Author: Michael A. Ventrella

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If the election were held today

If the polls were exactly accurate and the election were held today (August 30, 2024), Harris would win enough states to be President.

I made this map using 538’s page where the team averages out the polls based on the reliability of the pollsters (they currently says Harris has a 59% chance of winning) and then used 270 to Win‘s mapmaking.

But let’s be realistic about these numbers.

First, remember that anything can happen between now and November. You can rest assured that Putin and others will be doing everything they can to get their toady back into office, and already the Trump folks are planning to disrupt the election, kick people off the voting lists, challenge the results (but only in blue states, of course), and otherwise cheat to win.

Note as well that polls can be inaccurate and have constantly under-estimated Trump fanatics. Pollsters now claim they are taking that into account, but this is not an exact science.

See all those very light blue states? That means Harris’ poll advantage is less than 5%, and often within the poll’s margin of error. In some states (like Pennsylvania, where I live) her poll advantage is less than one percentage point. This is going to be close, people. We have to get every single vote we can.

If Trump wins, it will most likely be like last time, where we won the popular vote and he squeezed by due to the Electoral College. (Remember that absent that stupid Electoral College, Democrats would have held the White House going all the way back to Bill Clinton.)

I still predict a Harris win (for reasons I have stated here before) but we cannot afford to be overconfident.

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A good summary

Pedro X. Molina

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The Democratic Convention 2024

After a very exciting convention — one of the most enthusiastic ones I’ve seen in my lifetime — Democrats are fired up. Polls are moving in our direction, states that were once GOP locks are now within reach, and contributions are dwarfing the GOP numbers.

That doesn’t mean we will win. The swing states we need are still within that margin of error range. We have to organize, we have to work, and we have to vote.

But let’s celebrate while we can.

So here’s a collection of recent political cartoons about the convention to make you smile.

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Polemics

Robert Arial

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The GOP’s fake issues on the economy and immigration

Besides the fact that the GOP is now running an angry, elderly felon against an optimistic, joyful woman, they face other challenges, such as finding a winnable issue. No, arguing over crowd sizes isn’t it, and many in the GOP are begging Trump to shut up about that. (Apparently Trump is losing his mind over the thought that he could lose to a black woman, two things he hates. This is not new. ) The two main issues the GOP raises often are, of course, lies.

The economy is doing terrible! Actually, unemployment is at its lowest, real wages have risen sharply, the world-wide inflation problem didn’t hit us as bad as the rest of the world (and is now very low), overall the stock market has boomed, mortgage rates have fallen… Sure, it’s not perfect, but it never is.

Illegal immigrants are destroying our country! Okay, let’s begin by pointing out that this is largely an appeal to racists who hate the idea that brown people are coming here, because they never object to immigrants from Western Europe. But the fact that these people are illegal is simply because we made them so, and we could easily make them legal just like it was for many immigrants last century. And many are refugees, legally arriving and asking legally to be let in. (Also illegal border crossings are much lower than they were under Trump.)

But the fact is that, unlike Trump claims, these immigrants commit less crime than citizens. They pay their taxes, they want to work, they’re coming here for a better life, and they’re nothing to be scared of unless you are a white supremacist who worries that in the future, you will be the minority in America and then the majority will treat you as terrible as you have been treating them for generations.

Democrats and Republicans worked on a bipartisan plan to help immigrants and to make sure they all come in legally, but Trump told his cult not to vote for it because he needed to blame Biden for not fixing the problem. So if illegal immigrants are destroying our country, we can blame Trump for ignoring a solution.

They are trying to hide their positions on abortion and gay rights and the other extreme things in their Project 2025 because they know their views on these issues are hated by a majority of Americans. Their plan was to win and then force all that on us against our will, like they have always done.

I’m more optimistic now that we will be able to hold these liars back, but it will require everyone to vote, because you know the MAGA cult always will.

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Painting Walz

Bill Bramhall
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The next Vice President

My wife and I were firmly in the Josh Shapiro camp. Our current governor here in Pennsylvania is doing a great job and is very well respected. Plus, we need to win Pennsylvania, the biggest swing state. Without PA, it is unlikely any Democrat will win.

But as the media started writing more about Minnesota governor Tim Walz, the more I saw the potential. And now that he is the VP candidate, I am convinced that this was the right choice.

Walz will help carry those swing states that might have been suspicious of another East Coast liberal. (And let’s not discount the sad fact that there is still plenty of anti-semitism out there, which could make the difference in a close election.) So now Shapiro can travel his home state to make sure Harris captures Pennsylvania.

Admittedly, Walz’s record could be construed to be just as liberal as Shapiro (both are rather moderate in many ways), but Walz’s charm and history speaks volumes about his intentions. He just seems like the good neighborhood father that everyone trusts who wants to spend his life helping people — one of those politicians who got elected not out of some personal ego ambition, but because he saw it was the best way to help the largest amount of people.

So I have a lot more optimism these days, especially as I see the poll numbers moving quickly in our direction, and states that were clearly in the Republican column moving to the “too close to call” column.

