Undecideds Vortex Sutra
Undecidedness -- that most liminal of American political spaces
No one knows who is going to win this Presidential election. And anyone that pretends to know who is going to win at this point in time is quite frankly engaging in magical thinking at best and some form of misinformation at worst. That’s because according to all reputable polls both candidates are locked in a statistical dead heat — national polls as well as swing states. David Plouffe, a senior adviser to Kamala Harris's Presidential campaign, described the race as “just dead even.” Adding that the way Trump is behaving, his campaign probably is working on the same presumption. David Plouffe, was on the Impolitic podcast to deliver his prolegomena to a closing argument. He offered up some interesting points in between his pre-crafted pitches to the audience.
How are the undecideds going to break? That’s what Plouffe, on the Impolitic podcast, was trying to answer. Undecideds, low information voters — whatever you want to call them — are probably about 5% of the electorate and everyone is trying to read the tea leaves. Plouffe added that the way Trump is behaving suggests that his campaign is working with same data of a statistical dead heat. Plouffe’s internal data against the data on the ‘16 and ‘20 elections betrays no hint that Trump is registering new voters at the same pace now as he did then. Has Trump maxed out on the “irregular voters”? “This is going to be an exceedingly close race in seven states,” Plouffe told John Heilmann.
Trump, a shameless man, has few other options than performing awkward, clumsy photo ops like the shut down McDonald’s one this weekend. He is forever tied to overturning Roe v Wade, and honestly, Trump has lost suburban and college educated women since the historic Women’s March in 2017, the unofficial start of his Presidency after beating Hillary Clinton. Highly educated Progressives have had a ball in the last few days making memes out of this campaign stunt and jokes about his alleged contribution to the latest e coli outbreak.
But I don’t think these photo ops are not nearly as bad as leftish microbloggers find them to be. In fact, his staged employment shows, at least visually, a certain humility that goes against type — even though the franchise was closed and “customers” were highly vetted. Further, the fakeness of it all notwithstanding, it was a staged event made for Undecideds. “Unfortunately, the Trump McDonalds thing is both funny and good politics,” Emma Vigland wrote on Twitter. “It makes him into a goofy meme, involving a product everyone loves, while the Harris campaign tries to rightly paint him as dangerous.” I agreed, responding: His team, unfortunately, is getting better at softening fascists.
Here’s what worries me. Trump is effective — even better than Harris — at speaking directly to the disenfranchised, without gatekeepers, high profile endorsements from the worlds of politics and entertainment. Or at least his team is, and, quite frankly, getting better. Granted, the only reason Trump does not have a massive campaign war chest as the incumbent in this race is because he has cannibalized that money for his legal entanglements (he will be defending Jan.6 civil lawsuits far into the foreseeable future). But Trump’s ability to speak to the marginalized, the disenfranchised as well as the aggrieved and forgotten reminds me of how he contrasted against Yale Law grad, Hillary Clinton. “It’s possible that Trump’s being underestimated yet again; after all, he’s polling much better this year than in 2016 or 2020,” Benjamin Hart writes in The Intelligencer. “But it’s also possible that Democrats do have a superior ground game that will turn out more of their voters.” Plouffe was humble enough to concede in conclusion that Election night could prove him wrong.
Door knocking, of course, is of the highest importance in a race this close. Allocating resources to cohorts is how Plouffe describes the process. Harris, who raised over a billion dollars in four months, has the better door knocking game, as she is demonstrating in the Blue Wall States. Further, the Vice President also inherited a sturdy and resilient organization from President Biden. But will it be enough, in the closing argument, to sway such an even election even though the stakes — democracy versus Orbanist-nationalist state — are so vastly different? If the campaign hasn’t broken for one side, at this late in the game, will cold, hard cash be the ultimate gamechanger, giving one side an advantage? Does cold, hard cash explain, also, the Elon Sweepstakes, which may or may not be illegal?
Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, in one of the swingiest of districts in one of the swingiest of swing states, is something to look at. The equilibrium is astonishing. It just seems immovable. From Emily Witt of The New Yorker:
In Sturgeon Bay, both political parties have their county offices downtown within a block of each other. In the Democratic Party’s office, there was a cardboard cutout of Harris and a list of the Biden Administration’s accomplishments that included ‘Once-in-a-generation infrastructure investments’ and “First major gun safety legislation in decades.” In the Republican Party’s office, there was a cardboard cutout of Trump and brochures from the conservative advocacy organization Heritage Action for America, featuring headlines such as ‘What Americans Should Know About GENDER IDEOLOGY’ (‘The rise in mandatory ‘drag queen storytime’ in schools takes away valuable learning time’’) and ‘What Americans Should Know About IMMIGRATION’ (‘Fast Fact: The influx of immigrant children places a significant strain on the public education system’).
‘I feel like we’re hitting our stride at the right time,’ Stephanie Soucek, the chair of the Door County Republican Party, told me in the Party’s office. ‘Of course, in Wisconsin, with how close things are, usually, we don’t want to take anything for granted or get too confident or comfortable.’
Both sides knew better than to fully claim Door County. ‘All the actual voter contact suggests that it is a perfectly even split,’ Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, told me at a rally with Tim Walz in Green Bay, about an hour’s drive from Sturgeon Bay, a few days later.
One could say the same for Pittsburg metro, Augusta, GA, Charlotte, NC and other super-swingy corridors in the seven states that matter. The casual, low-turnout, low information voters are going to decide this election, for good or for ill. Both candidates have to make their closing arguments, in the coming days, to this peculiar cohort of five-percenters. They whose brows have never been taxed by the heavy burden of current events! Unfortunately, Trump — even without the organizational cash advantage — is far more nimble and aggressive in the maneuvering within this liminal space.
Harris is getting the support of superstars like Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Bruce and — Bill Gates. But is the support of a Bill Gates really a good thing, politically, at this particular point in time? To this particular cohort? The money is a mixed bag — good in the sense that it allows the Vice President to make more highly-targeted content in the final days; bad in the sense that it is of the swamp. This is a change election and a huge money advantage gives her a certain inherent incumbency. The support of Bill Gates, who is what can only be properly construed as a tarnished figure, is also mixed. Harris appears to be relying — largely, but not exclusively — on an old, outmoded sort of campaigning. She did not attend the hoary Al Smith Dinner (good), but she has not appeared with nearly as many influencers and videos as her opponent (not so good), relying instead on superstars, which only bolster the argument that Trump is the underdog, fighting the swamp creatures.
One could argue, of course, that Harris has several hundred million dollars more than her opponent and therefore does not need to appeal to the likes of lifestyle influencers. I would argue, however, that that is a mistake. That lifestyle influencers probably have the most sway over the archetypal low-information voters. Anyone who reads this Substack on even a semi-regular basis knows that I am not a fan of Trump or Trumpism. This is not a horse race, it is a battle for the future of the democracy that I migrated to in the 1970s to escape the dictatorship of Idi Amin. Trump, in his campaign to break the wheel — into, for sure, an autocratic, Orbanist form of government — is campaigning in a such way that makes it almost impossible to predict what his vote totals will ultimately be. There is no precedent in accurate polling on the influence of the podcast manosphere in a Presidential election. Did the category even exist in 2016? And it is in that opaqueness, on top of the even-split, that confounds the sensibilities and robs the data-obsessed with any clear idea as to how this will end.
Since 2023, Trump has appeared on more than 50 episodes of various podcasts. Those podcasts, admittedly, are hyper-testosteronal and right-wing — a mix of wrestling, boxing, MMA, Theo Von — but they are located within the entertainment-sphere of the disenfranchised American male. Kamala Harris went on the Howard Stern Show, which is not nearly as much of a marginalized mancave as it was, say, when it was on free commercial radio in the 1990s. She also went on Stephen Colbert, which is naught else but a pure, Establishmentarian safe space and naught else.
Of course, the Vice President has done some tough interviews. Her Brett Baier bare-knuckled brawl of an interview was magnificent. She did, in fact, go not just into the lion’s den, but she put her head into the lion’s mouth and walked away whole. And the Vice President probably shook off some Nikki Haley voters, perhaps even some of the 250,000 residing in North Carolina. We’ll see. Can we get some more of that please?
