Like many of you I’m sure, I am constantly baffled and depressed by the fact that the polls show Harris and Trump continuing to be essentially tied in all of the battleground states, with Trump recently actually showing a bump in many of these states’ polls. I just read an opinion piece by Robert Reich in which he shared my frustration with this situation and offered what I think is the most likely answer to the question: How the hell could Trump be running neck-and-neck with Harris? His response doesn’t necessarily alleviate any of my concerns about the election, but he does give me some solace that I’m not going crazy and he does offer some hope. So I wanted to share what Reich had to say.
Reich starts by aptly stating the same questions that I keep asking myself right now:
With less than 40 days until Election Day, how can it be that Trump has taken a small lead in Arizona and Georgia — two swing states he lost to Biden in 2020? How can he be narrowly leading Harris in the swing state of North Carolina? How can he now be essentially tied with her in the other key swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin?
More generally, how can Trump have chiseled away Harris’s advantage from early August? How is it possible that more voters appear to view Trump favorably now than they did several months ago when he was in the race against Biden?
How can Trump — the sleaziest person ever to run for president, who has already been convicted on 34 felony charges and impeached twice, whose failures of character and leadership were experienced directly by the American public during his four years at the helm — be running neck-and-neck with a young, talented, intelligent person with a commendable record of public service?
Reich answers this question by first dismissing some explanations that we continue to hear to try to make sense of this baffling situation. First, he does not think that polls are understating voters’ support for Harris and overstating their support for Trump, because given how everyone knows how awful Trump is people are likely more reluctant to admit that they plan to vote for him. Second, he doesn’t think that the corporate media’s interest in portraying a close race is the reason, since he says “more Americans appear to be tuning out politics altogether.” Third, he doesn’t think that inflation and economy are the reason, because “given that the American economy has rebounded, inflation is way down, interest rates are falling, wages are up, and the job engine continues, you’d think voters at the margin would be moving toward her rather than toward Trump.”
Reich’s explanation for the current tight state of the race is what he calls “asymmetric information.” This explanation is essentially based on the fact that nearly every American knows and has made up their mind about Trump, but they don’t yet know Harris or remain undecided about her. Trump is exploiting this asymmetry in a few key ways, so that when it comes to choosing between him and Harris voters — particularly, I assume, those low-information voters in key swing states — will choose “the devil they know.” How this works, per Reich:
This requires, first, that Trump suck all the media oxygen out of the air so Harris has fewer opportunities to define herself positively.
Americans who have become overwhelmed by the chaos are tuning out politics altogether, especially in swing states where political advertising is nonstop. And as they tune out both Trump and Harris, Trump is the beneficiary, because, again, he’s the devil they know.
In other words, Trump is running neck-and-neck with Harris not despite the mess he’s created over the last few weeks but because of it.
We’re all seeing this happening in real time right now. In August Harris was enjoying a wave of extensive and positive media coverage, riding the wave of her announcement, early exciting rallies and stellar debate performance. But the past few weeks in September we’ve seen Trump regain control of the media airwaves by saying more and more outrageous and frightening things and having everyone respond to them. It leaves little room for Harris to get her message out.
Reich points out that the other part of Trump’s asymmetric information strategy involves him and his allies flooding the airwaves and social media with negative ads about Harris, which are then amplified by the right-wing ecosystem of Fox News, Newsmax, and Sinclair radio. He points out that Trump’s campaign has given up trying to portray him positively.
Instead, the ads aired by Trump and his allies in swing states are overwhelmingly negative about Harris — emphasizing, for example, her past support for gender transition surgery for incarcerated people.
Researchers on cognition have long known that negative messages have a bigger impact than positive ones, probably because in evolutionary terms, our brains are hard-wired to respond more to frightening than to positive stimuli (which might explain why social media and even mainstream media are filled with negative stories).
So there you have it: Trump sucks up all of the media attention, be it positive or negative, so that voters don’t have a chance to learn more about Harris, and he portrays the lesser-know candidate in an extremely negative light so that voters end up voting for “the devil they know.” According to Reich, this explains why Trump refuses to debate Harris, lest he provide her with another opportunity to portray herself positively in front of a large group of voters.
Reich adds one final ingredient to the asymmetric information explanation — which is one we talk about a lot around here: racism and misogyny.
I can’t help wondering how many Americans who continue saying they “don’t know” or are “undecided” about Harris are concealing something from pollsters and possibly from themselves: They feel uncomfortable voting for a Black woman.
I found Reich’s “asymmetric information” framing helpful for me to try to put into context what is happening right now with the presidential election. And before you get too depressed, I’ll point out that Reich still holds out some optimism for Harris winning the election in the end.
Having said all this, I’m cautiously optimistic about the outcome of the election. Why? Because Trump is deteriorating rapidly; lately he’s barely been able to string sentences together coherently.
Harris, by contrast, is gaining strength and confidence by the day, and despite Trump’s attempts to shut her out, more Americans are learning about her. As she gets more exposure, Trump’s “devil-you-know” advantage disappears.
Perhaps it’s more accurate to say I’m nauseously optimistic, because, to be candid, I go into the next five weeks feeling a bit sick to my stomach. Even if Harris wins, the fact that so many Americans seem prepared to vote for Trump makes me worry for the future of my country.
Reich expresses some of the same feelings I have right now about the state of the race and the state of our country. But like him I remain nauseously optimistic. I continue to fight off my frustration with how the corporate media is failing at appropriately covering the election and thus tilting the scales for Trump, and to fight off my anger at seeing how so many Americans can possibly even think about voting for Trump after all the destruction and chaos he’s caused. instead I try to fight hard every day to do my part as best I can. My husband and I continue to donate to the Harris-Walz campaign and to other key Senate and House races, and I continue to volunteer to help with GOTV and voter assistance. As Kamala Harris says all the time, when we fight we win.
