Democrats got a stern message from a fed-up Washington Post columnist on Monday evening: "Snap out of it."
Eugene Robinson called out Democrats such as strategist David Axelrod and others who have sounded the alarm over recent polling showing Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in a dead heat.
The poll aggregators at FiveThirtyEight on Monday had Harris at 2.4 points above Trump. Meanwhile, The New York Times' polling average shows Harris leading Trump by 3 points — but essentially tied in the swing states.
The columnist pointed to the 2020 election that saw a few Election Day surprises go the Democrats' way, as well the so-called "Red Wave" that never came to pass in 2022 as evidence that all is not lost on the left.
"Take a deep breath and stop hyperventilating," said Robinson. "Vice President Kamala Harris has maintained a consistent lead in the national polls, and there is no way anyone can be certain which way the swing states are swinging until the votes are counted. Stop all the doomscrolling and go win the election."
Robinson noted that Harris has led in the polling averages since August — and emphasized that there's nothing more that they call say other than the race is within the margin of error.
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"Too close for comfort? Sure," he said. "But imagine the reverse: if it were Trump with the margin-of-error lead. How much more uncomfortable would that be?"
No one, said Robinson, ought to be intimidated by the GOP's "crowing now as if Trump has already one." A tight race, he added, gives Harris the advantage: She's raised more than $1 billion, and opened hundreds of field offices with thousands of staff in battleground states to churn out the vote. Trump on the other hand has outsourced such efforts to political action committees.
"The Trump campaign’s focus is on beating the bushes for potential supporters who don’t usually bother to vote. The Harris campaign is trying to do the same thing — and Democrats who are spending too much time wringing their hands could do something useful by impressing upon occasional voters that this election is too important to sit out," he said.
