Two Good Bits of Below the Radar News for Harris

Ignore the Media Focus

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

The media is mostly focused on whether Kamala Harris is making a mistake by not zeroing in more on the economy instead of Donald Trump’s unfitness over the final weeks of the campaign. Or they’re dissecting national or swing state polls that frankly tell us little given how close they are. Reporters and analysts have also all started to admit that trying to figure out what’s going on in the last two weeks of a toss up campaign can drive one nuts.

Next week, I’ll make the case for why both candidates can win, and why, on balance, it still seems like Kamala Harris has some advantages that might push her over the finish line.

But if you only know two things from the last 24 hours they ought to be this:

1. The Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia moved Pennsylvania 7th Congressional District to Leans Democrat from Toss Up — which is important because as I wrote about for paid subscribers last week, this might be the most important swing district in the country. Additionally, we got county-by-county numbers from a recent poll in the district, which had Kamala Harris outrunning Joe Biden in two of the three counties in the district (and even in the third). If Harris and Democrats have a good night in PA07, it’s very hard to conceive of Donald Trump winning Pennsylvania.

2. Harris got maybe the most important endorsement of the campaign — and it came from someone you probably never heard of. Waukesha Wisconsin mayor Shawn Reilly endorsed Harris on Wednesday night. While he voted for Joe Biden in 2020, he kept that to himself.

   The endorsement matters because the Milwaukee suburbs have defied the drift of Northern (and now Southern) suburbs to the left. Even as Biden was running up massive margins in the Philadelphia suburbs, and making big gains in the Detroit suburbs in 2020, he still lost the three suburban Milwaukee counties by 97,000 votes — which only shaved 8,000 votes off of Donald Trump’s 2016 margin in the counties. If the suburban drift leftward that has characterized the Trump era (and began in 1992 in the North) finally comes to Milwaukee, it could go a long way toward delivering the presidency to Harris.

   Why does Reilly matter in this equation? Waukesha is a Republican city in the largest Republican County in these suburbs, and it seems far more likely that his endorsement could move voters than a big name celebrity or a congressman who hasn’t been in office in years. Will 30,000 people hear he endorsed Harris and follow suit? Of course not. But in what probably will be the closest of the Northern battleground states, it’s the kind of thing that could push voters on the fence to Harris’s side.