Each year around this time, my wife and I make it a point to get away for a few days to celebrate our anniversary. Last year, we went to Ogunquit, Maine. This year, the plan was to go to Saratoga Springs, New York, the place where the two of us got engaged in 1993. At the last minute, we opted instead for another favorite spot of ours: New Hope, Pennsylvania.
For those who've never had the pleasure of visiting this quaint, little town, it sits directly on the banks of the Delaware River, across from Lambertville, New Jersey, approximately 50 miles north of Philadelphia in Bucks County. It's about a two-hour drive from New York and three hours from where we live on Long Island, so it's pretty close.
This was our fourth trip to New Hope, but it was the first time we'd ever visited this close to a presidential election, and let me tell you something: I now know what it feels like to be in a battleground state. It seemed like every other commercial was a political ad, and everywhere my wife and I went, there were Biden/Harris signs all over the place. In fact, I don't think either of us saw a Trump/Pence sign, which given the political leanings of New Hope in general, was not all that surprising.
Of course all that changed the moment we drove outside of town. All along the roads the signage was pretty much 50/50 between Biden and Trump. Bucks County, for those of you who don't know, went for Barack Obama in 2012 by four thousand votes and Hillary Clinton in 2016 by three thousand votes, so it's a good bet it will also go for Biden in 2020, though by how much remains to be seen. Like so many counties in the Keystone state, turnout will determine the outcome.
Before we go any further, I had a chance to watch the VP debate Wednesday night and here are my observations: I thought going in that Kamala Harris had two main objectives. The first was to not commit any unforced errors. The last thing the Biden campaign needs at this stage of the game is to give the Trump campaign a life line. Fortunately for team Biden, Harris did her job. She was poised and in command. In fact, of all four candidates running on their respective tickets, she actually seems the most prime-time ready, if you know what I mean.
And that brings me to the second objective Harris had. Unlike most presidential campaigns where the VP debate is inconsequential, this time around it was anything but. Both presidential candidates are well into their 70s and health, like it or not, has become a campaign issue in this election. This was an opportunity for Harris to define herself to an electorate that, as we speak, is determining whether she's qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. And let me just say univocally she passed with flying colors.
Whatever reservations I may have had about Harris during the primaries were all put to bed during that debate. Far from the radical love child of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren that the Trump campaign has tried to portray her as, Harris came across as measured, pragmatic and engaging. She made frequent eye contact with the camera and directed most of her answers to the voters who were watching at home. When Pence attempted to talk over her, she put him in his place without losing her composure, something her running mate, Joe Biden, at times struggled with in his debate with Trump.
There was only one moment in the debate that I chalk up as a missed opportunity for Harris, and that was when Pence wouldn't answer moderator Susan Page's question about what the Trump administration planned to do if the Supreme Court overturned the Affordable Care Act. Harris made the mistake of getting caught up in the weeds over court packing and that allowed Pence to escape without having to answer the single-most important campaign issue of this election next to the pandemic. I'm sure she'd love to have that one back.
That aside, I'd rate her overall performance as an A minus. Now you know why Biden chose her to be his running mate, and more importunity why Trump is pulling whatever the hell that is on top of his head out. It must be driving him up the wall knowing that Biden and Harris are kicking the shit out of him in the polls. He wanted to run against Bernie; instead he's running against the political equivalent of Hootie and the Blowfish. Suck on it, Bunker Boy.
But getting back to Pennsylvania, here's why I'm cautiously optimistic about Biden's chances this fall. On our last day in New Hope, my wife and I had a chance to speak with the inn keeper, who is an unabashed liberal. She told us about a couple that was traveling from Maine to Virginia that stayed a couple of nights with them. They seemed quite normal, nice and convivial. As they were checking out she noticed that there was a Trump-Pence bumper sticker on the back of their car.
It got her thinking that perhaps her perception of what a Trump voter was might not be accurate. We've all seen the bat-shit crazy contingent screaming at people for the high crime of wearing a mask, the throngs of boats with huge Trump banners flying on their mastheads and the militia groups that have taken to the streets to "preserve the peace." There's a temptation to assume that all Trump voters are like this. It is a dangerous and rather foolish presumption that could prove to be fatal in the end.
As a salesperson I should know better than to judge a book by its cover. You can never tell how someone will vote based solely on outward appearances. For all the talk about the alleged "shy" Trump voter, there is another frightening scenario that keeps me up nights: the real possibility that a significant enough portion of the electorate might actually approve of the job Trump is doing. Fancy that.
Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that the polls are wrong. I'm just saying that they might not be fixed. The fact that Trump is still polling in the low to mid 40s in most battleground states means he still has a shot at winning the electoral college. Let's not forget that among Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, Trump only needs to hang on to one in order to win reelection, that is of course assuming Biden doesn't flip Florida, North Carolina or Arizona.
It's worth noting that at this point in 2016, Clinton had a 4.5 percent point lead over Trump in the RCP battleground polls; the exact same percentage that Biden now leads Trump by. The difference is that Biden is polling at 49.1 percent while Clinton was at 44.5 percent. It was the undecided vote which broke heavily in favor of Trump in the final days that did Clinton in, no doubt spurred on by Jim Comey's October surprise with eleven days to go.
What devilish schemes do Bill Bar and John Durham have up their sleeves? Will there be another October surprise that could tilt the election? Barr, according to a report in Axios, has informed Congressional Republicans that the results of the investigation into the origins of the Russia probe won't be released until after the election. If that's so, Trump will blow a gasket. He's already demanding that both Hillary and Biden be arrested; Hillary, I suppose, for winning the popular vote against him four years ago and Biden, I imagine, for having the audacity to even run against him this year. The man is so jacked up on steroids, it's a wonder he hasn't exploded yet.
My point is that Biden shouldn't rest on his laurels or put all his eggs in one basket. The best thing he can do is to continue campaigning vigorously in all the key swing states, especially Florida, North Carolina and Arizona. All three states are winnable and would provide the necessary second path to 270 electoral votes should the polling in Michigan and Wisconsin prove to be as faulty as it was in 2016.
Being ahead is better than being behind, but it's no guarantee of a positive outcome.
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