The blue tsunami
Something is happening. There is a stunning, 175% surge in recent voter registrations in key groups, specifically, young black and Latino women. Meanwhile, former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney endorsed Kamala Harris for president. Meanwhile, the historian, professor and so-called “Nostradamus of presidential elections” Allan Lictman, who has correctly predicted all but one presidential election since 1984, is calling for a Harris win. Meanwhile, the MAGA states of Florida and Texas recently went from “sure things” for a Trump win to “in play.” Meanwhile, North Carolina, a state Republicans haven’t lost since 1980, is looking better and better for Kamala Harris.
What’s going on here? This is what groundswells look like. This is what a gathering storm looks like. To borrow a phrase from Donald Trump, “nobody has ever seen anything like it.”
It all appears to have happened as a direct result of the excitement Kamala Harris and Tim Walz generated when they took the stage. Their ascent has infused Democrats with fresh enthusiasm, leading to a surge in popularity that has propelled her into a small but consistent overall national poll lead and a fundraising bonanza that saw her campaign raise $540m in August alone.
Even Donald Trump knows, dimly, with a kind of insectile, low cunning, that something is happening. His late night posts on his failing “Truth” Social are taking on a desperate, frenetic character. He wants “Sleepy Joe” back, and he keeps insisting (without evidence) that the Harris/Walz candidacy is somehow illegal, or even unconstitutional.
And the news gets better. The upticks in voter registration aren’t just for black women, those are just the most impressive statistics. They apply to all groups who tend to vote for Democrats. What’s more, this favourable upsurge is being statistically compared with 2020, when Joe Biden won by more than seven million votes.
This is what the loomings of a blue wave looks like. No, not a blue wave. A blue tsunami. Harris and Walz are storming the country, going from venue to venue in battleground and other key states and mesmerising voters in huge, enthusiastic numbers. And that enthusiasm is as infectious as Covid-19, and ten times as deadly for Trump.
What do enthusiastic, newly-minted Democrats do when they go to the polls to vote? They also vote down-ballot. They vote for the Democratic candidates running for Senate and Congress. Democrats who might have otherwise lost with a Biden candidacy are given a new life. They just might win after all.
Barring some unforeseen setback, November is looking more and more like a win, not just for Harris and Walz, but for the Senate and the Congress. A new and exciting administration with a powerhouse Congress behind it can work miracles.
But I’m not done predicting miracles just yet. A Trump defeat means the end of Donald Trump. As with Hitler, whose cult died the day he died, the Trump cult will die, not because their Fuhrer was defeated, but because his prospects will be dead. Trump will be 81, incoherent and probably in prison in four years. No one will listen to his ravings.
Above all, Republicans who have secretly been hoping for Donald Trump’s demise will come out in ever-increasing numbers to speak out against the lost Trump years. Donald Trump will have laid his final curse on his final election. Suddenly the once resentfully silent members of the GOP will be emboldened with artificial courage and state the obvious: Trump has meant death for Republicans. They have performed abysmally in every election he’s ever been involved in since 2018. It’s time to shuffle off the Trump albatross.
The drooling MAGA masses will forget their former toad-god and focus on some new shiny object. Trump will join the likes of Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell and the politically irrelevant. What’s more, what ravings he makes will be drowned out by the black hole of a prison cell from which light never escapes.
We will wake up on the morning of November 6th and discover something wonderful: for the first time in nine years Donald Trump has finally become politically irrelevant. The damage he’s done can now be reversed by a new and young administration with a congressional majority at its back. And what a glorious day that is going to be! And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.