Jen Rubin had Simon Rosenberg on her 'Jen Rubin's Green Room' podcast and he said:
"I was on a network discussion right before the debate where one of my counterparts (another guest) said you know, 'We don't know which Trump is going to show up?' and I'm like, 'Yeah, we do! You know, I mean, there's only one and it's really ugly' and that ugliness was all over our television for 90 minutes and she did a lot of good for herself and I think he did a lot of damage to himself and so I think we're favored to win. You know, we still, the way I talk about this is that we are winning the election, but we haven't won it yet. And what we now have to go do in the next 50 days with early vote starting just in a few days is we got to prosecute this advantage we have and go kick their ass. "
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Jen Rubin, "What do you see in her favorability numbers [note from Dem this is a brilliant question - I promise you that this is FAR more important than topline poll results, even from well respected pollsters employing sound methodology and using high quality polling methods] ? Is she becoming more popular? Is he becoming less popular? Or is it both?"
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Simon, "Well, it is, thank you for asking that because I actually don't talk about that enough because in some ways I am still stunned by the data. You know she's regularly polling with higher favorabilities than unfavorabilities and we haven't really seen a major politician like that in a while in American politics. I think it's, they talk about physics or electoral physics, I mean, she's doing something right now that sort of many people believed we wouldn't see a major politician achieve positive status on favorabilities again just because of the polarization in the country and partisanship.
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So, she's really in a very strong place depending on the poll, she's got ten, fifteen, twenty points advantages on favorability over Trump and with so little time left in the election, the likelihood of Republicans denting that or fundamentally altering that is not high. That doesn't mean that it couldn't happen, we all know that, but she's in a, this is an important part of what's happening, it's another reason why, this election really isn't as it appears right now because again as you prosecute a campaign certain things start to happen, you know.
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We're going to be spending more money. We have more volunteers. We're going to be talking to more voters, we've got heightened enthusiasm, and our candidate is much better liked than theirs is which matters and he's also saddled with some of the ugliest and most unlikeable Senate and Gubernatorial candidates in the battlegrounds and the worst VP pick in history, modern American history. And so the thing is there a negative machine, negative ugliness every day that they're pumping out and they don't have the ability at this point, right, to really generate, Joe Biden is the president, we're going to have interest rate cuts this week, he's, good things are happening in the country that we can take credit for. What do they got? They've got cats and dogs, sharks and batteries, they've got the craziest guy we've ever seen. And it isn't going to get better (for them). And so look, we're in a good position, but we all recognize that anything can happen in this business, particularly in the age of Trump. And we've just got to put our head down and keep working really hard. "
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Below are my own thoughts, written before I had watched the video and performed the transcription so please forgive me where there are duplicates in material covered.
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As Rachel Bitecoffer correctly identified, this era of American politics is one of negative partisanship. That means that generally speaking the strongest arguments that move your people to the polls are not positive ones that you're great, but rather the other major political party nominee is utterly unacceptable. The voters have been through a lot lately. They have endured Donald Trump's American carnage, the pandemic, inflation from the pandemic, the insurrection, Donald Trump's legal problems which he has made his base believe are the results of the weaponization of the Department of Justice, and price level (inflation is annual, year over year comparing the same time the previous year) increases. Therefore , it seemed that in the West generally, it was impossible for a major politician to have positive favorability numbers. Somehow, she has overcome this.
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Donald Trump cannot raise his favorability numbers. He's been around nine years and he's a terrible human being who presents terribly and now is even worse than before. He's incapable of message discipline. His attacks don't work because (1) they're ugly bigoted attacks that aren't subtle and (2) they're coming from him . So, his only hope is to try to reduce her numbers, but he's not well- positioned to do that.
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There aren't any major political events scheduled for the future. The Federal Reserve Board of Governors chair just announced a half point cut in interest rates because inflation has been defeated. There is a debate between Coach Walz and the childless cat lady hater who lies about people eating dogs, JD Vance, but this is much less significant than the debate between the two principals. Both political parties have already held their national conventions. The debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump was a rout.
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Ask yourself this, 'How can he win (even the electoral college) when he's underwater fifteen to twenty percent on favorability and she's in positive territory? How does he do that?" The answer is he can't if turnout is strong. The stronger the turnout, the more the favorability hurts him. That's because his deep cult base loves him no matter what, so they won't share the views of most voters. However, outside of his base, voters will, generally speaking, like her more and have a better opinion of her than him. Obviously, a Black swan event could occur, but if one candidate is more likely to have a Black Swan event, it's him by far.
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The fundamentals of this election favor her. She has the largest lead in enthusiasm during the general election we have ever seen. The economy is strong. Republicans were afraid of this interest rate cut (this was obvious from their threats and other comments) and Democrats like Senator Elizabeth Warren were calling for it. Remember that there were some (but not here on Daily Kos - great job everyone!) who thought (and this was after the election so it would not have mattered anyway) that he might get sympathy for catching COVID. However, my memory here is that we generally didn't believe that because we believed, correctly as it turns out, that the American people would see that as the consequence of his own irresponsible choices. In the same way, I am quite confident that he won't make any progress politically from the failed plot and he is not going to intimidate or blackmail us into not telling the truth about him, that he's an existential threat to democracy, a fascist, uses Hitlerism language, is a terrible human being, and has been convicted of 34 felonies. The American people, generally speaking, are aware that he's the one who has frequently employed violent imagery in his political speeches.
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And early vote is about to start. So, she's got a huge favorability advantage over him, she's got a very large enthusiasm advantage over him, she has more realistic paths to 270 electoral college votes, she has an enormous advantage in voter turnout operation, the ground game, she has more volunteers, we have an enormous voter registration advantage, he's outsourcing the work that would normally be done, she's got better surrogates, she's got a huge advantage in money raised, he's a terribly flawed candidate with a terrible record, and while our Senate map is difficult, she will be joined on ballots by strong candidate whereas he will be joined by freaks and extremists like the Republican gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina.
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My response to Donald Trump's attempt to intimidate us into not identifying him correctly
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The polls have improved and we are likely doing even better than the polls say
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Vice President Harris raised $47 million in the 24 hours after the debate
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New York Times reports how the debate may widen the disparity in how well the two candidates campaigns raise funds
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Vice President Harris' campaign raised $361 million in September, more than three times the amount raised by the Trump campaign
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Vice President Harris' entrance into this election lit a fuse and attracted a large number of new volunteers
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Vice President Harris has a much more muscular ground game than Donald Trump
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Donald Trump is relying upon a risky strategy, outsourcing work normally performed by volunteers
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I STRONGLY RECOMMEND you visit this site because polls alone are not going to give you as comprehensive an understanding of where the election is. This website tracks new voter registration.
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This trend of increased voter registration was seen early on
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Taylor Swift's endorsement led 338,000 to use a government voter registration Website
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Vice President Harris leads in enthusiasm among voters
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When we take a comprehensive look at this election, we consider voter enthusiasm and voter registration data and her far superior voter turnout ground operation and her massive amount of volunteers and her enormous fundraising advantage and her decisive debate victory and how she has narrowed what should have been large leads in red states, then we put that with the polls and she probably has about a five percentage point lead now.
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