knowledge of the topics.

The agreement to no independent real time fact-checking by the moderators was in my opinion, a fatal mistake for Biden's side. For example in the debate, Trump suggested that Democrats supported abortion even days after a baby is born which is an outrageous lie repeated endlessly by Republicans but it got no reaction. When the moderators asked Trump about child care or climate change, Trump just resorted to his stream of irrelevant lies which the moderators could do little about. To CNN's credit, they did present Daniel Dale to do a fact check presentation after the debate. But how many of the people who watched the debate saw it?

The point here is that it was Biden's task under the accepted rules to do his own fact-checking. And although Biden was clearly off his game, even a younger and experienced debater would have had a difficult time countering the endless stream of lies that Trump was using to dominate the debate.

The crucial question that needs to be answered is - What truly caused Biden's malfunction during the debate? We have never gotten a definitive answer. Some say it was a cold or that Biden was just tired. Was it due to a cognitive decline heading to dementia? If the answer is yes, this means that Biden has no other choice than to withdraw. But as far as we know, Biden has not agreed to any testing. Unless he does, this provides a great deal of ammunition to those who are demanding his withdrawal.

For now, Biden has agreed to do more campaigning and interviews to demonstrate his functioning. He has done well so far, but will this convince his detractors? Can he continue to do his job for 4 more years? And even for those who believe he can, is he capable of winning the election to give him those 4 more years? Perhaps we will have a better idea of how this will sort out in the following weeks. So far, the great majority of his detractors have been unmoved.

But if Joe drops out, what are the alternatives? You can't replace something with nothing! Whether Joe stays or goes, there is an element of risk of a catastrophic loss to Trump in November.

There are the two main alternatives:

One is for Biden to resign his presidency and have VP Kamala Harris take over. She is sharp with a tongue to match to effectively combat Trump in a war of words over the rest of the election campaign. But justifiably or not, her approval numbers are even lower than Biden's which gives some people pause. In this candid profane video, Trump is already assuming that Biden is dropping out while licking his chops at the chance to take on Kamala. But Kamala shouldn't be so underestimated. She has served as Biden's spokesperson at enthusiastic rallies across the country on the vital issue of women's reproductive freedom. Please check out this Washington Post Jennifer Rubin op-ed assessing the pros and cons of a possible Harris presidential candidacy.

The other is for Biden to voluntarily release his committed convention delegates and have the nominee decided at the upcoming convention. This may lead to chaos with a grueling fight and a divided party. This is what happened when LBJ announced his withdrawal from the presidential nomination in 1968. Many feel that this divided party caused the eventual nominee, Hubert Humphrey to lose to Richard Nixon. The Democrats indeed have a deep bench of candidates, some of whom will be strong presidential candidates someday. But they are mostly unknowns on the national stage and have never been tested in the fiery crucible of an intense presidential campaign. Would they be an improvement over Biden running? Many believe so but who really knows?

Especially with the recent Supreme Court decision giving increased presidential immunity, there would be even fewer guardrails against Trump's totalitarian ambitions if he wins. This makes it even more urgent that Trump is defeated at all costs.

So here we are a little more than a week after the debate. Biden cannot be forced to withdraw because the convention delegates are committed to him. In addition, he has doubled down that he has no plans to withdraw from running. At the same time, a growing number of Democrats are calling for Biden to resign because he is too old to serve another term and fear that he will lose the election because of this.

So the Democrats are at this time gathered in a circular firing squad! I wonder if the people who are afraid of losing the election are part of a self-fulfilling prophecy? Their lack of support may indeed contribute to Biden's defeat in the end.

If Biden ultimately refuses to withdraw, there is another narrative these Democrats can adopt. "Although I cannot give my enthusiastic endorsement of Biden because of his age, he is a superior choice to a would-be destroyer of our democracy in Trump. So I am supporting Biden and appeal to you to also do the same."

Check out these latest (July 6, 2024) poll simulations from FiveThirtyEight.com:

Trump wins 51 times out of 100

in our simulations of the 2024 presidential election.

Biden wins 49 times out of 100.

This means that while Trump got a small bump from Biden's poor debate performance, Trump didn't win that many more supporters with his torrent of lies at that debate. So despite all of the gloom and doom from Biden's detractors, it's still anybody's race to win!

I don't claim to know how this is all going to turn out. But circling back to the original question of whether Joe should stay or go, there are no easy answers!