The presidential election might be slipping away from Vice President Kamala Harris, Democrats indicated Wednesday.
With preliminary early voting trends on Tuesday suggesting that Republicans are outperforming Democrats in key swing states, the Harris campaign will likely hit the panic button in the coming days with ramped-up rhetoric meant to drive turnout. Both Harris and Barack Obama claimed Tuesday that former President Donald Trump is unhinged and incompetent “with no guardrails.”
“Everyone keeps saying, ‘It’s close.’ Yes, it’s close, but are things trending our way? No. And no one wants to openly admit that,” a Democrat strategist told the Hill’s Amie Parnes. “Could we still win? Maybe. Should anyone be even slightly optimistic right now? No.”
Some Democrats, however, are ringing the alarm bells after early voting data in Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania looked to benefit Republicans. “In Wilmington, they are frantically trying to figure that out,” Democrat and cohost of The Morning Meeting Dan Turrentine said Tuesday about early vote trends. “If you look at, not just in Nevada, but so far, Democrats are underperforming in Philadelphia and Atlanta, and now we’re seeing Las Vegas.”
“The Harris campaign appears to be struggling with Latinos, black men, and young voters,” Turrentine said. “It appears that those problems have not been solved … Things like this, you know, give you a little bit of heartburn … Nevada is supposed to be, you know, one of our best states. And so it appears that some of our base voters are not very energized right now.”
Early voting is ongoing and the data is incomplete, but that has not stopped Democrats from noting the absence of momentum. “If this is a vibe election, the current vibes ain’t great,” another strategist told the Hill.
A former aide in the Obama administration believes that Harris might still win, but a loss would not be surprising.
“It feels like two things are true at the same time,” an aide told the Hill. “It’s either … of course she was always a flawed candidate, nobody likes her, she’s tainted by Biden, and all of the macrofactors have slid away from Team Blue — it’s becoming a border, economy, foreign affairs election.”
“Or, of course — he was a terrible candidate, ran a horrible, crazy campaign, had no real ground game or fundraising and then acted like an insane person,” the aide added. “It’s sort of the opposite of 2016, which was, ‘How could this happen?’ This feels more like, ‘Of course this happened.’ … We just don’t know which yet.”
The Harris campaign appears to believe that if it wins, it will not win big. The same cannot be said for the Trump campaign, which seems to feel optimistic about victory.
“Democrats wish Donald Trump wouldn’t get more than 46% of the vote,” Harris campaign senior adviser David Plouffe told CNN. “That’s not reality. He’s going to get up to 48% in all of these states. And so we just have to make sure we’re hitting our win number, which depending on the state, could be 50, could be 49.5.”
“Historically, it would be unusual to have seven states come down to a point or less,” he added. “But I think at this point, you have to assume that’s a distinct possibility.”
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
