Trump v. Harris

If anyone ever doubted Lenin, let’s mark July 13th to the 21st down as a week (plus a day) in which a decade happened. Beginning with the attempted assassination of Donald Trump and culminating in Joe Biden’s announcement that he would not seek a second term for office, we are truly living in an episode arc of The West Wing; although, we grant, the actors are not nearly as good. We thought we would depart from our usual bi-weekly (ish) format and instead provide 14 thoughts on Trump v. Harris.

?1.???? Biden is no longer the candidate because … the Democrats were about to get trounced down ballot. While the June debate was the match that lit the fire, polls that suggested that the Democrats were not only very likely to lose the White House, but also get soundly defeated in House and Senate races was the giant container of gasoline thrown on that fire. And while we cannot confirm that the Lord called Joe, a visit from the Almighty Nancy Pelosi likely conveyed this dire message to Biden, if he did not get out of the race, Trump and the Republicans were very likely to control all levers of power.

2.???? It will almost certainly be Harris, but … let’s face it – it’s been a weird election. Let’s start with – Kamala Harris is almost certain to get the nomination at the Democratic convention. There are optics – it’s hard to pass over the sitting Vice-President – and there are economics – she has direct access to Biden’s campaign war-chest – and there is ground game – she also has access to the thousands of volunteers that Biden’s team had assembled for his campaign – and there are endorsements – Biden and Pelosi. Given we are roughly a month out from the convention, it would be a very tall order for someone to throw his/her hat in the ring given her advantages. Further, anyone with aspirations of one day being the nominee would be essentially burning their bridges now as opposed to waiting until 2028 or 2032 when there are likely to be better optics and more time. Is it impossible that someone of heft comes forward in the next few days and declares his/her candidacy – no, but we would not wager on it.

3.???? Harris would likely not be the nominee if … Biden announced last October that he was not seeking a second term. This has less to do with Harris and more to do with the general incumbency-bias that we are seeing worldwide. High prices are going to plague anyone running for reelection and Harris would have struggled in a primary to overcome this. Further, her 2020 campaign was not exactly memorable; although, we grant that candidates (Biden) have run bad campaigns in the past but have gone on to figure it out in subsequent campaigns.

4.???? Trump is still favored, but … most of what has occurred up to this point is probably moot. Hypothetical Trump v. Harris match-ups that were a part of polls prior to Biden withdrawing are meaningless as most people had not given her more than the once-over since she was not the candidate. Over the next couple of weeks, people will pay more attention and we would suspect that polls are likely to suggest that Trump is leading, albeit by a narrower range than he was over Biden. We would also add that there were a lot of so called “double-haters” – would-be major party voters who were either going to vote for a third -party candidate or simply not vote because of their dislike for both Trump and Biden. Considering at least some of these double-haters were likely not voting for Biden because of his age, Harris may have an opportunity to close the gap with Trump by simply siphoning off some of these folks.

5.???? The narrative will shift from … “Biden’s Age” to “do we want to go back to Trump”. The writing was on the wall for Joe Biden post the debate largely because his age had become the entire story. While there are lots of things the Democrats could run on as it pertained to Trump (we will not enumerate them, as we have a 100,000-word limit), none of these things really mattered post the debate, as the entire story had become Biden’s fitness for office. And while things such as Harris’s role as the border Czar and the “are you better off than you were four years ago” argument will be mainstream issues; we would strongly suspect that the “do you want to go back to Trump” argument will dominate the discourse.

6.???? Harris is going to choose as her VP … Mark Kelly, Senator from Arizona, or Josh Shapiro, Governor of Pennsylvania. The VP choice is going to be the next big news cycle and we would suspect it is either going to be a governor from a purple state – Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina – or a Senator with similar street cred. If Harris can tick one of PA, MI, or AZ into her column, it makes winning in November that much easier. We would note that a VP pick does not guarantee anything, but it does help. Kelly is a former marine and an astronaut, which makes him cooler than pretty much anyone, while Shapiro would probably deliver PA, which is essential to Harris winning.

