In recent years, I’ve largely avoided posting political topics. My education and experience in politics (I hold a Bachelor’s degree in political science) has made me apolitical to a degree over the years.
I don’t subscribe to an ideology, and I try to be pragmatic and objective in forming my political opinions. Political opinions should always be formed from an objective viewpoint. After all, this blog is called The Rational Ram. 🙂
With the 2024 presidential election in full swing, I thought I’d offer my opinion on why I think Vice President Kamala Harris will win on 5 November 2024.
Four reasons…
- “Trump Fatigue.” My opinion here is completely anecdotal and comes from my gut, but I think many in the American electorate are genuinely exhausted with former President Donald Trump and his petulant behavior. His brash, vulgar, arrogant, and childish antics were seen as “fresh” and “anti-establishment” in 2016, those same antics didn’t work for him in 2020. They are failing him now, in 2024. While he has a very loyal base, tangentially bolstered by voters who simply can’t see themselves voting for a Democratic Party candidate, that base appears to be dwindling. Those are valuable votes that may cost him the election.
- Harris is successfully (so far) controlling the way both she and Trump are framed. It has been said that whoever the campaign is about is the one who loses. So far, this campaign has been more about not wanting to see another Trump presidency than it’s been about Harris becoming the first woman to be elected president. In 2020, Biden won because people didn’t want to see Trump reelected. In 2016, Trump won because that election was all about electing Hillary Clinton as the first woman president and Trump, helped in large part by Senator Bernie Sanders, successfully framed her as “establishment” and part of the “swamp,” while framing himself the anti-establishment “change candidate.” In 2024, Harris appears to be benefiting from the same dynamic that benefited President Biden. People have seen the Trump shtick before, and to many people, he’s viewed as an oddly adolescent senior citizen who is “weird” (more of that Harris/Democrat Party framing) and only cares about himself.
- Harris’s youth is her greatest asset. I know I am not alone in being relieved that this November, we have another viable choice other than an octogenarian and a nigh-octogenarian who are both low-energy and appear to be in cognitive decline. Harris doesn’t suffer that problem, and it may serve her well in November. It already has in many ways.
- Harris has the more enthusiastic base of supporters. This is partially because of reason number three, but it is also because she has the endorsement and support of political luminaries from both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. I never thought I’d see the day when the likes of former Vice President Dick Cheney would openly endorse a supposedly “radical liberal” Democrat for president. Disaffected Republicans appear just as energized about seeing Trump and “Trumpism” defeated as Democrats are. When your own base is augmented by members of the other candidate’s party, it is difficult for the other party to say with a straight face that they aren’t worried about their candidate losing the election. In a landslide.
A bonus point here is that Harris is running an ingenious campaign so far. She is taking a page from the Obama playbook and taking the campaign to the voters, on the ground , and in the battleground states.
She has Trump on the defensive in a way Biden and Clinton could have only dreamed of. She isn’t passively “taking the high road,” like Democrats in the recent past did. Like Obi Wan Kenobi in Revenge of the Sith, Harris has the high ground and both she and Trump know it. She and her surrogates are adroitly “fighting fire (insults) with fire” in a way that still makes them look like the adults in the room.
If she keeps the high ground, she will win. Nothing so far indicates that she will lose the high ground,
-The Rational Ram
The Rational Ram 