Next Tuesday, it’s about Pennsylvania and soccer moms
I told my kids, in 40 years of being a political junkie, I’ve never seen the following recent events in any Presidential election over the last 60 days, except maybe 1968
Aug 23 - RFK Jr. drops out and endorses Trump
July 21 – President Biden drops out of presidential race, endorses Vice President Kamala Harris
July 13 - Attempted assassination of former President Trump in Butler, PA, which is deeply saddening
June 27 - The sad difficulty Biden had during the debate
May 30 - Trump convicted by Manhattan jury of falsifying business records over hush fund money
Pictures are worth a thousand words they say – the iconic image of Trump after the assassination attempt (beats his mug shot for sure). But the election wasn’t in July, and Republicans were so confident after the RNC, the Trump campaign believed both Virginia and Minnesota were in play. But Republicans cannot be complacent about Harris.
It’s now about Midwestern swing states
Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes), Michigan (15) and Wisconsin (10) – called the “Blue Wall” in the 2020 election of 44 electoral votes. I’ve been in western Michigan every July for almost 25 years as my wife, Julie, grew up in a small town in Western Michigan, Gerald Ford country.
Midwesterners were ignored by both party establishments when manufacturing jobs were outsourced to China under global trade, followed by the opioid epidemic after the Great Recession
The VP pick is often a geographic choice:
JD Vance is the ideal VP for Trump – he’s a Midwest success story with establishment GOP credentials (Ohio State, Yale Law School, venture capitalist) that will help in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin . People love social mobility – it’s the American dream.
I thought Harris would pick Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, but instead she picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her VP. His down-to-earth folksy style will connect well with Midwest voters.
And key swing voters - college-educated suburban women
VP Kamala Harris is energizing the Democratic base as shown by rapidly growing endorsement list. I thought Governor Newsom would challenge her, but instead he endorsed Harris in the same day. She will make reproductive rights an issue and will try to convince college-educated suburban women, a huge swing voter group, known as “soccer moms” then “security moms” after 9/11. Trump will try to convince soccer moms over rising crime and national security.
On August 23, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. dropped out as a third candidate and endorsed Trump, which has closed the gap between Harris and Trump after Harris’ gain in polls since July 21. RFK lost his liberal voters when it came out he left a dead bear cub in Central Park as a practical joke - prep school humor that turns off many voters, so his remaining voters are anti-vaxers likely to help Trump - small, but significant given how close the election has become.
So what’s next? Sept. 10 debate
Harris hasn’t been vetted by the media yet, and she’s held few interviews with the press. When Kamala Harris was California’s Attorney General, she wrote the ballot label for Prop 47 in 2014 as the “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act”, which raised the felony threshold to $950 on shoplifting and grand theft. The resulting “smash and grab” burglaries of retailers across the state has contributed to businesses leaving the state and the doom loop of our great cities.
Trump needs to stick to script - inflation, border, safety and security - but he won’t, and risks coming across as rude and divisive.
It’s so important to reach out across the aisle and forge consensus on the policies that will fix the problems facing our nation.
I’m afraid it will only become a shouting match.
