The Outsider Perspective Issue 403 | The Beltway Outsiders

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Good Friday Morning! Except to Paris, France, which is struggling through these Olympics. Aside from the blasphemous display during the Opening Ceremonies, serving raw food to athletes in the village, and team chefs flying in emergency eggs and meat to cope with the overabundance of unwanted “vegan offerings,” swimmers have had to deal with French sanitation—or the lack thereof.

France spent $1.5 billion on infrastructure improvements for Paris, some of which went to clean up the historic Seine river. The New York Times ran this headline before the Olympics: “Mayor of Paris Takes an Olympian Plunge in a Beautified Seine: Anne Hidalgo swam in the cleaned-up waters of the capital’s river, fulfilling a promise that has become a symbol of the Olympic Games that start this month.“

Belgian triathlete Jolien Vermeylen disagreed, saying, “While swimming under the bridge, I felt and saw things that we shouldn’t think about too much.” She was also concerned about the water she ingested during the swim, which was tested as having E. coli levels ten times above acceptable limits, not including other trash in the water, and diseases.

Meanwhile, Emmanuel Macron was seen on camera greeting the country’s sports minister with a “greeting kiss” so steamy that even the French press had questions. Disgusting water, uneatable food, and accusations of torrid affairs—sounds French to me.

This week, I’m sticking with elections analysis and whether or not the meltdown among Republicans has merit (spoiler, I don’t think so)—links to follow.

Quick Hits:

The Federal Reserve is locking into a rate cut, likely 25 basis points, in September. Barring some radical change in the inflation data, the central bank is signaling to markets that they’ll cut rates ahead of the election. Nick Timiraos at the WSJ says Jerome Powell is setting the stage for that move, and the Fed is putting out explanations ahead of time to avoid appearances that he’s trying to sway the election one way or another. Investors are locked into a rate cut, with markets at 100% expecting an interest rate cut. There is a growing fear in markets that the Fed will be late to a rate cut, and a recession is around the corner. While you can cherry-pick anecdotes to find possible slowdown signals, there’s nothing broad signaling a downturn. We’re at the unemployment level the Fed wants, with no signs things will go beyond that. So, for now, the Fed is declaring victory over inflation and expects the economy to follow that victory lap.
At one point, the United States had a “no concessions” policy towards releasing foreign prisoners, spies, and others. The WSJ noted in its coverage of the big prisoner swap between the West and Russia “that principle has been steadily eroded by one precedent after the next.” Who did we give up? Among others, “Vadim Krasikov was a professional hit man who had gunned down an exile in broad daylight in a Berlin park. He was the man the Russian president wanted to bring home. ‘The Russian Federation will not leave me to rot in jail,” the murderer once told a guard.'” He ended up being right. Putin got him home on Biden’s watch. But right along with that deal, the US Government reached plea deals with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two of his co-conspirators. The deal allegedly took the death penalty off the table for the group. One of the 9/11 victims’ families put it succinctly: “The government has failed us.“ It is hard to avoid that conclusion about the plea deal and prisoner swaps.
The Harris campaign has rolled out the most bizarre thing in modern politics: racial and sex-segregated Zoom calls. To date, the Harris campaign has had: Black women for Harris, Black men for Harris, White women for Harris, White Dudes for Harris, and other calls for Asian, Hispanic, and any other grouping you can imagine. Harris began her national presidential career with a broadside against Biden, effectively slandering him as an old-school racist and segregationist from another century. She then became Biden’s VP and now claps while segregated Zoom calls happen in her honor. The White Women for Harris group makes me want to jump off the nearest ledge. It’s so revoltingly condescending. Who wants to be affiliated with the millennial version of “I WANT TO SPEAK TO THE MANAGER“ on a Zoom call? The White Men for Harris call is like watching a Low-T commercial come to life. I’m convinced Trump should air clips of these calls as ads. He’d win a landslide.

Where you can find me this week

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Horse Race Ep: 007: Trump vs. Harris: Latest Poll Results and Analysis | Harris VP Chosen

The Olympics Opening Ceremony And The Pagan Dark Ages – Conservative Institute

The Kamala Harris Sugar High Continues – Along With Trump’s Lead – Conservative Institute

Kamala Harris Needs To End The Segregation Zoom Hours – Conservative Institute

Sugar-High Into A Transition Period

We’re in the middle of one of the weirdest elections in U.S. history, and the reactions to this election are also extreme. In February, I registered that the general election polls favored Donald Trump. At the time, no matter what polling said, the press just reported the race as “leans Biden” to “it’s a toss-up.”

Then Biden imploded, and the press came around to my view of the race: Trump was winning. That drove a month-long effort to drive Biden out of the race, which was successful. Trump’s polling surged up higher than average, and Democrats watched their polls fall lower than expected.

The assassination attempt on Trump drove Democrats into even more despondency. And the effort to push Biden out ratcheted up a level.

Now, Biden is out, the press is going full-court for Harris, and the sky is falling for Republicans. I wondered if it was me seeing this, but Mark Halperin hosted his show this week on this exact subject: people declaring the race is over, Harris is going to win, and Trump has already lost.

Nate Silver’s latest model run has the race as a toss-up now, with the exact numbers being Trump at 54.9% vs Harris at 44.6% (and a 0.5% chance of a total deadlock). In other words, it’s a close race that leans Trump.

