(Written Nov. 1) Let’s cut to the chase: Vice President Kamala Harris now looks slightly more likely than not to be the next president of the United States.
To be sure, this race is so close that only a fool would express major confidence in any prediction. In each of eight states (including New Hampshire, along with the seven other states regularly assessed as toss-ups), factors as random as bad weather, traffic jams, or late-breaking local news could provide the difference between victory or defeat for Harris or for former President Donald Trump. Still, a number of factors taken together seem, to this experienced observer, to favor Harris.
Among those considerations, especially for number-crunchers, are some data points and trends to which we will return later in this column; but, first, to understand the most important two factors that favor Harris, at least for a race this tight, consider the pithiest words of political wisdom I ever heard. They came to me back in the 1980s, when I was a young Republican activist seeking a spot as a delegate or alternate-delegate at a national convention. One of the party regulars, someone who never said much or asked for anything for himself but who always seemed both to be “in the know” and to be wherever the most productive things were happening, was a guy named James “Canche” Plummer.
“How many votes do you have?” he asked, as I paced nervously about a half hour before the decisive balloting. In answer, I shrugged my shoulders.
“Quin,” Canche said, “Ask for the votes, and count the votes. Ask for the votes, and count the votes. Got it?” And then he smiled and walked away.
Canche was right. And this year, the two first reasons Harris may have an edge is that her campaign appears to be doing a better job at asking for votes and at counting the votes expected to come in….. [The full column is at this link.]