7.???? The Republicans did not want this … they wanted Biden. The less we talked about Trump and the chaos of 2016-2020 and the more we talked about Biden’s age, the more polls widened. As we discussed previously, Biden essentially had to be perfect from here on out given that any gaffe would become the story, and even then, he faced an uphill battle trying to change the narrative that came from his debate performance. Now, the narrative has shifted, and this is bad news for the Republicans as they not only must come up with new narratives, but they also may have to defend the Trump years, which is not quite as easy. We would also add that the entire news cycle over the next several weeks is going to be about the Democrats – VP pick, polling shifts, the Convention – which is never a good thing for the other party, especially one led by Trump.

8.???? Trump would probably want a Vance do-over … as the only reason to pick JD Vance as your VP is if you think you have the election largely locked-up. He hails from Ohio, which was already in Trump’s column, and Vance is not even a good Ohio candidate as he won in 2022 by six points when the Republican governor of Ohio – Mike DeWine - won by 25 points. Further, JD has some bad Trump comments from 2016 that the Democrats will drum up and is not generally viewed as a strong debater. So why pick him? Other than the rumors that Elon Musk and Trump’s sons pressured Trump to do it, we would suspect that Vance’s 180-degree turn on Trump over the past eight years plays right into the things that Trump generally likes to see.

9.???? The Republicans are going to throw a lot of things at the wall in the coming days … in the hopes that something sticks. We have already seen a variety of arguments put forth by the Republicans that relate to cheating and how unfair this is. They have also tried to argue that the 25th Amendment (cabinet removal of the President) should be invoked on the logic that if you can’t run for reelection, you can’t serve as President. They are likely to throw more stuff at the wall in the coming days in the hopes that something sticks or at least resonates enough with the American people that it hurts Harris.

10.The argument Republicans should make is … the border is a mess and Harris was “in charge” of the border, while prices are high and that happened under the current administration. Further, before COVID, things were pretty good both domestically (economy) and internationally (no wars), so pull the lever for Trump and we can go back to that.

11.The argument Democrats should make is … Trump will be the oldest person ever to run for President. Further, Harris used to throw sex offenders and law breakers in jail and Trump, umm, is those things. As for the border, the argument we would make is: 1) we had a deal to fix the border and Trump pressured Republicans to back out on it and 2) they want to throw families into cages and that’s not what we think the American people are about. Lastly, inflation is a world-wide phenomenon so blaming Biden/Harris would be akin to blaming FDR for WWII (or something like that).

12.The Stock market impact will be … fine either way. We have seen some rotation into small cap stocks in the past few weeks at least in part because of Trump’s surge in the polls. Trump is perceived as better for small caps because: 1) domestic companies, which tend to be smaller, stand to be bigger beneficiaries of de-regulation; and 2) Trump has talked about 10% tariffs on all imports, which helps domestic businesses and generally hurts multi-national companies, which tend to be larger. We would assume that Harris would be generally status quo as it relates to markets – i.e., large cap growth outperforms – although, her platform is not yet clear, so we would reserve judgement on that.

13.Trump wins in November if … the American people value their own situation more than all of the other baggage. We will not get into the debate of whether things were indeed better in February of 2020 than they are now, but there is certainly that perception. Trump needs to convince the American people that all the other stuff is just noise and if you pull the lever for him, things will return to their former glory.

14.Harris wins in November if … she can shift the narrative to the dark days of 2020. While the economy tends to, err, trump all in an election, Harris needs to convince voters that Trump 2.0 is simply too great a risk. Further, Americans seem to want change and while she comes from the current Administration, if she can convince voters that she is the change candidate, she is likely to win.

Final Thoughts

Consider that if there had been no debate at the end of June, which was about three months earlier than the normal first debate date, Democrats would likely not have had this opportunity to replace Biden on the ticket. Put another way, if that first debate had been at the end of September (the traditional period), and Biden had performed as he did in the June debate, the election would essentially be over. Should Trump go on to lose, we imagine this “ill-fated” decision will get some attention. As for how this is likely to go, as noted above, we would not be surprised to see Trump still ahead in the polls post any bump Harris might receive, but we suspect that absent any other surprises, the election is likely to be extremely tight. We will put off further prognostication for now.

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