Swing-state polls show that 2-5% of the electorate remains undecided. Yes, that crowd is infuriating, but they exist, and if they vote, they can decide the election. Good news: They appear to be breaking toward Vice President Kamala Harris. Released last Friday, an Emerson College poll of likely voters gives Harris a 49-48 national lead over Donald Trump, but more interesting were the numbers about when respondents made their decisions. “Voters who made their decision on who to support over a month ago break for Trump, 52% to 48%, while voters who made up their mind in the last month or week break for Harris, 60% to 36%,” reported the pollster. “The three percent of voters who said they could still change their mind currently favor Harris, 48% to 43%.” It makes sense that late-breakers would trend Harris. Trump is a known quantity, and people’s opinions about him are extremely polarized. But we have more data validating this bit of common sense (or is it an educated guess?). I wrote Monday about a battleground poll conducted by The Washington Post and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. It showed that 21% of likely voters were “uncommitted,” meaning they were either truly undecided or leaning one way but willing to change their minds. Those numbers included registered 43% of 18- to 25-year-olds and 34% of registered voters of color—two demographics that lean heavily Democratic. Of course, not all of them will vote—they are unenthusiastic voters, after all—but they offer Harris a growth opportunity compared with Trump. The news cycle should prove brutal for Trump in the coming week: Retired Gen. John Kelly, Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, went on the record with The Atlantic on Tuesday, saying that Trump praised Adolf Hitler so much that Kelly had to tell him, “Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing.” There is a growing movement to get Kelly to host a press conference to communicate his experiences with Trump directly to the American people. That could be one hell of an October surprise. And yes, the story is getting heavy media coverage. From that same Atlantic story, we learn that Trump promised to pay for the funeral of a murdered Army soldier. But when he found out the price tag, he reportedly said, “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!” He then barked an order: “Don’t pay it!” Spanish-language media is already all over it. The Army was ordered to release records related to Trump’s disrespectful Arlington National Cemetery visit in late August. Taken in tandem with the previous bullet point, all of this is giving new life to Trump previously calling our service members who lost their lives in combat “losers” and “suckers.” Trump is clearly operating on fumes and the final shreds of his sanity. We’re apt to get many more “Arnold Palmer” moments, and whatever the hell this is: Trump: I'm looking at the screen, I'm seeing this 20 story huge tube pouring down on fire at, you know, fires pouring out of it and it used to be white, but the heat is thousands of degrees coming down, they say thousands and thousands, so it's been beat up in that trip down, and… pic.twitter.com/2dcbnSceEX— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 23, 2024 In 2016, it was the late-breaking letter from then-Director of the FBI James Comey that helped doom Democrat Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. But there looks to be nothing like that in store for Harris, who isn’t just squeaky clean but also hasn’t been around long enough for Republicans to invent scandals out of thin air. The focus should be on Trump and his cognitive decline, his racism and sexism, his violent rhetoric, his openly shared dictatorial aspirations, and all the ways in which he is among the nation’s most horrible people (even as Elon Musk gives him a run for his money). It’s our job to help bring this thing home. Let’s do it. We need your help if we’re going to defeat Trump, Vance, Project 2025, and Republicans up and down the ballot. Click here to volunteer to write letters so we can increase voter turnout.
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