XPost: alt.politics.elections, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, sac.politics   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns, talk.politics.misc   
   From: democrat-insurrection@mail.house.gov   
      
   https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2024/10/22/houston-she-has-a-problem-   
   n3796121   
      
   The 2024 election cycle has come down to its final fortnight. Every moment   
   of campaign time takes on huge importance, especially considering how   
   close the presidential race appears to be. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris   
   need to make every minute count in the places where this election will be   
   won or lost.   
      
   And as much as I love my adopted state of Texas, this ain't one of those   
   places.   
      
   So why will Kamala Harris spend a day in Houston on Friday? Especially for   
   an event that doesn't have a venue yet?   
      
   Vice President Kamala Harris will be in Houston Friday to cap off the   
   first week of early voting in Texas with a campaign rally.   
      
   She will attend a rally from 3 to 8 p.m. at a location to be announced in   
   Houston that day, according to an events page seeking RSVPs made public on   
   Tuesday. ...   
      
   While the margins of victory have narrowed in recent presidential contests   
   statewide, Texas is still not considered a swing state. Trump won Texas by   
   5.6% in 2020. But, Harris County has turned into the biggest generator of   
   Democratic votes in the state. Biden won Harris County by 13 points in   
   2020.   
      
   Aaaaaaaand ... so? Harris may get a slight boost in Harris County by   
   showing up here, but that won't translate to support in Pennsylvania,   
   Michigan, or Wisconsin -- three states she has to win to beat Trump. Texas   
   not only isn't a battleground state, it's not even close. We haven't seen   
   a ton of polling here in the presidential race because Texas will be   
   reliably red, but every poll aggregated in RCP shows Trump ahead outside   
   of the margins of error. His RCP average right now is +5.7 and 51/45.3,   
   right in line with his +5.8 margin of victory over Biden in 2020.   
      
   Earlier in the cycle, we have seen both candidates show up outside of the   
   battleground states. Trump went to both New York and California last   
   month, but those were likely primarily for fundraising, with rallies   
   scheduled around them. Harris has done the same, which makes sense for the   
   same reason. (Trump will be in New York again this week, too, but he's   
   already leading the polling and may hope to shore up Republican incumbents   
   in the House.) But fundraising is irrelevant right now, especially for   
   Harris, who has a significant money advantage already. Plus, there just   
   isn't enough time to spend the money to make the distraction worthwhile.   
      
   Why isn't Harris spending her time in the "blue wall" states exclusively   
   at this stage of the campaign? That's where her biggest risk is, and where   
   Democrats worry most about an electoral catastrophe. She could spend time   
   in Michigan, for instance, which looks almost too far gone to salvage.   
      
   Instead, they're sending someone else to Detroit while Harris plans events   
   outside the battlegrounds:   
      
      
   This smells a lot like panic. Democrats sent Obama racing for Michigan on   
   the last weekend of the 2016 election in a desperate and unsuccessful bid   
   to prevent losing the state to Trump. They didn't send Hillary Clinton,   
   whose negatives climbed throughout the campaign -- especially in the blue-   
   wall states.   
      
   It looks as though Democrats have some polling that suggests that Harris   
   hurts herself more than she helps in these appearances. Sending her to   
   Houston could be a plan to get Harris out of the way so that more popular   
   surrogates can make the closing arguments in these states. The problem   
   with that strategy, however, will be the same as it was in 2016 -- the   
   candidate has no real argument except a sense of entitlement. With   
   Hillary, it was all about her gender; with Harris, it's all about how   
   awful Donald Trump is.   
      
   If Kamala is in Houston ten days before the election, she has a problem --   
   and Democrats know it.   
      
   But even then, why Texas? Why not build some buzz in a friendlier state,   
   or shore up near-purple states like Virginia and New Mexico? Harris may   
   have decided to try to assist Colin Allred's campaign to unseat Ted Cruz   
   in the US Senate, but this looks like it has the potential for backfiring:   
      
   Harris’ visit signals national Democrats’ renewed interest in the race   
   between Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and his Democratic challenger, U.S. Rep.   
   Colin Allred of Dallas. Though Cruz remains favored, the contest is seen   
   as one of Democrats’ few viable options to pick up a seat in the upper   
   chamber, and an Allred win would be critical to Harris’ hopes of working   
   with a Democratic Senate majority should she win in November.   
      
   Cruz leads Allred by an average of about 4 percentage points, according to   
   FiveThirtyEight’s rolling average of recent public polls.   
      
   True, and RCP has it almost the same, at Cruz +4.5, 49.5/45. The last   
   three polls have Cruz at or over 50%, however, and Cruz' debate   
   performance against Allred probably moved the needle further in his   
   direction. Furthermore, Allred has campaigned in part by attempting to   
   distance himself from the Biden-Harris administration, especially on the   
   border crisis and the economy. Showing up in Houston to talk about how   
   much Allred supports her agenda does not seem like a great closing   
   argument in Texas after nearly four years of malicious incompetence on the   
   border.   
      
   The Cruz campaign hasn't exactly been energetic in this cycle, but they   
   are jumping all over this new Harris-Allred rally. The campaign sent out   
   this statement by e-mail, and one can bet they're working on a closing-   
   pitch ad along the same lines:   
      
   "Colin Allred is Kamala Harris. They have spent the last four years   
   working hand-in-hand against Texans and the American people with their   
   radical policies, whether those be pushing to allow boys in girls' sports,   
   allowing dangerous illegal aliens to come into our country, or trying to   
   destroy the oil and gas industry in Texas.   
      
   Colin and Kamala share an agenda, and now they'll share a stage for all   
   Texans to see.”   
      
   Perhaps we'll get surprised by the results, but this looks like a very   
   bizarre campaign strategy. Harris is losing where she needs to win and   
   campaigning where she doesn't as the clock runs out. I'd bet this gets a   
   big mention in the post-mortems after November 5 if the current trends   
   hold up.   
      
   Addendum: I wrote this before the news about Trump appearing on Joe   
   Rogan's podcast, which puts them both in Texas with ten days to go. The   
   difference is that Trump's leading in these states while Harris is falling   
   behind, and he's in Texas to speak to a national audience rather than a   
   local event. If Trump did decide to do something with Cruz, he'd be much   
   more of a help to Cruz than Harris would be for Allred, too.   
      
      
   --   
   We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that   
   stupid people won't be offended.   
      
   Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem.  It has none.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)