Democrats and Republicans launch into key states // Kamala and Walz will go to Georgia // Trump and Vance will travel to Pennsylvania and Michigan
▲ US presidential candidates Kamala Harris, from the Democratic Party, and Donald Trump, from the Republican Party, maintain a narrow gap in voter preference, according to recent polls. The images are from the archive.Photo Ap
David Brooks and Jim Cason
Correspondents
The newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, August 27, 2024, p. 31
New York and Washington, DC., Riding high on the success of last week’s Democratic National Convention, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz will begin a bus tour to the key swing state of Georgia tomorrow, while Republican challengers Donald Trump and JD Vance will hold multiple rallies in Pennsylvania and Michigan.
These states were not selected by the campaigns at random; they are three of the six or seven considered. keysaround which the national result of the presidential election on November 5 will most likely be defined.
Polls indicate the presidential race is very close, and so the focus in the final 10 weeks will be on those key states, which include Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and possibly North Carolina. In those states, the candidates are virtually tied, although nationally Harris is ahead by 3 points, according to the average of major polls. But there is no direct national vote for president in this country, and in practice there are 50 state elections, and with a couple of exceptions, whoever wins each state takes all of that state’s electoral votes to accumulate the 270 or more needed at the end to win the White House.
More than 154 million people participated in the 2020 national election, but Joe Biden won by only a margin of between 100,000 and 300,000 votes in total. The news and political analysis site Axios examined the potential electorate of 2024 and concluded that Approximately 244 million Americans will have the right to vote. But 99.5 percent of us will not be the ones to decide: either we don’t vote, or we always vote the same way, or we live in states that are virtually certain to be red (Republicans) or blue (Democrats).. I mean, 6 percent of voters in six states could end up deciding this election, according to a Democratic analyst interviewed by Axios.
The democracy in the US
For a country that never stops lecturing the rest of the world about democracy, the United States is hardly a democratic country. In 48 of the 50 states, the winner is awarded all the electoral votes of each state he or she wins, even if it is by a microscopic margin. Moreover, because of an electoral system that gives small states non-proportional power in the electoral vote, the candidate who wins the majority of votes nationally does not necessarily win the presidency. In 2000, for example, Democrat Al Gore won more votes nationally but lost to George Bush, and in 2016, Hillary Clinton also won more votes nationally but lost the election and Trump went on to win the White House.
However, the dynamics of the very small number of states that will likely determine the election results offer opportunities for other voices. For example, Trump won Michigan over Clinton in 2016 by a margin of 10,000 votes. But this year, more than 100,000 voters from that same state cast ballots in the delegate primaries. not committed with Harris – across the country, 700,000 voted this way in the primaries – all in demand of a change in the United States’ policy of unconditional support for Israel and its genocidal war in Gaza.
Despite demonstrations, protests and a call from progressive leaders within the party, Kamala Harris only managed to squeeze in brief comments of concern for the situation in Gaza interspersed with a firm defense of Israel’s right to defend oneselfand she and her campaign refused to grant the request of several party delegates and lawmakers to allow a Palestinian speaker a few minutes to speak from the podium before the convention.
Arms embargo on Israel
We want to defeat TrumpAbbas Alawieh, delegate uncommitted from Michigan, he explained last week during the convention. But in order to mobilize our people behind Vice President Harris, we need to hear from her that she supports an immediate ceasefire and an arms embargo on Israel. She is at risk of losing Michigan.That state has an Arab-American community that could directly impact the outcome.
Harris did mention, on the final night of the convention in Chicago, the need for an end to Israel’s war in Gaza and the release of the hostages. She added that this would The suffering in Gaza will end, and the Palestinian people will be able to achieve their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.; but, as one delegate commented, uncommitted to The Daywho requested anonymity, call a ceasefire while sending bombs does not convince. A veteran American analyst on the Middle East summed up the convention (referring to the repeated message of the campaign cheerful Harris’s) as Joy in the midst of genocide.
The other issue that could derail Harris and Walz’s momentum from the convention is immigration. On the day the vice president gave her formal acceptance speech for her party’s nomination, Trump was visiting Montezuma Pass in Arizona to praise the border wall he claims to have built, even though that section was actually built during the Obama administration. There, the former president again criticized Harris for his administration’s failure to do so. check unauthorized border crossings; completely ignoring that Mexico’s efforts have reduced the flow of migrants to the border by almost 50 percent.
Minimum advantage
Polls by NPR and CNN show Harris holding a slim lead over Trump in the key states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, but it is close enough to be within the margin of error. When voters are asked which candidate will handle the border better, large majorities favor Trump.
Although Harris dared to mention the phrase path to citizenship In his convention speech, he did so only after repeating his emphasis on securing the border, and immigrant leaders and advocates for their rights were relegated to the background during the convention.
Some party members believe that’s a mistake. “Our policy has been pushed so far to the right on immigration by Donald Trump that it’s time to fight … to realign our immigration policy to where it was a few years ago,” Rep. Greg Casar of Texas said in an interview with the House of Representatives. Democracy Now.