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Too weird

Mike Luckovich
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Why Harris will win

Back in March, I posted an article where I explained why I thought Biden would win. Many of the same reasons apply, but now that Harris is the candidate (as I had hoped), I can add a few more.

Trump’s support isn’t as good as it seems. The man lost the popular vote the first time he ran, never even reached a 50% approval rating his entire time as President (unlike every other person who has been President), and lost his second election by an even larger amount. A majority of Americans don’t want him.

And a large percentage of Republicans don’t want him this time, either. As a semi-incumbent, he should have gotten the numbers that Biden got in the primaries, but instead, quite often, he was lucky to get more than 50% of the registered Republicans voting for him. Many old-school Republicans (the kind who aren’t part of the Trump cult) can’t stand him, see the harm he will cause, and while they may not vote for Harris, they aren’t going to vote for Trump, either. They’ll probably just stay home.

Trump chose a terrible Vice President. Trump needed to win back those Republicans mentioned above who don’t like him, but instead, he got a guy who is even more extreme and worse, and who has a lot of former baggage, not the least of which is being anti-Trump in the past, calling him the “Republican Hitler.” He was right, of course, but that won’t help get more independent voters. There are only so many Trump cultists and the nomination of Vance was what the cultist wanted but it won’t attract others.

The Republican party doesn’t have a lot of money. People just aren’t contributing to them in the same way they are for the Democrats. There are stories all over the states where the local parties are going broke. Meanwhile, since Harris was announced as the candidate, Democratic money has been pouring in. Money means ads, workers, mailings, and many other campaign expenses. It’s tremendously important.

Trump has taken over the party. The head of the party is now Eric Trump’s wife. You remember Eric, who took money meant for a children’s cancer charity? Well, you can bet that any money the party raises isn’t going to go to the campaign. It’s going to go to Trump (and probably his legal fees, assuming he pays them).

Moreso, these people have no real experience in running a campaign, and they fired all those who do.

Trump’s legal worries may influence the undecided. The Trump cultists will never change, and as Trump once said, he can shoot someone on 5th Avenue and still have their support. It’s difficult to imagine how anyone can be undecided in this election, but apparently there are a lot of clueless folks out there who have no problem voting for a lying, cheating, raping idiot who wants to be a dictator, but perhaps the more Trump spends time in court, the more these undecideds may think that maybe they don’t want a criminal as President.

Trump is old. Hey, if they could spend all their time talking about how old Biden is, we can turn it around on them now and point out that he is the oldest person ever to run for President.

Everyone hates Project 2025. Republicans can’t run away from it. The more people learn about it, the more they hate it. Democrats are going to constantly remind everyone of what it is and how it is essentially the GOP Platform.

Democrats have done better than expected in recent elections. We’ve managed to win quite a few special elections and in those that we didn’t win (in very red areas) we did much better than expected and much better than the polls predicted. Some of that is because we’re angry and pissed, and that gets people to the polls.

And we’re tremendously angry about abortion rights. In red states where this was on the ballot, pundits were shocked to see that even conservative voters voted to keep abortion legal. Many states are putting the issue on the ballots in November, which hopefully will bring more Democrats out to vote to protect this right (and then they’ll vote for the Democrats running as well.)

And, let’s face it, there are still some reasonable Republicans and moderates out there who may come out to vote because while they don’t agree with Democratic policies, they don’t want someone in there who has vowed to be a “dictator on day one.” Some patriots will put the country’s needs over the party’s.

Harris is exciting younger and newer voters. Her poll numbers among the young are excellent and way beyond Trump’s. Harris is energizing younger voters in a way Biden couldn’t, and these voters don’t answer polls so they’re not always counted. (Polls still rely heavily on landline phones — which may also be why we have done better than expected in recent elections). Their presence along with people who want to vote for the first woman President may make all the difference. (Keep in mind many Republican women won’t tell others that they’re voting for her, but in the privacy of the voting booth…)

All we have to do is hold the states we won last time. All over the country, purple states are becoming bluer all the time. It’s not that hard. We can lose Georgia, Arizona and Nevada and still win. I am hoping Harris will chose Governor Shapiro as her running mate, as that should help secure Pennsylvania, a state we have to win. (Seriously, without purple Pennsylvania, there’s no way a Democrat can win.)

There are more of us than there are of them. Democrats have won the popular vote in every single election except one since Bill Clinton, and the only reason Republicans got into office was because of the electoral college. We can overcome that by showing up in huge numbers in the swing states where our votes are tremendously important, like we did when Obama was elected. A huge turnout will guarantee our victory.

If we lose, it will be because we stayed at home and didn’t vote, or wasted our vote on a third party candidate. And then we can scream and shout all we want as our country moves toward a Putin-friendly dictatorship, but it won’t do any good because it will be our fault.

And now, a caveat: The GOP knows all this, so they plan to use their secret weapon: cheating. They’ll do everything they can to make it harder for anyone to vote; they’ll use the judges they’ve appointed to throw out ballots whenever possible; they’ll lie in campaign ads and use connections in Russia and China whose goal it is to dismantle American power; and otherwise claim to have won if they lose despite all evidence to the contrary (just like they did last time).

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To Serve Mankind

Pat Bagley