That’s fine. I’d make two observations about that: 1) it’s August with Democrats heading into their convention. We’d expect them to rise in the polls by now. 2) Trump is outrunning where he was at this point in 2016 and 2020.

In 2020, Biden won the national popular vote by 4.5 points; on Election Day, his final polling average was 7.2 points. He underperformed expectations. Clinton won it by 2.1 points in 2016 and had a final polling average of 3.5 points. She also underperformed.

As of Thursday evening, Trump leads the national averages by 1.2 points over Harris. In other words, even with all this sugar high for Harris, Trump still has a lead. It’s why I don’t get all the “sky is falling” nonsense. Trump has a lead. It’s a smaller lead than when Biden was bottoming out, but that was outside the norm for this race.

And I say that as someone expecting Kamala Harris to take a lead over Trump in the polling averages by the Democrat’s convention week or soon thereafter. By the time we factor in a likely convention bounce, Harris should have a lead over Trump in the averages. My question won’t be, “Does she have a lead?” It’ll be: how big is her lead?

To be competitive, Harris must, at minimum, hit Clinton’s 2.1% margins in the popular vote. Ideally, Harris wants that reflected in the polls. In 2016 and 2020, Trump over-performed his polling. If Trump is going to do that again, it suggests that Harris needs a larger polling buffer.

In short, Harris can’t be down in the polls and expect to win. She needs to have a lead. Nate Silver thinks Harris needs to hit at least 2.5% for the race to be a true toss-up. To win, I think she needs to be much closer to Biden’s 4.5-point victory.

Whatever metric you set for Harris winning, she’s not there. Exactly one poll shows a Harris +4 lead, and that’s a left-wing Daily Kos poll, which I take as seriously as a pro-Trump Rasmussen poll.

The point I will keep hammering is this: every race has a natural gravity. No matter what event happens, the fundamentals of the race will pull everything back to the earth. To escape that gravity, you need a truly earth-shaking event, like in 2008, when the economic meltdown shattered the Republican Party and accelerated Barack Obama into the White House.

We don’t have that right now, which is bizarre, given all the insane things that have happened in this race. But we’ll undoubtedly get another big new splash. Will Harris survive that? TBD.

We’re still in the Harris honeymoon period, which should last through the convention. After that, the hard sprint to Election Day begins.

The Trump campaign has a similar view of things to my own. In a campaign memo, Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio wrote:

Many of you have heard me refer to the upcoming “Harris Honeymoon“ that I expect to see in the public polling over the next couple of weeks. As I’ve explained, the honeymoon will be a manifestation of the wall-to-wall coverage Harris receives from the MSM. The coverage will be largely positive and will certainly energize Democrats and some other parts of their coalition at least in the short term.

That means we will start to see public polling – particularly national public polls – where Harris is gaining on or even leading President Trump. Obviously, the situation we find ourselves in today is totally uncharted territory and has no modern historical parallel. But there are some things that haven’t changed. Due to the events of the past two weeks including our highly successful Convention, President Trump has seen a bump in his numbers in a number of recent public polls. Not surprising given that most candidates historically receive some type of bump.

Given what has happened over the past couple of days and her impending VP choice, there is no question that Harris will get her bump earlier than the Democrat’s Convention. And that bump is likely to start showing itself over the next few days and will last a while until the race settles back down.

The race will settle down after the Democratic Convention and Labor Day. That’s typically when American elections shift from marathon mode to full sprint. If Harris maintains a large lead by that point, Trump must recalibrate his campaign. For now, this is about weathering the storm of uncertainty Democrats unleashed on the campaign. There’s no plan here for either side. They’re trying to ride this out like a bucking horse at the rodeo. The plan is to weather the storm and see where things stand. Once that happens, the race begins.

Links of the week

What I Saw at ‘White Dudes for Harris’ – Segregated fundraisers are really taking off. – The Free Press

Rise of Kamala Harris solidifies Dems’ full embrace as the party of ‘preachy females,’ scolding shrews – NYPost

Willie Brown on Kamala Harris: ‘She’ll Deport My Ass’: At 90, Harris’ mentor and former boyfriend is basking in her rise to power — along with those of his many other proteges. – Politico

‘Blame It on Kamala Harris’: VP Gave Lenient Plea Deals to Murderers, Domestic Abusers as DA: Prosecutor who worked under Harris said she lacked ‘guts and the willingness to go after tough cases’ – Washington Free Beacon

Two Assassinations and a Transformed War: Israel just took out Hamas and Hezbollah leaders deep inside enemy territory. Now Iran is threatening to retaliate. What comes next? – The Free Press

Bomb Smuggled Into Tehran Guesthouse Months Ago Killed Hamas Leader: An explosive device hidden in a heavily guarded complex where Ismail Haniyeh was known to stay in Iran was what killed him, according to a Times investigation. – New York Times

‘It’s Not Fair! It’s Not Fair!’ – Female boxer quits fight after 46 seconds in shocking Olympic scene. – The Free Press

Sen. Mark Kelly Secured Investment In Spy Balloon Company Through China’s Tencent –
RealClearPolitics

Biden-Harris admin’s 4 most dangerous Title IX changes for girls: Protecting original Title IX legislation is the preeminent civil rights issue of our time – Fox News

Josh Shapiro and Mark Kelly Vetted in Kamala Harris Veepstakes – Daily Beast

Gen X and millennials are more at risk of 17 cancers than past generations – Semafor