Abortion. Education. Civil rights. Health care. Guns. Social Security. Climate. Democracy.
On issues that matter in peoples’ lives, Republicans have staked out minority positions.
It’s a target rich environment.
To that add Democrats’ financial advantage. Consider the candidates. Look at the economy, with the AI boom ripping along, unemployment under 4%, and inflation nearing 3%.
The best indicator of what’s coming is the stock market. Stocks don’t like uncertainty. If the outcome in November were uncertain it would be reflected in stock prices. Sectors the Biden Administration is shining on, like tech, would be falling. That’s not what is happening. Instead, we have a rising stock market, falling unemployment, and low inflation. I haven’t seen business so sanguine in a decade.
Most talk about a close general election, or Republican victory, is pushed by people with an interest in keeping the story going. Pundits want to be paid. Pollsters want to be seen. All it’s doing is getting the majority, who believe in the human rights of all Americans, more determined to walk barefoot through broken glass to reach the polls.
It’s easy to use anecdotes to claim blacks are with Trump, or Latinos, or old people, or young people. But small shifts don’t change the outcome. Big money only matters on the margins.
It all reminds me of 1984. This was 16 years after oil replaced manufacturing as the gating factor to growth. Political assumptions had changed, but the political media had not. After the Democratic convention Walter Mondale led the polls.
Getting to 60
I don’t know if this will be a 3-2 election, with one party getting 60% of the vote and forcing a reckoning on the other. But I see a much better chance of that happening than a narrow Republican victory.
The money Republicans aren’t investing down the ballot is going to tell. Voters are going to learn what the media isn’t telling them. Trump will continue to melt down. Red state Republicans will continue their daily outrages. Billionaires can claim all they want that up is down, that black is white, or that fascism is freedom. It won’t work.
What can change things? Ukraine being overrun could change them, or they could inspire a new wave of pro-freedom patriotism. Biden’s inability to rein in Israel could do it, but there’s scant evidence for it right now. We’re far more likely to see a climate catastrophe over the next 7 months than an economic one.
I wish Democrats would invest more in media, especially social media. It would be better it they went on offense more. I wish we could end the wars and I wish Donald Trump were in jail.
None of those things are likely to happen, but they don’t have to.
Because it’s morning again in America.
