The idea that the 2024 election should be a slam dunk for Democrats is delusional

Denverite proposes two takeaways should the coin flip land against Harris:

(1) It will firmly confirm my growing suspicion that there is now an incumbency disadvantage because negative partisanship is the biggest motivating force in politics, far bigger than the advantages the incumbent has. It is far easier to demonize the incumbent and motivate people to vote the asshole out of office, than it is to motivate supporters to keep the incumbent in place.

(2) The electorate is so closely divided now that any small mistake is usually fatal. If Harris loses, this election was lost when Biden decided to run for reelection despite dismal polling and widespread concern in the electorate that he was too old. You can probably say the same about 2020 and Trump’s missteps on COVID.

On point #1, I think it would be premature to conclude that there is a general anti-incumbency effect (although the incumbent advantage is clearly shrinking.) But it is almost certainly true that incumbency in this context (post-pandemic inflation still in people’s minds) is a major disadvantage. Incumbents are getting beat all over the western world, and polling suggests that Trudeau is going to get absolutely slaughtered. Harris — in part because Biden made better economic choices than other incumbents and in part because she’s running a strong campaign — will almost certainly do better than could have been reasonably be expected all things being equal.

On point #2 though, I’m less sure. To be clear, this is purely retrospective. I agree Biden should have announced that he was dropping out after the midterms, and while I think Harris was somewhat underrated as a candidate nobody could have anticipated that she could have improved upon both her own and Biden’s net approval numbers to this extent in such a short time:

One upshot of this, though, is that I don’t agree that a lengthy and probably bruising primary would have left Harris in a better position that she is now, and it’s more likely the opposite. This is pure serendipity — reports have been clear that Biden was still fully intending to stay in 48 hours before he stepped down — but it was probably the best case scenario among the remaining available options. If Harris had gone through a long primary her net approval would more more likely to be lower than higher. It is true that Harris has almost no margin for error, bur whether there was some choice she could have made that would have produced a different outcome should she never lose will be forever unknowable, leaving aside that “flawless” is a standard no candidate in history has ever met.

In related news, we’re already getting pieces from a variety of ideological priors asserting that Trump should be easy to beat and Harris is blowing it she doesn’t win. This was a crazy thing to believe in 2020 and it’s just as crazy now. Even leaving aside the fact the structural disadvantages facing incumbents in this cycle, I don’t know how anyone can think that Trump is easy to beat at this late date. Politically, he’s a combination of huge weaknesses (he’s never been broadly popular) and unique strengths (most notably, a remarkable ability to mobilize sporadic and first-time voters) that play particularly well to the electoral college. I think Ezra’s recent piece is very good on this — although Donald Trump “is not cognitively fit to be president,” and he will face fewer institutional constraints and do much more damage in a second term even than he did in the first, he does have real political strengths that it would be foolish for those who understand the urgency of keeping him out of the White House to ignore. Nobody would want to hear this, but Harris could run a strong campaign and still lose the Electoral College — and I think she is in fact running an excellent campaign under very unfavorable circumstances.