Tomorrow's debate should be fun to watch

Watching Biden self-destruct was a sad moment but watching Harris trying to make a silk purse from a sow's ear will be laughable

Harris’ policy statements are legend. Here are some of them and, in square brackets, her flip flops.

• Medicare for all, including illegal immigrants [Now says she didn’t mean it]

• No requirement for proof of citizenship to vote in the Presidential election

• A ban on “fracking” or some similar curb on the energy industry [Now says she will not “ban fracking"]

• A 25% tax on “unrealized” gains for Americans with a net worth over $100 million

• Higher corporate tax rates (which get passed on to consumers in higher prices)

• Price controls, a bit like Communist Russia

• Defund the police and ensure criminals are free from the burden of cash bail [Now says she will crack down on crime]

• On open border characterized by thousands of migrants entering America every day [Now says she will crack down on immigration and even build some border wall]

Harris will try to walk back pretty well all of these as well as copying popular Trump policies like “no tax on tips”, pretending she now supports a border wall, and an expanded child tax credit which are policy proposal the two candidates now have in common.

For the past week or so, Harris has been huddled with Trump impersonators trying to prepare for a debate she is sure to fumble, since insincere promises that conflict with prior statements of leftist ideology impress virtually no one except the dedicated Democrat party base which would vote for Harris if she were a Holstein cow rather than a Jamaican-Indian American who happens to have dark skin.

If Harris is true to form, she will be well into her cups by the time the debate starts, if not totally polluted. Alcohol depresses inhibitions so she may make some outlandish statements, followed by her now famous “cackle”. Regardless of how the audience views her during the debate, mainstream media will claim her performance was a debilitating humiliation for Trump and declare victory on November 5, 2024 as a virtual certainty.

But the wheels are already falling off this crate. Since Labor Day, Harris has dropped in the polls from a five point advantage to a tie, and that trend is likely to accelerate.

National polls are interesting if you care about the popular vote, but the U.S. electoral college system has to be parsed in a bit more detail to get an accurate picture. Here’s how things stand today.

It takes 270 electoral college votes to win. It all comes down to a handful of states. If Trump wins Pennsylvania (19), Georgia (16) and North Carolina (16) the game is over for Harris even if she prevails in Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada. The latest polls are of little value to handicap the outcome since the two candidates are less than one percentage point apart in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Nevada and Harris’ lead in Wisconsin is within the margin of error. This is definitely a horse race. I point out that in the past, Trump has outperformed the polls by a few percentage points in the actual votes counted in the election despite the diligent attempts by Democrats like Stacy Abrahms to “harvest votes” from seniors and the emerging evidence that thousands of votes were cast by persons who were not citizens in the 2020 election (although no data has surfaced to point to whether they favored Biden or Trump, or whether they were sufficient to tip the scales either way in any event.)

That makes Tuesday’s debate an event worth watching. If Harris’ impresses, her road to the White House seems clear of traffic jams. If she flubs it, she will be pulled over for driving too far below the speed limit and ticketed into the history books as an “also ran”.