LOSING SKIPPERS BLAME THE CREW.

Psephologist Nate Silver recently posted "24 reasons that Trump could win," quite possibly in sadness rather than anger, or perhaps to stir up his fellow establishmentarians to do something right in the next ten days or so.  Town Hall's Matt Vespa honors the work.  "I do like Silver calling out the uber-left, hyper-condescending Democratic consulting class who are so weird they don’t know how to talk to real people."

The problem, Josh Hammer suggests, might be that there are no real people left in that consulting class.

Harris has recently been engaging in what the psychology profession calls "projection," ludicrously criticizing Donald Trump for avoiding the media when it was actually Harris who infamously avoided a single one-on-one sit-down interview for weeks on end following the Biden coup. In reality, Trump recently sat down for two interviews with Time magazine, whose owner is a vocal Harris donor. Harris declined a Time interview, nonetheless. Prior to this week's desperate, last-second change of course, which saw her sit down with Fox News' Bret Baier, Harris had only deigned to sit down with the most obsequious media imaginable.

One can only wonder how bad the Harris-Walz internal polling must be to impel her to ditch the far-left "Call Her Daddy" podcast and the friendly ladies of "The View" for the considerably more mainstream Baier. Desperate times sure call for desperate measures. Democrats routinely blast Republicans as misogynistic, but their own chronic misandry is so bad that Kamala is apparently considering a sit-down with podcast king Joe Rogan, whose own brand of woke-skeptical irreverence sharply clashes with Harris' identity politics obsessions and overt race-based pandering. The tables sure have turned. Will the last person hanging around Harris-Walz campaign headquarters please turn off the lights?

Snark aside, this race isn't over yet. But the Harris-Walz camp cannot possibly be feeling too good right now, either.

Democrats have no one to blame but themselves for their predicament. Throughout this interminable campaign season, they have studiously avoided substantive discussion of the four issues that Americans consistently tell pollsters are most important to them this cycle: the economy, inflation, immigration and crime. Instead, they have repeatedly attempted to shift the electoral terrain back to the few issues that poll in their favor: namely, abortion and the Jan. 6 jamboree at the Capitol. In this, they have completely failed. The American people still care above all about the same four basic quality-of-life issues that they have cared the most about for years now. It is Democrats' own fault that they are so woefully out of touch with the voters' sentiments on those issues and that the Biden-Harris administration's track record polls as poorly as it does.

Perhaps, if the Harris-Walz ticket does go down in flames, Democrats will pause and take a long, hard look in the mirror. Perhaps they will recognize that promising late-term abortion is a peculiar way to pander to women, that pledging mass amnesty for illegal aliens is a counterproductive way to pander to Hispanics, and that dangling marijuana legalization is an outright offensive way to pander to Blacks.

Perhaps, and in doing so Democrats might head off that very drift into fascism their candidate keeps whining about.  Take personnel policy away from the alphabet people, stop pretending mental illness is another form of diversity to be celebrated, stop affirming counterproductive behavior as expressive authenticity, restore journalistic objectivity, and perhaps you'll have a less fertile environment for those fascist ideas to catch on.

But, no, Democrats so quickly pivoted away from the Jarrett regency being good old time tax and spend, tax and spend, to ... the alphabet people running personnel, the environmentalist wackos making energy policy, the process-worshipping cookie pushers making nice to jihadis ... and Donald Trump's appeal to the Militant Normals won out in the primary over two southern governors who could have run on a similar platform, perhaps with more success.  But when a CNN columnist, Stephen Collinson, sees what has gone wrong, he also sees how that fertile environment took shape.

The twice-impeached, once-convicted ex-president’s outlandish displays only underscore his anti-establishment authenticity for millions of Americans who adore him.

His alarming behavior may look to some like a candidacy melting down when the pressure is at its most extreme. But the election may be decided by other factors.

With polls deadlocked, Trump’s behavior hasn’t yet disqualified him. And he consistently leads surveys when voters are asked who they most trust to manage high prices for housing and groceries and to handle immigration.

The White House failed to neutralize both those issues politically, paving the way for their potency in the 2024 campaign. Officials repeatedly insisted that rising inflation early in the Biden term was “transitory” and that the economy was healthy even when millions of Americans were hurting. Similarly, administration spokespeople were long reluctant to consider rising numbers of border crossings as a “crisis” even though the asylum system was overwhelmed. Migrant crossings and inflation have both fallen considerably from their peaks, but the political damage may have been done. And Trump’s voters still regard him as a vessel for their frustration with a political and economic system they believe has poorly served them.

"Believe has poorly served them" is an understatement.  Whether it's boys playing on girls' sports teams, or the baby formula still under lock and key at the grocery store, or jihadis holding military parades with our Hummers and helicopters, the past presidential term has been disastrous.

In a country where majorities believe things are heading in the wrong direction, and where Harris this month said she couldn’t point to one thing she’d have done differently from Biden, Trump’s recent unhinged behavior may not be decisive.

“We’re winning, and going to win, not because of what Donald Trump is saying, but because of what they’ve done for four years,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday in reference to the Biden-Harris administration. “The American people are not going to tolerate four more years of affordability crisis, a world on fire, a broken border, energy dependence.” The South Carolina Republican added: “It’s all about Trump; they have got no other game to play.”

Indeed not, and Hill contributor D. E. Collins gives Militant Normals little reason to be hopeful.

There’s an expectancy of total support for any Democratic presidential candidate, no matter how abhorrent their policies and politics. The theme of tough love toward the Black electorate has been a part of the more liberal party’s playbook since Bill Clinton’s so-called Sista Souljah Moment, one born out of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. Clinton compared the rap artist and activist to one-time Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke for suggesting that the anger of Black gang members be unleashed on white folks.

But really, the Sista Souljah Moment, like Obama’s tongue-lashing, is an example of punching down. Clinton used a comment from a lesser-known artist to suggest that any rage toward white people was on the same level as systemic racism and a then-125-year-old white supremacist organization. Both Clinton and Obama point to a certain respectability politics that overgeneralizes about cultural degeneracy among Black folk while ultimately downplaying the latticework of endemic racism Black people face, including from the Democratic Party.

What has made this quashing of differences worse over the past two decades is that more often, the faces and voices calling for Black folks to fall in line with the Democratic Party’s neoliberal tough love are Black and biracial.

Put another way, the party has not catered enough to the identity-politics-soft-on-crime-weak-on-jihad elements of the Democrat coalition.  That is the way to more Minneapolis riots, discontent in Galewood, and more Trump.