There is no reason why Harris cannot go on Joe Rogan. I strongly recommend it, in fact, and more of the same. Trump will be on Rogan next week (Harris, by contrast, will be on Brene Brown’s podcast). And she should be on even more of the testosteronal podcasts and TV shows, like Monday Night Raw (how about Walz? Minnesota is a great professional rassling state). Because, obviously, we have a toxic male problem in this country. And in the last few days of this campaign, Harris is not directly and aggressively confronting that. Granted, the campaign can run itself quite fine without my humble Substack presumptions. But even if Harris/Walz wins, to ignore the substantial — though minority — toxic male problem is thoroughly unwise. One of her tasks as President of the United States should she win would be to promote “positive masculinity,” a roadmap to a post-Trump America. Because, failing that, she would wind up precisely in the negative inverse space of Trump in 2017, where he faced immediately following his inauguration the Women’s March, where more than a million people showed up, though politely, at the footsteps of the capital. Trump has has been losing college-educated and young women ever since.
It is not inconceivable that the Joe Rogans and the Brett Baiers of the politico-entertainment man-osphere would organize a shadow inauguration, calling such an grievance based cuddle-puddle, entirely without irony, something like the “Million White Men’s March.” This slow moving showdown at the Election Day corral between masculin/féminin forces that the Harris campaign appears to be playing into directly could lead tosome sort of testosteronal backlash, after the same fashion of the Women’s March, but not nearly as respectful (consider: the history of Trump rallies). This is a period of incredibly high anxiety, made worse by the complete lack of any one candidate breaking away clearly. This period great unknowing, and then, on Election Day, for one side, probably, a terrible surprise. The strategy — doubling down on suburban women — may just result in a clear Harris win, of course. After all, women are registered to vote in the U.S. at higher rates than men. In 2022, there were 7.4 million more women than men registered voters. But why inflame such a possibility by doing exactly what the Trump campaign is doing, which is, obstinately, doubling down on gender identification?
Why not spend the closing argument doubling down on women as well as spending the lag time on making the argument to persuadable men? And why not unleash Tim Walz, America’s favorite WallMart dad, to help make this case? Unless there’s something in David Plouffe’s numbers that I am altogether missing entirely, which I am humble enough to admit could be the case. But it seems to me the most politically anti-inflamatory thing to do is to do Rogan and to send out Walz into the podcast manosphere.
“Yesterday I was playing poker and a guy said to me, ‘I saw you making fun of Trump on that TV show.’ That’s never a good way to begin a poker session. I hate being recognized at the poker table and the very last thing I want is to be recognized for my political opinions at the poker table because poker players tend to be, how shall I say this, not of my political stripe. For some reason, the game attracts more than its representative share of Republicans, Libertarians, ne’er-do-wells, real estate investors, drug dealers, ex-athletes, degenerate sports betters, and at least one basic cable superstar (me). And, of course, it’s 90% men. Any political conversation around a poker table is likely to feature off-color remarks about trans people, ‘liberals,’ and the fuckability of Fran Leibowitz, as happened to me a couple weeks ago while playing at Foxwoods. The verdict from my seatmate after I informed him that the woman he was watching on Real Time with Bill Maher was one of the most celebrated humorist of the last fifty years: ‘She probably talking about abortion. That’s what every unfuckable woman talks about.’ So that’s a pretty good example of the kind of mentality one experiences when sitting down to play low-stakes poker at any card room across America.” (Michael Ian Black)
“When Donald Trump refused to concede the 2020 election, he and his allies led a chaotic effort to overturn the results, spreading conspiracy theories, filing dozens of unsuccessful lawsuits and encouraging ‘Stop the Steal’ protests that culminated in the assault on the Capitol. Next month will likely play out differently if Trump loses again. The former president and his allies have spent the last four years laying the groundwork for a more organized, better funded and far broader effort to contest the outcome—a Stop the Steal 2.0—if the vote doesn’t go his way. A secretive network of GOP donors and conservative billionaires have fueled the effort, giving more than $140 million to nearly 50 loosely connected groups that work on what they call election integrity, according to a Wall Street Journal review of Federal Election Commission filings, tax filings and other records. Among the donors are organizations linked to Wisconsin billionaires Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein and Hobby Lobby founder David Green.” (Rebecca Ballhaus and Maria Timms/WSJ)