Strassel

[Jolly]

One of my favorite conservative columnists...From the WSJ:

Less than eight weeks from the presidential election, there are two wildly different narratives of this race: the one presented by the press, and the one experienced by average voters. No points for guessing which is more accurate.

Tuesday’s debate postmortem is the best example yet. The press is fist-pumping over Kamala Harris’s “win,” how she went about “eviscerating [Donald] Trump,” how she turned in (no joke) “one of the more resounding debate performances in recent decades.” Republicans are still stewing over biased moderators, even as they grudgingly admit Mr. Trump blew it. Social media is mixed on whether Taylor Swift’s endorsement seals victory for the vice president.

Back in the real world, this is all ridiculous. There was no winner in this televised scrum; only a nation of hardworking losers. Millions of Americans came home after a long day of work and tuned in hoping for answers to their daily struggles with inflation, migrants, crime. They instead got moderators obsessed with Beltway-bubble issues, and candidates who relitigated old disputes.

Surprising though this will be to cheerleading pundits, that’s a problem for their favorite. Tucked amid the pro-Harris headlines were some honest reactions to the debate.

Reuters interviewed 10 swing voters after the event and gave the story an intriguing headline: “Some undecided voters not convinced by Harris after debate with Trump.” That’s one way to put it. “Six said afterward they would now either vote for Trump or were leaning toward backing him,” the piece explains. One remained undecided. Three backed Ms. Harris.

A New York Times interview of eight undecided voters after the debate found two leaning toward Mr. Trump, one toward Ms. Harris, the rest extremely confused. CNN, BBC and Wall Street Journal interviews with uncommitted voters produced similar mixed results.

These voters’ responses highlight Ms. Harris’s problems. She has succeeded in dodging questions about her past and her agenda and she did so again Tuesday night. The press raved over her deftness. But whoops. Five of the Reuters interviewees faulted her for failing to explain how she’d help improve the economy—their top issue. “There was no real meat and bones for her plan,” said a 61-year-old entrepreneur from Florida, who is now leaning toward Mr. Trump. A Nevada resident said he also moved toward Mr. Trump after hearing Ms. Harris tell him “not to vote for Donald Trump instead of why she’s the right candidate.” At least Mr. Biden in his basement spoke to the issue that in 2020 was voters’ top concern: Covid. Ms. Harris is AWOL on the economy.

Mr. Trump was equally short on agenda details, but unlike Ms. Harris, he doesn’t necessarily have to provide a plan. People lived life under his leadership and can compare it with the Biden-Harris economy. A 34-year-old black woman in Milwaukee explained to the Times why the debate nudged her toward the Republican: “When Trump was in office—not going to lie—I was living way better. I’ve never been so down as in the past four years.”

Ms. Harris spent the debate casting Mr. Trump as a truly unpleasant dude. And? “We are voting for the leader of our country,” not “who we want in our wedding party,” said a Pennsylvania woman in the CNN group. She now plans to vote Trump. Of the six Trump converts in the Reuters article, “all said they did not like him as a person. They said their personal financial situation had been better when he was president.”

These anecdotal responses are borne out in polls. Ms. Harris’s standing with working-class voters is the worst of any Democrat in modern history. Barack Obama lost the white working class by 20 points in 2012, Joe Biden by 26 in 2020. The most recent Times poll has Ms. Harris behind by 36. That number has barely budged since July, despite five weeks of “joy.” Also unchanged: Ms. Harris is winning among nonwhite voters without college degrees by 30 points. Mr. Obama’s margin was 67. She’s losing voters 45 and older. She’s behind among male voters by a notably wider margin than she’s ahead among women. And 41% of Hispanics say they back Mr. Trump.

Donald Trump may not win. He’s unlikable and undisciplined and has proved his ability to lose. But the last time the press and Democrats were this giddy about their candidate—this resolutely blind to the disconnect with average voters—was in 2016. Remember how that turned out for Hillary Clinton?

Perhaps these interviewees are outliers and the debate was a Harris game changer. But wouldn’t it be wiser to assume that Americans aren’t stupid, that they are unhappy with inflation, crime and chaos at the border, and that they do care about an agenda? Until or unless Ms. Harris campaigns in a way that acknowledges as much, she’ll struggle against a beatable opponent. The press won’t help her by spiking the football.