It is the end of October, and the presidential election is on a razor’s edge. Anything might happen. The unpopular incumbent is clinging to the narrowest of leads as Election Day approaches. The challenger from outside the DC beltway promises a massive shakeup of the status quo and has been demonized widely by Washington elites. He is called everything from a fascist to a warmonger who cannot be trusted with the nuclear codes, and corporate media pile on, doing all they can to shield the incumbent.
The economy is a wreck due to stubborn inflation, skyrocketing mortgage rates, and extremely low consumer confidence. The administration’s foreign policy disasters, especially in the Middle East, have humiliated the United States on the world stage. Americans across the board find the incumbent’s leadership sorely lacking, concluding he is not up to the job and forcing him to change the subject from his failures and focus his campaign on the mortal threat posed by his opponent. The visions and agendas of the two candidates could hardly be more opposite, with both sides calling the election the most important in their lifetime – and with good reason.
Still, according to the polls, the race is tied just days before Election Day.
You will be excused if you thought we were describing the 2024 presidential race. In fact, this was the state of a contest with remarkably similar circumstances more than four decades ago. It was 1980, and the pollsters and pundits told us that President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were essentially deadlocked just days before voters cast their ballots.
By now, you probably know the outcome. Reagan soared to a remarkable landslide victory, winning the popular vote by 10%, capturing 44 states, and sending the sitting president to a humiliating defeat, the worst for an incumbent since Herbert Hoover amid the Great Depression. The stampede to Reagan had largely been undetectable because it seemed to happen so late in the game.
The 2024 Presidential Election – Have We Seen This Movie Before?
While Kamala Harris is not Joe Biden, she owns his record and, in fact, doubled down on it by holding her final big rally in the shadow of the White House as she issued dystopian warnings of Armageddon if Donald Trump is granted another term as president. Biden chimed in by calling Trump voters “garbage.” At least Hillary Clinton labeled only half of his voters as such, but Biden proved once again what Barack Obama famously warned, "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f--- things up."
It has often been said that history repeats itself, and the contours of a tight race that could break heavily one way, as described above, are all in place in 2024. Pablo Picasso is said to have declared that “good artists borrow, great artists steal.” At his mega-rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday (Oct. 27), Donald Trump opened his address by invoking the same simple but profound question posed by Reagan that most historians believe turned the 1980 race from a nail-biter to a one-sided repudiation of a failed presidency: Are you better off than you were four years ago?
For those who argue that Trump is far too outspoken, controversial, and risky to win anything but a narrow victory, voters remember that he already presided over the country during a time of peace and prosperity – until the pandemic ruined everything. In contrast, when Reagan was elected in 1980, he was hardly viewed the way he is now, in retrospect, as a potentially great commander-in-chief. A vote for him was thought to be a real gamble. He served mostly as the repository for voters who were loath to double down on what they had just experienced over the previous four years. He was the only option available to ensure change.
Outside of pure partisans, almost no one is predicting a decisive victory or landslide for the quasi-incumbent Kamala Harris. But more and more observers are seeing the same signs, the same 1980 vibe that could possibly lead to a big Trump victory. The latest is from a man who worked inside the Reagan White House, political strategist Craig Keshishian, who studied the roots of the 1980 Reagan landslide and uncovered what the pollsters missed:
“We discovered thousands of previously overlooked Americans, living in rural and suburban communities — folks who worked 40-hour weeks, lifted the freight, paid the bills, and ran the small businesses. Their voices weren't regularly heard in the halls of power and didn't necessarily vote in every election. These men and women were not 'country club' Republicans. Many were culturally conservative Democrats or independents who were fed up with rampant inflation, shuttered factories, failed foreign policy, and surging crime.”
Sound familiar? And this time around, those same “previously overlooked Americans” are the ones who drove Trump to a shocking upset victory in 2016. Could they do it again, but in even greater numbers? Well, on this day in 2016, according to the polls, Trump was trailing in the popular vote by more than 4%. He won. In 2020, he was behind by almost 8%. He almost won. This time, he is leading in the popular vote and rising by the day. In the last two elections, pollsters undercounted Trump voters by 3%. So whether you discount the value of polls or not, unless the surveyors have suddenly figured out where they went wrong or somehow started to overcount Trump voters, the numbers suggest the election is Trump’s to lose.
For now, we do not have any hard evidence indicating that a resounding triumph for Trump is in the works. While he is unlikely to win 44 states, as Reagan did, if you look beyond the deluge of raw numbers to Americans’ deep and abiding dissatisfaction with the state of the nation, a one-sided victory for the 45th president hoping to become the 47th certainly appears possible.
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