For well over a month now, I have been traveling the country trying to get a sense of where voters stand, not just on the election but on the state of our great experiment in democracy.
In that time, former President Donald Trump has been shot, President Joe Biden has dropped out and Vice President Kamala Harris has turned Biden-Harris 2024 into Hidin' Harris 2024 by refusing to answer any questions.
It's been a bit hectic, but there are five things that stand out.
For committed partisans on both sides, the idea of an undecided voter seems completely bizarre, especially in this election cycle. And yes, most people I spoke with have not only made a choice but feel incredibly strongly about it.
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Having said that, those on the fence are not unicorns. The most common version is the person who likes Trump’s record but strongly dislikes Trump. Another group is a faction that simply thinks the whole system is broken. Finally, there are those who don’t know if they will vote at all. As one told me, "I want something to vote for, not to vote against." A lot of these voters? They want to be persuaded.
One huge advantage that Harris and the Democrats have is the complicity of most of the mainstream media. Nowhere is that clear than in the alacrity in which their talking points saturate real life. No sooner had Ohio Sen. JD Vance been selected as Trump’s vice-presidential nominee than the memo went out that he is "weird." People heard it everywhere. But even Democrats, when they are being candid, don’t buy it.
They understand why it's being tried and yes, they will even play along. "It’s just good politics," one said to me. But Vance is not weird and that’s why the charge is already fading. It's important to remember just how many Americans have watched "The West Wing." They know the game. They can play it. But nobody without a Kamala Harris T-shirt on whom I spoke with thinks Vance is actually abnormal in any significant way.
I know it feels like a decade, it was only 6 weeks ago when Joe Biden’s fingernails were still gripping the top of the ticket. At the time, the strongest argument he and his supporters had was that he had received over 20 million votes in the primary, and that those Democrats who cast their vote for him would be disenfranchised if the president dropped out.
Having spoken with more than 100 Democrats in 9 states, I can tell you this, they don’t care. The relief at ditching Biden, and the chance that Harris gives them now of holding onto the White House, has erased any concerns about how she got the nomination. Part of this is fueled by a hatred of Trump, but there is also a collectivism about Democrats. "It’s a whole team," they’ll tell me, and they are not upset about seeing a relief pitcher in this particular game.
If the average 15 minutes spent on X or Facebook were to be believed as the norm, we would be living our lives in a cauldron of red-hot hatred and snark directed at those we do not agree with politically. If, as I suspect, this does not describe your daily interactions with real people in the plastic of reality, you are not alone.
I have had many occasions to just sit back and listen to members of the two sides talk, and truthfully, even if our media have forgotten how to have honest, open, and respectful conversations, the American people have not.
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For all the talk of a nation on the brink of civil war, I don’t even see a country on the brink of a civil snowball fight. This is not to say that some real-life relationships have not been harmed by politics, I hear those individual stories too, the high school friends who no longer talk, the estranged uncle, but it is thankfully not the norm.
One question I’ve taken to asking across the country is how often in their daily lives people speak to family, friends, or coworkers about the election. It turns out it happens a lot, and as noted above, usually in more constructive ways than occur across the social media feeds on our screens.
Political campaigns and the media can arm Americans with talking points to bring up in such chats, but we can never really see or hear them in action or see how they work.
For example, in Carroll County, Md., a farmer described a long conversation he and several neighbors had about former Gov. Larry Hogan, now running as the GOP candidate for senate who refuses to endorse Trump. "We all agreed we had to vote for him," he told me, "but we don’t like it."
So yes, they will vote for Hogan, but they won’t donate to him, they won’t knock on doors or convince moderate friends. In these invisible exchanges, behind sturdy walls of hearth and home, much of the 2024 election will be decided.
Until that happens though, I’ll be out on the road, and if I find anything interesting, as I usually do, you will be the first to know.
