Washington Merry-Go-Round

IMMEDIATE RELEASE 20 September 2024
WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND
Today’s Events in Historical Perspective
America’s Longest-Running Column Founded 1932
              They who shall decide
By Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift         
 
WASHINGTON – Back in the day when legendary broadcaster Tim Russert hosted “Meet the Press,” he memorably called the 2000 election as “Florida, Florida, Florida,” and the 2004 election as “Ohio, Ohio, Ohio.” And if he were here today, he would say, “Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania.”
Both the Harris and Trump campaigns are focused on Pennsylvania as the linchpin for an Electoral College win. The winner would have a better than 90 percent chance of becoming president, according to New York Times polling guru Nate Silver.
The most direct path for Harris to the White House is through Pennsylvania and the two other “Blue Wall” states, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Taken together with other reliably blue states, she would need just one more electoral vote, which she would likely get from Nebraska’s only blue-voting district. (Nebraska and Maine are the only two states that award an electoral vote to a congressional district that doesn’t vote with the majority.)
If Harris were to lose Pennsylvania, she would have to win Georgia, North Carolina, or Arizona. And if she were to lose Wisconsin and only carry Michigan, or vice-versa, she would have to win two of the Southern and Southwest states.
Each of these six swing states is governed by a Democrat with the single exception of Georgia, where Republican Governor Brian Kemp has resisted Trump’s blandishments. However, except for Michigan, they all have conservative Republican legislatures. That’s where the push to restrict voting is coming from, and to de-certify the election if Trump isn’t the winner.
A spate of recent polls suggest Harris is getting a post-debate bump after her robust performance against Trump. If she can sustain that edge and turn it into votes, she could win the election – but by how much? Will she have coattails?
Typically, a strong presidential candidate brings in a Senate of their own party. But this cycle, even if Harris wins all the swing states, there are Democrats running in red states, notably Jon Tester in Montana and Sherrod Brown in Ohio, who are popular but may get overtaken by the big Trump margins in their red states.
Tester is facing former Navy Seal Tim Sheehy, a self-funding Republican, and Brown is facing Bernie Moreno, a wealthy Cleveland car dealer endorsed by Trump.
The uproar over Haitian immigrants allegedly eating household pets generated by Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, has forced Ohio Republican Governor DeWine to intercede and provide armed guards to police the schools.
Vance has not backed down from spreading the false stories, and Trump says he will visit Springfield in the next two weeks.
In a Senate controlled by Democrats 51 to 49, there is no margin for error. West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin’s likely replacement is Jim Justice, the current GOP governor. Justice is embroiled in a legal battle over his failure to pay health insurance premiums for hundreds of employees at the Greenbriar Resort, which he is now trying to prevent from being sold out from under him. 
It is a herculean task for Democrats to hold back the gravitational pull toward the right with these GOP candidates.
The House is another matter. Democrats are within shouting distance, eyeing seats they should have held in New York and California. The five-term New York Democratic congressman, Sean Patrick Maloney, headed his party’s congressional campaign committee, and was so focused on other areas of the country, he lost his own seat. 
There was plenty blame to go around for Democrats taking their eye off the prize and blowing their chances in 2022. Neither Democrats nor Republicans will make that mistake this time.
 
See Eleanor Clift’s book Selecting a President, and Douglas Cohn’s latest books The President’s First Year: The Only School for Presidents Is the Presidency and World War 4: Nine Scenarios (endorsed by seven flag officers).
          Twitter:  @douglas_cohn
          © 2024 U.S. News Syndicate, Inc.
          Distributed by U.S. News Syndicate, Inc.
END WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND