Will being anti-Trump and pro-choice be enough for Vice President Kamala Harris to win the presidency in November?
With eight weeks until Election Day and in our current hyperpolarized political environment, this question remains unclear.
The general election remains a dead heat in national polls and locked in tight races among voters in swing states.
This seems unfathomable to many, as Harris is running against the former president who is a convicted felon, incited an insurrection, and is an adjudicated sexual assaulter. Former President Donald Trump is also the first president in our history who refused the peaceful transfer of power.
But 鈥 and this is a big but 鈥 just because a voter is anti-Trump, in this polarized climate, that does not always translate into actually supporting Harris as a candidate.
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Harris is too liberal for much of the general electorate. Even though she is tacking to the center on many issues since her nomination, there is still much that the American people do not know about her due to her strategic ambiguity.
Mark P. Jones, James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy鈥檚 fellow in political science and co-director of its Presidential Elections Program, analyzed the 11 complete Congresses since the turn of this century and tracked roll call votes for a reliable analysis of their ideological position. During this period, there were 109 different Democrats who served in the Senate.
Jones wrote in The Hill: 鈥淏ased on her roll call voting record, Harris is the second-most liberal Democratic senator to serve in the Senate in the 21st century.鈥
Jones also plotted out President Joe Biden鈥檚 roll call. Biden鈥檚 voting record locates him at the ideological center of those 109 Democratic senators (two senators to the right of the median Democratic senator).
Harris is also not doing a particularly good job of reaching out to low-information or disengaged voters. At this writing, she has sat for just one major-media interview. She has not held a town hall event or taken non-scripted questions from voters. The debate on Tuesday could prove very illuminating.
Conservative Stephen Hayes, co-founder of The Dispatch, recently posted the following on X: 鈥淭rump is a dangerous demagogue, uniquely unfit to serve another term as president. Harris is a far-left senator now trying to run away from her rhetoric and record. Opposing Trump doesn鈥檛 require pretending Harris is something she鈥檚 not.鈥
Hayes has articulated a dilemma that many voters find themselves in. Recent polling shows that Hayes and I are not alone in this thinking.
A new ABC News/Ipsos poll, conducted after the Democratic National Convention, found that 46 percent of likely voters viewed Harris favorably versus 43 percent unfavorably, while Trump鈥檚 ratings were 33 percent to 58 percent.
If being anti-Trump were enough and we weren鈥檛 stuck in our cemented tribes, Harris鈥 favorable rating would be closer to Trump鈥檚 unfavorable rating of 58 percent.
There is a lot of pundit chatter that this is a 鈥渧ibes鈥 election. If true, this would play in Harris鈥 favor. But elections are also about policy and here is where Trump has an advantage over Harris. On key issues and policies, Trump continues to out-poll Harris on the economy, inflation and immigration.
In the same ABC News/Ipsos poll, Americans trust Trump over Harris to handle the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border (Trump +9), the economy (Trump +8), and inflation (Trump +8).
The one issue over which Harris leads Trump 鈥 and by a wide margin 鈥 is abortion. More Americans say they trust Harris over Trump to handle that issue. This is even with Trump bouncing all over the place with his views on reproductive rights.
If Trump wins in November and Harris loses, Democrats will default to blaming the electorate for being racist and/or misogynistic.
While that might be a part of it, a more likely explanation is that as a country, we are not as liberal as Harris, that the known is preferable over the unknown, and that the election was more about policy and less about feelings.
Or to flip it around: If Harris wins and Trump loses, Harris should remember it was likely an anti-Trump coalition that put her over 270 electoral votes. It would be a mistake for her to think she has a mandate for liberal policies.
This may be one of the least rational elections in modern history. Voters are asked to weigh conflicting ideas with their current ideologies and fluid party platforms. One candidate lies and the other one does not talk.
Top it all off with a heavy dollop of polarization, and predicting the outcome is nearly impossible.
Schmidt is a Post-Dispatch columnist and Editorial Board member. SchmidtOpinions@gmail.com. On X: @Lynn Schmidt.