Run for the Roses
Horse racing isn’t simple, but the goal of horse racing is: to win the race. There are all sorts of tactics to achieve that goal. I don’t know a lot about horse racing, though as a track coach, I do know about tactics. Like horses, different athletes bring different strengths to the race; fast at the beginning, strong at the end, courageous from the back, comfortable in the lead. And athletes, and horses, can get distracted in a race and lose focus on the goal: to win.
With athletes I often give them “checkmarks”, points along the way where they need to re-check their tactics and their focus, and make sure they’re “mind’s right”. With horses it’s not quite so easy; the jockey has to control the distractions along the way, and determine when it’s time to “go” for the finish (as the old Dan Fogelberg song goes: Run for the Roses!).
Eyes on the Prize
One way to control the distractions for a horse, is to put blinders on them. Blinders restrict their vision only to the front. There’s an obscure car racing movie, Gumball Rally, that had only one famous line: “The first rule of Italian driving, what’s behind me is not important”. So too for the horses in the final stretch: make sure they’re not distracted. Put blinders on them.
I was in a social media discussion the other day, and one of the participants stated that I had blinders on. It wasn’t meant as a compliment, but I took it that way. Because we need blinders right now as we enter the last three weeks of the American Presidential campaign. There are so many things to distract us, to waste energy and time on, to “lose our minds” about. As the old civil rights slogan goes, we need to “keep our eyes on the prize”. So put your blinders on.
Polls
I swore after 2016 I wouldn’t get sucked back into daily political polls. 2016 polling was just wrong: understandably, I guess, Trump voters didn’t want to tell anybody. But they did vote, and so what looked like an easy Clinton win, became a shocking Trump victory.
And I did a pretty good job of ignoring polls in 2020. The Covid Presidential election was truly unreadable; who would vote, what impact did Biden following Covid protocols versus Trump himself getting Covid then ripping his mask off (he almost wore a Superman shirt) on the White House terrace have on voters. It turned out to be the same kind of “squeaker” as 2016, with Biden coming out on top.
But in 2022 the polls predicted a “Red Wave”. The pollsters underestimated the power of women and reaction to the Supreme Court decision ending Roe v Wade. But for the internal Democratic fight in New York state, Democrats would have kept the House and the Senate. In spite of New York, instead of an overwhelming Republican victory, Democrats kept the Senate and barely, by five votes, lost the House.
Margin of Error
So here we are in 2024. And I got sucked back into the polls again, just like I did in 2016. The polling is showing, right now, that this election is even narrower than 2016 and 2020. It could go either way, inconceivable as it is to me that we could return to Trump after the January 6th Insurrection. I’ve written a lot about polling, and the dangers of “living and dying” on a one percent change in polls that have a four percent margin of error. In the end, Trump up one percent, Harris up two percent; it’s meaningless. It’s just crazy, crazy close.
Are the pollsters under estimating the power of women, again? Is the model over-compensating for the Trump voters they missed in 2016? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? It just doesn’t matter: put your blinders on, and get to work. There’s three weeks to go, it’s time for a “stretch run”.
Post-Elections Shenanigans
So, say that Kamala Harris wins both elections, the popular vote and the electoral college. Will there be a second Insurrection, this time better conceived, planned and executed? Will “the will” of the people be served, or will the dark MAGA forces rise up and try to wrest the Presidency by “hook or by crook”?
We all know, it might happen. And worse, we can’t be sure that the US Supreme Court will do the right thing. They’ve already put their judicial thumb on the scales of Justice, granting Trump unheard of immunity for actions he took as President. Things could get incredibly ugly between November 5th and January 20th. But, for right now, there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. It’s like worrying about the final race when you haven’t finished the prelims yet. Put your blinders on, we’ve got to get through this finish line first, then we can deal with the next issue.
Vote Against Themselves
So what about the Black men who might vote for Trump, or the Hispanic vote that seems to be leaking towards him, or the Muslim vote that might sit out the election in protest to Biden? There’s an old political “saw”: in the end, voters will come home. 87% of Black men voted for Joe Biden. There may be a vocal few who switch to Trump, but the reality is that Harris is likely to draw at least that much.
59% of Hispanic voters (men and women) chose Biden over Trump. Sure it might be a little closer this time around, but there’s no “mass movement” of Hispanic voters to Trump. That shouldn’t be a surprise, Trump is denigrating Hispanics almost daily in his rallies. And what about Muslim voters, particularly in the swing state of Michigan? They aren’t going to vote for Trump, but will they turn out for Harris? Do you think they’ll vote for a Jewish lady from Chicago, Jill Stein? In the end, Muslims represent less than 3% of the Michigan vote. While they are important, their vote is a very small slice of a much bigger pie. It’s hard to say what they will do, (other than they won’t vote for Trump) but unless you have a way to impact them directly, there’s not much you can do about it.
Trump Voters
And what about white men, and the “hidden” misogynistic, “I won’t vote for a woman” vote? It’s the same vote that ultimately cost Hillary the White House. Hopefully eight years has changed many Americans’ views, and certainly the younger generation is less burdened by prejudice than their elders. But the bottom line: if being a woman disqualifies Harris from a man’s vote, he probably wasn’t going to vote for a Democrat anyway. Put your blinders on, and keep your “eyes on the prize”.
And just an aside, how can folks vote for a man who held a rally in the desert this weekend, and required everyone to park five miles away and bus in. Then, he didn’t pay for the buses to take them back, and abandoned his crowd to hike the miles back to their cars. It was a strategy to make sure no one left early, and it demonstrates Trump’s “concern” for his MAGA crowd – none. But don’t get distracted, the walkers are still voting for him anyway. They’ve got blinders too.
The Race
You can’t change the polls, and you can’t pick up people from the rally. But you can still impact the Presidential race. You can call the campaign and volunteer; to make calls, knock on doors. And you can try to influence folks who listen to you (and write essays too). You can donate money, in an era where it takes billions of dollars to run for President. But most importantly: you can put your blinders on, and you can make sure that you, and your like-minded friends and family, vote. That’s keeping your eyes on the prize.
