Is there any plan for after Harris loses (which seems inevitable at this point)? People are pointedly not talking about after, so I assume that Trump winning really does mean everything is Over in a very final way.
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Both of those assertions are wrong.
Polls are notoriously unreliable (and getting less reliable), and things are close. I honestly have no idea who's going to win. But right now, fivethirtyeight.com (which is the best overall politics predictor in the US, and has been for the last several election cycles) has Harris ahead by 1.3 points. So, no, Trump winning is not inevitable.
But especially with things this close and the election this close, this is the least likely time for people to be publicly talking about contingency plans for a Trump win. The more people think Trump is going to win, the less likely Harris voters are to show up at the polls ... which means that Trump is more likely to win. Talking about how awful a Trump presidency would be if he got elected can motivate people to vote, when paired with "but voting for Harris can help prevent that!" Talking about what to do after he wins (if he does) is much more concrete and much more likely to convince people that there's no point in voting, we need to move on to the next step of preparing for the inevitable. But it isn't inevitable! Not even close!
Organizations at all levels--political groups, advocacy groups, charities, legal aid groups, etc.--have been preparing all along. But the more you talk about those contingencies in public, the more likely you are to actually need them.
And the thing is, we know a Trump win would be bad. How bad, and in what way exactly ... depends on a lot of factors. His first term was bad, but he was prevented from achieving his goals because he is incapable of keeping competent people around, and nobody knew how to make the bureaucracy of government do what they wanted it to do. He may have fixed that problem, he may not. We know what his goals are and those of his closest allies. What we don't know is, would he be better able to carry those goals out this time if he wins, and if so, how many of them he will be able to enact. And what we, as leftists, can do in the event of a Trump presidencey depends on all of those things!
So it's much better to point out that the odds are in Harris' favor right now (even if not by much) and we need to go out and make sure they stay in Harris' favor.
Also! Remember that in 2022 the polls were predicting a "red wave" that would turn both houses of congress firmly Republican? And instead we got a blue wave? (They still lean right, and will until we have Democrats reliably showing up in off-season elections for a few more election cycles.)
Remember that, when you hear about polls predicting a Trump sweep this election.
So here are two important facts you need to know about the polls:
- Trump's campaign and the GOP in general are doing tons of "partisan polls." Partisan polls masquerade as regular polls but lean heavily toward trying to get positive results for Their Guy, without being so biased that they get thrown out, and the Trump campaign in particular has been heavily favoring them lately because a lot of biased polls in their favor give support to the efforts they're going to make to steal the election. We don't normally see so many partisan polls.
- Even good nonpartisan polls that try to be fair are usually pulling from the pool of "likely voters", which is people who voted in last presidential election. But we know enormous waves of people registered to vote for the first time when Harris announced her candidacy. Those people are not being polled. Polls of "registered voters" might not be catching people who just recently registered. And even a good poll that is based on the latest set of registered voters works by calling random people. Millennials, Gen Z: how often do you answer the phone when strangers call?
There has always been an overcount of the retired elderly who are lonely and have nothing better to do than answer the phone, in polls, and an undercount of the youth vote because young people are more likely to be working retail or food service and not available to answer phones in the late afternoon/early evening when the pollsters are trying to get the people who are off work and not yet eating dinner. And because young people's phone numbers often haven't been established as long and aren't on as many databases. But nowadays there's an even bigger imbalance, because young people simply don't answer the phone. Everyone they care about knows to text them or call them on Discord or something, and the few people who they'll still answer the phone for, those people are in their contacts so they know who they are. They don't answer the phone for strangers.
Pollsters have been trying to balance this out with text polling. But a text poll requires that you take action. Where a phone poll keeps you on the phone because after you answered it, you're too polite to hang up on the person asking questions, a text poll requires clicking on the link you were texted. If you're very security conscious you won't do that. If you're not, but you're busy and can't be bothered, you won't do that. Probably only the most partisan people are clicking on the link and answering the poll. And people like me, reliable partisan voters who vote in every election and have had the same cell phone for 24 years, get a disproportionate number of the text polls... young people probably do not for the same reasons they have traditionally been undercounted.
So a youth vote that actually turns out and votes will blow the polls away. Thus, enormous efforts are being made to discourage left-leaning young people from voting. "They're both the same." "Harris supports genocide." "There really isn't any difference." "Why bother, Trump is going to win." Every time you see one of those messages, it is either from someone who was trying to discourage left-leaning young people from voting, or it's a left-leaning young person who was successfully discouraged and is now infected with the pernicious meme, retransmitting it because now they believe it.
Recently Trump just severely pissed off the Puerto Rican voting bloc. Believe it or not, there were actually Hispanics who were considering voting for him! No, I don't know why either. But I bet a lot fewer of them are now. He's also been even more mask-off fascist lately, and many people who were his supporters and attended his rallies saw him rambling, mixing up names, doddering and dancing to music for half an hour. Those people might be afraid to say out loud that Trump has lost it because they don't want their friends and family to hear them, but some of them, in the privacy of the voting booth, will vote for Harris or a third party or won't vote at all.
So no. A Trump victory is not at all inevitable. Anyone who told you this is either lying or was duped. But Harris hasn't got it in the bag either. She can and will win if all of us who despise Trump actually get out and vote for her. But she can still lose if a lot of us get discouraged and stay home (or get too complacent and stay home.)
