Once More Unto the Breach
Let's send him back to the Shadow, for the last time.
Folks, it’s time.
To prepare for this Jackal, I went back and read the last one I wrote before the 2020 Election. It is funny to look back on, because I was so clearly focused on “the data,” and assumed that it all pointed to a win for Joe Biden.
Sure, I ended up being right, but the post still feels…wrong in 2024. Since the 2020 Election, we have learned that our polling methodologies are more than a little imperfect, and that the media ecosystem that surrounds them is similarly flawed. I can give you a good example.
This past Saturday, it was political Christmas Eve1 as everyone waited for J. Ann Selzer’s final poll of Iowa to drop. Her last poll before an election always gets lots of attention because…well, she tends to nail it.
Her past polls vs. the actual results:
2022 Senate: R+12 —> R+12
2020 President: R+7 —> R+8
2020 Senate: R+4 —R+8
2016 President R+7 —> R+9
2014 Senate: R+7 —> R+8
2012 President: D+5 —> D+6
She is good at her job. And she dropped a political earthquake on Saturday night when her poll was released:
Selzer has earned an almost mythological status not only because she tends to be right, but also because she isn’t afraid to step out and be bold. Towards the end of an election season, pollsters have a tendency to “herd,” i.e., make sure their own results match other pollsters’. Finding Harris up three in a deep red state is a lot of things, but it’s definitely not herding.2
In addition, Iowa can be predictive of how other blue states are polling. In 2020, Biden was enjoying healthy polling margins in the traditional “blue wall” states: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Selzer’s poll was an outlier, but she was clearly capturing something that other pollsters had missed. One can only wonder if she is doing the same thing this year.
Needless to say, Selzer’s poll was a huge boon for the Harris Campaign. On its own, it changes the dynamic of the race, because if Selzer is able to spot some of this stuff then maybe there is a little landslide bubbling up underneath the surface that other pollsters aren’t seeing. And then maybe we’ll start to see it being reflected in the polling models put out by websites like 538 and Decision Desk!
Just kidding. After Selzer dropped her poll, Republican-aligned polling firms did their own polls of Iowa and found Trump up by big margins in a pretty candid attempt to neutralize Selzer’s findings. That’s what I mean when I say the “media ecosystem” around the “data” in this race is pretty flawed.
If the polling aggregators will take almost any poll and throw it into their averages, then what is the disincentive for a pollster to make sure their methodology is sound? Sure, “Patriot Polling” (a real firm) has a 1.9 star rating on 538, so their polls are worth less overall. But it still gets thrown into the average anyway! A Republican pollster can charge campaigns (and others) a ton of money to do a poll, re-weight the entire thing, and produce a result that is favorable for Trump. It doesn’t seem to me like the system has gotten better in the past four years. In fact, the entire system may be propped up by some of these bad polls, because even if the GOP pollsters are unrepentant trolls, their findings do influence the shape of the race. This is exactly what happened in 2022 and what led many media pundits to predict a red wave (R.I.P.).
In summary, the Selzer poll is a big deal, but I am down on polling. I think we are clearly missing something as this Campaign has played out.
Donald Trump did a few rallies today in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. In both instances, his audiences were really small:
Meanwhile, just look at one of Harris’s rallies:
This has been the case since she was announced as the nominee. Maybe Trump’s voters are shy now in 2024, or they’ve been to enough of his rallies to know what they’re getting. But if we are going based purely on vibes, Kamala’s got them. And I think Trump’s massive rallies in the 2016 Election were an indicator that he was headed for a win that the rest of us missed.
I have heard a repeated phrase from family members and friends over the past few weeks: “I can’t believe this race is even close.” The assumption is that Kamala should be running away with it when the alternative is Donald Trump.
The thing is, all of the foregoing is why the race may not actually be that close. A funny thing happened on Sunday that sort of supports this theory. Mitchell Research and Communications is a polling firm that has been focused in Michigan, and they released a poll yesterday that showed Harris up by two points in the Purest State™.
Overall, not that weird, but they also attached a statement to it, where they basically said their demographics have been wrong:
Before polling began, we looked at what we thought would be the likely turnout in 2024. Every poll we conducted - including this one - was weighted exactly the same. We weighted party affiliation, gender, age, race, area, and education. It seems clear now that we are under sampling women, African Americans, and the City of Detroit based on absentee ballot returns and early voting. However, to assure we are comparing 'apples to apples,' we kept the same weights we have used all along. Because of our strong belief in transparency, we always include our crosstabs, so it is easy to substantiate our use of the same weights on every poll.
"As pollsters, we are of course aware of what other pollsters are showing. But, having done this for forty years, you just have to follow your numbers and see what happens. My intuition (based on the interviews conducted later in the week by texting voters and directing them to a SurveyMonkey poll), is that this race could move out for Harris. But my numbers are from Tuesday-Saturday and therefore that is what I'm releasing," Mitchell said (my emphasis).
Mitchell basically says that he thinks they were undercounting voters who are turning out for Harris based on the make-up of the early vote in Michigan. In other words, his poll that shows Harris up by two points may actually be an undercount.
All in all, I don’t trust the polls. If you’ve been reading the Jackal over the past few years, you have probably been able to track my shift on this, or at least noticed my crankiness. But I think this is the map we will eventually see when the election is over, because I do trust Ann:
But because we are no longer relying on the polls, I could just as easily see a Trump win (although it will be much closer). Embrace uncertainty.
