DOGGO DEMOCRATS

I was wrong.

Very wrong.

First cup of KoolAid: I believed the country was really ready to turn the page. I thought Kamala was running a winning campaign; I got to believing Pennsylvania was in play. Signed up to go door-to-door in the same area we visited in 2008, to stump for Obama.

Canvassing for Kamala in northeast Philadelphia last Saturday November on a beautiful, sunny fall day, I was struck by the ubiquity of Trump/Vance yard signs and relatively few on the lawns for Harris/Walz; this in a roughly half-and-half D & R split. Odd, because this was a get out the vote operation: we knew the registered Democrats were there because we had their names and addresses.

The day was long and enervating. But I came away believing Kamala was going to win Philadelphia, the state and the popular vote ( but at this moment, Trump may actually win that as well) and the election. A good friend kept asking me why I was so sure Harris would prevail; for me it was gut not data. The prognosticators, resting on their never-missed past successes in election forecasting, convinced me. They were all wrong.

Second cup of KoolAid: women will turn out in droves and that reversing Roe v. Wade would be number one for them. It may have been for many women. But over all, choice ranked low, below immigration and the economy, two phony issues: we need immigrants in the labor force, especially in the low-paying jobs the natives won’t take. And the economy is healthy. At 10:30  am this morning, the Dow Jones was up over 1300 points. But everything costs more than it did pre-Covid. The rate of inflation may be decreasing but that’s irrelevant in the grocery store.

Time is not on my side. I don’t have too many presidential elections left. Trump won fair and square, likely surprising even him and most of the rest of us. But at least he will stop talking about a rigged election. I wish him no harm but he is o-l-d; the prospect of JD Vance running the country if Trump can’t serve out his term, then followed by by two terms of his own is scary and depressing. I was wrong.