Alan Zendell, October 4, 2024

We’re told every day that the 2024 presidential race is too close to predict a clear winner. As far as the news media are concerned, the race will stay too close to call until Election Day because that’s in their self-interest. Pundits write articles decrying the unlikely, and probably wrong conclusion that things are so baked in, we’re trapped in stasis, and nothing seems able to budge. Daily, no matter what happens, be it a revelation about Trump’s private words and actions on January 6th, a new celebrity endorsement, a slick debate performance, or a claim that murderous illegal immigrants took over a zoo so they could barbecue a lion, all I hear is “that’s not likely to move the needle.”

I’m skeptical. If we buy into the notion that everyone’s mind is made up, what’s the point of spending billions of dollars on TV ads and rallies? The idea that minds can’t be changed is utter nonsense. Just ask corporations that spend fortunes on mass advertising and mailings. Most will tell you a positive one percent return makes it worthwhile even if the other ninety-nine percent ignore them.

I couldn’t care less who Taylor Swift or Bruce Springsteen thinks should win in November, but hundreds of thousands of Swifties running out to register to vote because Taylor told them to is very significant, and it’s something that’s not likely to show up in polls. On the other hand, when literally hundreds of Republicans who never supported a Democrat in their lifetimes wait in line every week to pick up a microphone and tell their fellow Americans why, from their direct experience with Trump, they believe he is a terrible danger to the country, I take that seriously.

The election will turn on what a small percentage of self-proclaimed independent or undecided voters in a handful of states do on November 4th. That means all the ads and rallies have two purposes. One is keeping each side’s base engaged to increase turnout. The other, obviously, is to help undecided voters make up their minds.

What do we know about those supposedly undecided people? We know they’re thoughtful and they do their own thinking and fact-checking. We know they’re educated, serious people. We also know that they’re not followers looking for someone else to tell them what they should believe. When someone like Liz Cheney stands next to Kamala Harris and tells the world that Donald Trump should never be allowed to wield power again, and he responds on his pet network that Cheney and Harris are both stupid, how are those independent, smart thinkers likely to react?

Consider the vice-presidential debate. The initial response by TV commentators was that JD Vance was slick, and clearly won on debate points, while Tim Walz’s answers weren’t as smooth or polished. Conclusion: not likely to move the needle. But by the next day, commentators had generally changed their tune. Now it was Vance was clearly well-prepared and the more talented debater, but he lied almost every time he opened his mouth, and his refusal to give a clear answer about whether Trump lost the 2020 election had undermined his debate performance. Suddenly, Walz’s common man, imperfect debating style was homey and likable.

Neither Trump’s nor Harris’s base were likely to be moved by any of that. But what about the million or so voters who watched and listened with their brains engaged? I believe those things matter very much to undecided voters, and they’re part of a rising trend toward valuing truth and the rule of law over lies and hateful personal attacks that lack substance. The reason these people are undecided is that they care very much about their country. If they were into the kind of craziness and chaos that is the MAGA movement’s primary asset, they wouldn’t be undecided.

Seeing and hearing Cheney, yesterday, felt like a refreshing breeze. That she is but one of thousands by now, if you’ve been counting, makes that breeze a gradually rising wind that in the end will decide who our president is. That wind is blowing in only one direction. There is no group called Democrats for Trump out there at his rallies, only Elon Musk, a black-sheep Kennedy, and a nutcase who makes pillows. If all the Republicans who privately despise and fear Trump grow a pair and stand up the way Cheney, Adam Kinsinger, and the vast majority of people who know Trump well or worked for him did, all of those independent or disaffected voters will notice, and Harris will win by a margin that shocks everyone (except me and a few close friends.)

Are you listening, Mitch? Imagine what a spectacle it would be to hear Mitch McConnell endorse Harris, though I doubt he has the integrity to do it.