What happens if he wins?
We are now done with the hopium, so let’s get dark. If you know me personally, even in a limited capacity, you know that I am an even-keeled guy. I am given to insane and hyperbolic statements (or questions, like last night when I asked a woman in our Bible study to name her favorite member of the Wu-Tang Clan),3 but I do not lose my head about political stuff.
I also fundamentally believe in the promise of America. I think we are the best country in the world, even while I accept that we are not perfect and have an ongoing work to do. We have built strong institutions and they held up well when Trump tried to bend them to his will during his first term.
I try to keep this attitude when I think of Trump winning the election tomorrow (his chances are currently the best they have been in any election since 2016). Tim Miller appeared on Bill Maher’s show on Friday night, and the other guest - Michael Moynihan - pushed back on the notion that America’s institutions would crumble under Trump 2.0. He said there was a “zero percent” chance Trump would be able to carry out his most vindictive plans (Miller and Maher were less sure).
For the life of me, I cannot see how someone can get to 50%, let alone 0%. Most people have forgotten this, but while he was President, Trump tried to force the Department of Justice to prosecute Hillary Clinton and James Comey:
President Trump told the White House counsel in the spring that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute two of his political adversaries: his 2016 challenger, Hillary Clinton, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to two people familiar with the conversation.
The lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, rebuffed the president, saying that he had no authority to order a prosecution. Mr. McGahn said that while he could request an investigation, that too could prompt accusations of abuse of power. To underscore his point, Mr. McGahn had White House lawyers write a memo for Mr. Trump warning that if he asked law enforcement to investigate his rivals, he could face a range of consequences, including possible impeachment.
The encounter was one of the most blatant examples yet of how Mr. Trump views the typically independent Justice Department as a tool to be wielded against his political enemies.
As we know by now, there are no more Don McGahns. If Trump wins, he will not be appointing a Bill Barr as Attorney General again. What’s more: A guy who is apparently in line for the job - Mike Davis - has explicitly said he is going to prosecute Donald Trump’s enemies. Maybe he’s joking? We have to hope he’s joking.
Trump’s Administration also targeted Andy McCabe, who initiated the investigation into his Campaign’s collusion with Russia (spoiler: His team colluded with Russia). They purposefully fired him in such a way that he lost his government pension, which he had to fight for in court (McCabe won it back).
Peter Strzok and Lisa Page - FBI agents who investigated Trump’s Campaign - had similar terminations and sued the Justice Department. Thanks to Trump’s need to see them fired, you and I forked over around 2 million dollars between the two of them.
This is just a small taste of what he will do. To assume that he will get distracted, or lose focus (this is the Wall Street Journal’s argument; that Trump is too stupid to coup) is rolling the dice. And say whatever you want about the likelihood of his success: 40 out of his past 44 cabinet members are not willing to take that risk.
Ukraine matters.
I have not written about Ukraine all that much this year, mostly because the war is currently at a stalemate.
But I think that will change if Trump is re-elected. While Europe is currently footing most of the bill for Ukraine’s war, if aid from the U.S. stops, their ability to withstand a Russian onslaught will collapse. Ukraine will fall to Russia without our help, and once Vladimir Putin is done there, then he will turn to the other former Soviet States.
China - who is now fully a Russian ally - will see Trump’s election as an invitation to invade Taiwan. In his first term, Trump was easily manipulated by Xi Jinping, to the point where Trump was repeating Chinese propaganda about COVID-19 throughout 2020, fed directly to him by Jinping himself.
George Will says World War III has already begun. It’s just that no one has noticed:
Beginning Jan. 20, 2025, the next president will cope with today’s axis: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. […] North Korean military engineers are assisting Russian launches of ballistic missiles at Ukrainian targets. This month, North Koreans reportedly were killed by a Ukrainian missile strike on Russian territory. Russia’s arsenal includes North Korean missiles and large-caliber ammunition.
From Russia’s western border to the waters where China is aggressively encroaching on Philippine sovereignty, the theater of today’s wars and almost-war episodes spans six of the globe’s 24 time zones. This is what “the gathering storm” (the title of the first of the six volumes of Winston Churchill’s World War II memoirs) of a world war looks like.
Will ultimately concludes that neither candidate currently running is able to face this challenge. I will disagree with him.
I will not pretend that Kamala’s valuable experience as a prosecutor, attorney general, senator, and vice-president translates easily into geopolitical expertise. Nor do I think that she is secretly aligned with George Will (and myself) on American foreign policy. But a good president has the capability to face a crisis, stare it down, and conquer it. When I look at both Kamala and Trump, it is so clear to me which of them has the character to do that. When faced with a difficult challenge, Trump will only think of himself and Kamala will think of the country. I think even most Trump voters (if they are honest with themselves) know that I’m right.
She may not be perfect, but that is a characteristic of all human beings. But Trump is ultimately much lower than that. He is, in many ways, sub-human, and much more than imperfect. He does not belong anywhere near the Presidency and tomorrow we can hopefully end his nearly decade-long threat, for good.
Once more unto the breach.
Kamala 2024: Send Donald Trump Back to the Shadow.
If you open all your Christmas presents on Christmas Eve…what’s wrong with you? Also, you should go to church on Christmas Eve.
There is a great interview with Selzer here where she breaks down her methodology.
She did not say Ghostface, The GZA, or Raekwon, which are all acceptable answers.