Commentary

Leave it to the left-leaning media to come up with a vibe shift in the presidential election to get uncertain voters to believe that former President Trump is beatable.

I recently wrote about Dianne Schwartz, an 80-year-old Chicagoan who listens to political podcasts while she exercises, who felt something she hadn’t felt for a while. 

She told the New York Times’ Jess Bidgood, “I realized today, while I was listening to my podcasts, that I spent the last few days worrying and being depressed.”

Schwartz had resigned herself to the idea that Trump would win in November, and that he could be the last president of her lifetime, but with President Biden bowing out and the party coalesced behind Vice President Harris, she found herself feeling strangely, impossibly good about politics.  “I haven’t been this excited about an election since Kennedy,” Schwartz said.

Bidgood called it “the Kamala Harris vibe shift,” describing a “dispiriting slog toward an all-but-certain defeat by Trump that suddenly feels lighter.  Hopeful.  People are even feeling … is it joy?”

Others in the media have since been writing about the “vibe election,” and did you notice how the Harris-Walz campaign even picked up on Bidgood’s use of the word “joy?”   The Harris-Walz water carriers at MSNBC and CNN latched on to “joy,” too, including Joy Reid, of course.

The more conservative New York Post, reporting on fresh polling in four key states (Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) showed Trump in too close to call races, with one slipping away.

It doesn’t translate to a match-up that GOP strategists might have hoped for, according to the Post’s A.G. Gancarski, who viewed a common thread as a “vibe” check. In other words, battleground voters like Harris more than they do Trump right now.

While Gancarski writes that the new polling “shows a race slipping away under Trump’s nose,” Kramerontheright finds that’s hard to swallow.

I’m in the camp of fellow blogger Ben Domenech, who defined a vibes election as a “clumsily characterized” means of stating that personalities matter more than policies.  “Who would you like to have a beer with, not who would you prefer to handle the very urgent need to pass Social Security Disability Insurance reform.”

“This contention, made by many intelligent people, is absolute shite.  The 2024 election has been one of the most stable election of the modern era in terms of voter priorities, with the top three issues – the economy, immigration and security – locked in for more than a year.” – Ben Domenech

“At no point in the history of polling has immigration mattered more as a sustained issue to voters than it does now,” says Domenech of the Gallup poll. “The degree to which Americans are concerned about it and the collapse of a secure border under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is incomparable.  You don’t care much about who you would prefer to have a beer with when your life and livelihood are on the line.”

Like Domenech, I don’t believe the 2024 election is one where candidates are judged on the vagaries of their personalities. At this point you either like Trump or you don’t; you either like Harris or you don’t.  You aren’t going to warm up to the other side.

One thing is obvious.  Trump and Vance need to focus on Harris, not Biden. She was on the team, and we were repeatedly told she was the last to leave the room during discussions on issues.

Harris cannot be permitted to rewrite history as she is attempting to do now. She was the border czar, and she supported the over-the-top spending on the green new deal.

They want us to believe that her flip flopping is more of an evolution in her positions.

Voters need to be reminded that she said, “there’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking” in 2019, the same year she cosponsored the Green New Deal.

She’ll say anything that will help her get votes wherever she’s speaking.  She even told her audience in Las Vegas that she would not tax tips, a promise already made by Trump.

A “vibe election?” Certainly, voters will be looking beyond personalities to policies. Trump has a four-year record of accomplishments.  Nobody can cite an achievement of Harris.  And voters know, despite Trump’s personality, they were better off under the Trump administration.

May God continue to bless the United States of America.