Senator Mark Kelly is sworn in by Vice President Kamala Harris. January 2023
The Buzz for July 26, 2024
The last two weeks of the presidential campaign have been unprecedented, to say the least. It started with an attempted assassination of former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump, followed by President Joe Biden announcing he would no longer be the Democratic Party nominee.
"This is made for TV, this election. I've been around this a while. This is my eighth or ninth election cycle going through and I feel like I've seen it all," said Mike Noble, President of polling company Noble Predictive Insights. "And here's the thing, if people thought it's been crazy so far, well, guess what? I've news for them. We got four months left, and it's gonna get weirder before it gets more normal."
While Noble has yet to do any polling on the race and the presumptive Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, he has seen numbers from reputable firms that show what he expects will be the case.
"You saw that the race got slightly tighter in let's say, the Midwest states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, but in the Sunbelt hasn't really changed. But you look at the demographics, Trump's still ahead in all of those key battleground states. I think it was tied in Wisconsin. But you know, other than that, I mean, it's still Kamala starting in a backfoot position. And it's going to be tougher for her in Arizona, I think compared to the other battleground states."
As talk now centers around who will become the next vice presidential nominee for the Democrats, U.S. Senator Mark Kelly's name has frequently been mentioned. Noble thinks that decision could help not only in Arizona but nationwide because of his reputation as a moderate and his past as a combat pilot and astronaut whose wife, former Tucson-area Representative Gabrielle Giffords, survived an assassination attempt.
"Try to find me a group of people that are anti-astronaut. Seriously? You have, anti everything else," he said. "Maybe Flat Earthers could be the ones that are very much against astronauts. But aside from that very small microcosm of the electorate. Here's the thing, astronauts, it doesn't get much more American than that."
While Harris appears to have secured enough of the electors who were pledged to President Biden to win the nomination, it is not yet confirmed.
A political scientist and election analyst said she thinks that will happen quickly so the party can avoid an open convention next month.
"I thought it was naive to believe that the Democrats had an appetite to have a debate over who their nominee was, after having such a vigorous debate over whether President Biden should step away," said Dr. Lara Brown, the author of two books on presidential campaigns. "That just doesn't make sense at the Democratic Party level. All politicians know that there are times to be what I call strategically altruistic, meaning that they are realizing that it is in their self-interest to put the party before their own ambition.
She said regardless of the vice presidential pick, she thinks that Harris becoming the nominee will give the Democratic party a similar amount of enthusiasm to what is being seen in the Republican party.
"The real question is going to be what happens after Labor Day when, you know, moderately interested and marginally aligned voters kind of tune in to the race and decide where they're going to put their thumb on the scale. And this is where I think the Democrats' appeal ends up being broader than the Republicans partly because all indications in the party suggest that she is going to be looking toward a moderate vice presidential pick."
Dr. Brown said she expects that Harris' pick for vice president will be more scrutinized than is often in the case, largely because it could be an indication of the direction she intends for her campaign to go.
"It will provide a signal in a very short campaign of who she is and what matters to her. And this is where I would argue that as much as Senator [Mark] Kelly is a compelling vice presidential candidate, I think the biggest knock against him is that he is a senator, that then would make the ticket a ticket of insiders against a ticket of outsiders. And at this moment, outsiders do have something of kind of a claim on the American imagination."
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