Back in July I did a blogpost with the title "Can Harris Keep Up Her Momentum?", and now, with just a few days before the election, it appears that the answer might be no. That doesn't mean that Kamala Harris will definitely lose, the race now is essentially tied,. But it does appear that some of energy and excitement that came when Harris first announced her candidacy and the Democrats ran a joyful convention has dissipated.
This is enough to make me want to bang my head against a wall. Especially because, since the convention, Harris has run a near perfect campaign: she's raised over a billion dollars (considerably more than Donald Trump has), clearly bested him at the debate, and hasn't made any large, noticeable gaffes. Meanwhile, Trump has not only continued his usual mix of lies, boasts and racist comments, but he's also clearly started to show signs of mental decline, with his rambling speeches lasting so long that even his own supporters sometimes leave his rallies early.
And yet he and Harris are still tied. A big part of this comes down to Trump polling ahead of Harris on two big issues: the economy, and immigration. This leads me consider a crazy irony that might take place: the pandemic, which is probably what cost Trump a second term in 2020, has had residual effects that may now allow him to reenter the White House!
While we'll never know for sure, I'm pretty sure that if there had been no pandemic, Trump would have won a second term in 2020. In America, the presidential incumbent always has an advantage, and without the effects of the pandemic, the economy probably would have been good enough for him to win. But he so obviously handled the pandemic poorly, from downplaying its dangers to suggesting that people inject bleach, that his inept flailing sent him down to defeat.
So what has happened since? Well, shortly after Joe Biden took over in the Spring of 2021, inflation started skyrocketing to its highest levels in 40 years. While there are a number of reasons that this happened (like Valadmir Putin's invasion of the Ukraine), one of the main factors was the then continuing pandemic, with consumers staying home and buying goods online driving up demand while sickness and shutdowns compromised supply chains inevitably leading to price increases. Now, overall, the economy has been good in the past four years, with the Federal Reserve raising of interest rates causing inflation to finally cool in 2023 without pushing the country into a recession. But most voters have paid less attention to the state of job growth and the stock market than they have to inflation, which, even though it has slowed, still remains in their memory every time they go to the grocery store. Biden has been quite upset with this situation, and he has a point: even if you ignore the pandemic, in the first two years of the Trump presidency, 5 million jobs were created, while in the first two years of Biden's, 10 million were. But, sadly, people still wish for the lower prices of the Trump era and give him high ratings on the economy.
And then there's immigration: in March of 2020, Trump sealed the American border with Mexico for everything but commercial trade while expelling asylum seekers, citing Covid safety issues. After Biden entered the White House, there was a relaxing of those policies, not only at the border but also between other Central American countries, which resulted in an inevitable flood of people crossing the border. While there are many reasons for this increase, the ending of Covid restrictions was definitely a factor. Even though border crossings have been reduced in the past year, that initial increase is what most voters think of when they give Trump higher ratings for immigration.
What has happened in America is endemic of the entire post pandemic world, with voters still smarting from the global shutdown going after incumbents all around the planet. I think it's hard for many people to accept what a massive event the pandemic was, and how long it will take before we are completely free of its effects. Yes, the very thing that cost Trump a second term could wind up giving him another next year. We live in truly crazy times...
