Episode 14: Can't Lose

In a video chat available to all subscribers this week, Claire and Neil believe that Vice President Kamala Harris will win the 2024 election

This week I have tried to create informative, lively posts that will help get you through Election Day in one piece. Our nation has repeatedly come to points where fighting for justice, truth and equality has been a hard bop: this is one. Be strong, stay calm—and if you do nothing else, watch the first few minutes of the video chat, because Coach Taylor has a message for you. And don’t worry. She’s got this.

Vice President Kamala Harris campaigning in Atlanta, July 30, 2024. Photo credit: Phil Mistry/Shutterstock

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With only four days to go until voting ends, and early voting ended in some states, the presidential race remains (at least, according to the pollsters) in a tightly locked tie. It’s all happening in the swing states, which are within a point one way or another: the polling is frozen, although we are seeing little bumps here and there. 

Claire and Neil urge everyone to stop looking at the polling, particularly on social media, where Republican influencers are pushing out junk polls that show Trump with outsized, and fake, leads. This is part of a disinformation model to gin up the base to support fake election fraud claims in the (likely) event that Donald Trump loses.

Our predictions? As you can tell, we both believe that Kamala Harris will win, and that her momentum will help the Democrats win a House majority (although the simulated 538.com model for the House gives Republicans a victory in slightly more scenarios.) 

We think a Republican Senate majority is likely, and Montana Democrat Jon Tester is a goner. The 538 simulation heavily favors the GOP, but also gives Trump a slight edge. But we are skeptical since we are finding junk polls in the simulations too. Neil wonders whether the Florida Senate race could be a surprise win for Democrats after the Trump Madison Square Garden rally. Mucarsel-Powell has a big lead with independent voters, and as Neil points out, it is difficult to overestimate how little even Republican voters like Rick Scott.

In red states, much will depend on whether Trump’s devolution into incoherence and craziness depresses the Republican vote. So, Claire is watching Dan Osborne, independent in Nebraska: the New York Post has him within “striking distance” of Republican incumbent Deb Fischer; the Economist/You.gov poll gives Fischer 7 points, but NY Times/Siena has the race—tied?—as does a second poll, just out today.

There are so many known unknowns. This is the abortion election, otherwise known as Roevember: polling shows the largest gender gap since experts started measuring the phenomenon in the aftermath of the 1980 election. There is the fallout from Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, and the question of whether the Tony Hinchcliffe routine has jolted the vote toward Harris in key states, primarily Pennsylvania. There was Biden’s “garbage” fumble, an unfortunate opening for Republican “gotcha” jockeys trying to distract from the repeated racism and misogyny that the Trump campaign manages to display every day, often more than once.

We don’t know if the devolution of the Trump campaign into darkness, violence, and madness will push enough unaffiliated and Republican voters away from Trump, but we are betting it will. At the same time, Kamala Harris closed the deal at the Ellipse, where a crowd of over 75,000 people gathered to listen to her vision for America. You can access the video and transcript here.

We believe that given the choice between anger and hope, our fellow Americans will choose hope.

Clear eyes. Full hearts. Can’t lose.

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Your hosts:

Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.

Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024). 

These videos are a paid subscriber feature (although you can access them on YouTube one week later.) Don’t miss new drops from Claire and Neil by taking out a paid subscription! Only $5 a month, or $50/year and choose Neil’s Coming Out Republican or Claire’s Political Junkies as a welcome bonus. 

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What we want to go viral:

• Neil recommends Jazmine Hughes's “The Tight-Knit World of Kamala Harris’s Sorority,” The New Yorker, October 21, 2024. It’s a short history of “the Divine Nine,” and how AKA, the oldest Black sorority in North America, shaped Kamala Harris, then boosted her candidacy? Harris’s sorors were a huge presence at the DNC: the Harris candidacy marks their first foray into partisan politics.

• Claire went for self-care this week—or, you could say, the tight-knit world of Martha Stewart. R.J. Cutler has just dropped a new documentary about America’s first influencer. Made with Steart’s full cooperation, it’s a biographical portrait of the first woman to become a self-made billionaire. It’s also an excellent exploration of the misogyny that continues to dog powerful women even as the beautiful gardens, meals, and perfect homes that Stewart creates soothe your nerves.

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Short takes—or three women Donald Trump’s Supreme Court killed:

• “The first hospital diagnosed her with strep throat without investigating her sharp abdominal cramps,” Lizzie Presser and Kavitha Surana report at ProPublica, as they describe how a wanted pregnancy becomes a death sentence for a young Texas woman named Nevaeh Crain when medical staff at three hospitals feared that treating her would break state abortion laws. “At the second, she screened positive for sepsis, a life-threatening and fast-moving reaction to an infection, medical records show. But doctors said her six-month fetus had a heartbeat and that Crain was fine to leave.” Crain, a recent high school graduate, is survived by her mother and her fiancé. (November 1, 2024)

• “The fetus was on the verge of coming out, its head pressed against her dilated cervix; she was 17 weeks pregnant and a miscarriage was `in progress,’ doctors noted” in a Houston woman’s medical records. But the fetus inside Josselli Barnica still had a heartbeat so, as ProPublica’s Cassandra Jaramillo and Kavitha Surana report, care was delayed for 40 hours. Josselli died of sepsis three days later: the 28-year-old mother is survived by her husband and daughter. (October 31, 2024)

• Amber Thurman had “taken abortion pills and encountered a rare complication; she had not expelled all of the fetal tissue from her body,” Kavitha Surana reports at ProPublica. “Thurman waited in pain in a hospital bed, worried about what would happen to her 6-year-old son, as doctors monitored her infection spreading, her blood pressure sinking and her organs beginning to fail.

  It took 20 hours for doctors to finally operate. By then, it was too late.” Amber does on the operating table. She is survived by her mother, her boyfriend, and her young son. (September 16, 2024)