After Donald Trump humiliated himself for an hour-and-a-half at last week’s televised debate with Kamala Harris, the big question on many minds is this: Why is she barely leading him in polling in the crucial toss-up states?
Harris was pretty good, wasn’t she? She conducted herself like a grownup. She came prepared, in grasp of facts and in plan of attack. She knocked Trump down the way she might knock down any autocrat, including Vladimir Putin.
And she knew how to speak colloquially, instead of some faux diplomatic jargon.
She said Russia’s Putin would meet with Trump and “eat you for lunch.” She said America’s top military people, most of whom had worked for Trump, consider him “a disgrace.”
It was hard to picture Joe Biden using such blunt language if he’d decided to stay in the race.
But if Harris seemed to have done her homework, Trump came prepared to fake it, much like a fourth-grader called upon to give a report on a book he hadn’t read.
His plan was to bluster his way through, and to lie when deemed necessary. He did a lot of deeming. And when this wasn’t enough, he’d start shouting and reaching for as much empty Doomsday language as he could muster, considering his clearly limited vocabulary. This, from a man who once boasted, “I have all the best words.”
All of this is consistent with Trump, and sometimes it works.
On CNN, they started the week with the latest polling from around the country. In national polls, Harris leads Trump by 6 points — not bad. But in polling from half a dozen toss-up states, she’s up by a collective .2 percent.
This, despite polls saying voters gave her enormous victory numbers over Trump in their debate. And considering 67 million people watched the debate, and many millions hadn’t seen much of Harris before this, why the continued polling deadlock in so many key areas?
On my desk now is a photo-shopped image of Trump and kittens. It’s a variation on a theme, spread all across the internet ever since the debate.
Here’s Trump, clutching adorable kittens in his arms while running down a street, pursued by a couple of dark-skinned, shirtless guys obviously meant to be Haitian immigrants.
Because as Trump and his running mate JD Vance have informed us, Haitians are stealing dogs and cats and devouring them in some Ohio town which will never live down this kind of comic infamy.
If there was single moment in the Harris-Trump debate which captured the former president as a lost, blustery old man, it was his contention that the Haitian story must be true because “I saw it on television.”
And when has television ever screwed up a story?
So the question remains: why are the polls still so tight?
Here’s one answer: Maybe they’re not. Maybe Trump’s supporters invested so much emotion in him that they don’t want to admit to themselves — and to pollsters — that they were so thoroughly conned by this charlatan.
And maybe come Election Day, they’ll quietly admit they’ve figured out the truth and either vote against Trump or stay home, finally exhausted by years of Trumpian drama and divisiveness.
If that’s not the case, then this country’s in a lot worse shape than we’ve ever known.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, including “Journeys to the Heart of Baltimore” and “Michael Olesker’s Baltimore: If You Live Here, You’re Home.”
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