And there, on front row at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, was Nancy Pelosi, chanting with everyone else "We love Joe" as the sitting US president took the podium at the party forum.
I instinctively thought of the "Red Wedding", that episode of Game of Thrones in which the event that was supposed to marry the Stark and Frey families turned into a bloody carnage. Unlike the adaptation in question, based on the books by George RR Martin, in the saga of the Democratic Party, the head of the current head of the White House fell first, and then came the explanation in love. And in the role of the despot of the Riverlands, Walder Frey was the former speaker of the House of Representatives, who directed the difficult and by no means voluntary withdrawal of Joe Biden from the presidential race. Since then, Nancy Pelosi has given three interviews in which she said that she had not heard from the current head of state after the casting in question. "I did what I had to do," the influential Democratic politician said on CNN.
And at this stage "The Red Wedding" of Nancy Pelosi, in which she replaced the old man of the Democrats with a younger meraclia, is fully justified. A month after Kamala Harris was launched as the new candidate for president of the liberal formation in question, the electoral distribution of forces looks radically different. While Joe Biden trailed Donald Trump both nationally and in each of the 7 "purple states" (so-called swing states - Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina), which will decide the outcome of the competition for the White House, it seems today that there is no longer a favorite in the elections. If there is an electoral gap between Trump and Harris in national samples, it is small (within the margin of error), but rather in favor of the Democratic candidate. For example, the average difference between Democrats and Republicans across the country ranges between 1.5% (RealClearPolitics Poll Averages) and 2.9% (FiveThirtyEight Poll Averages). But even the importance of the popular vote should not be absolutized, insofar as it is entirely possible for one of the two to win a majority in the Electoral College and not have one at the ballot box. This was done last by George Walker Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016; then, respectively, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but lost the Electoral College, and with it the White House. As of now, based on the polling average, Republicans have secured 219 delegates in the Electoral College and Democrats have 208, with 111 remaining up for reapportionment for the required majority of 270 (RealClearPolitics).
This makes the significance of how the aforementioned "purple states" will vote become even greater. And the battle for who will prevail in them is also more than contested. Harris leads in Wisconsin and Michigan, and Trump leads in the other five - Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia. But don't be held hostage by that tally, as it currently exists more on paper than in practice: in none of those seven states is the difference between the two greater than statistical error. This means that any one of these topos could go either Trump's way or Harris's (with the caveat, of course, that because of local specifics, Democrats are more likely to win Michigan than Arizona, for example). That's why "The Red Wedding" of Nancy Pelosi gave results: today and the "Rust Belt" (the so-called Rust Belt - Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan), and the "Sun Belt" (the so-called Sun Belt - North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada) are in the range of the candidate of the Democratic Party.
This snapshot " of the electoral constellation is done against the backdrop of the ongoing Democratic convention, which, given the normal effect of this type of party event, is quite possible to bonify the Kamala Harris - Tim Waltz couple further. The Chicago, Illinois Democratic Forum has the following three main goals. The first is to make the transition from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris relatively smooth, ie. to mop up the blood left behind by Nancy Pelosi's intervention. The second is to mobilize the party's electorate, wrapping the campaign in a positive horizon, combining the motives of the "future" (Kamala Harris) and "the hope" (Michelle Obama), thus contrasting with the highly negative campaign led by Donald Trump. The third, to "sell" to independent voters, the idea of this year's presidential showdown as a battle between the "prosecutor/policeman" Harris and the "criminal" Trump. In fact, the latter goal is perhaps the most important, insofar as it targets all those voters who consider themselves to be moderate in their political views. However, swing voters exist alongside swing states. And here the key role was played by the speeches of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, whose addresses were directed not so much to the Democrats, but to all those who think beyond the two-party dichotomy Democrat-Republican. And even before the Democratic National Convention began, Harris led Trump by 9% among independent voters (according to the NPR/PBS News/Marist poll).
But if the electoral dynamics favor the candidate of the Democratic Party, the circumstances remain more favorable for that of the Republicans. There are several reasons for this. Kamala Harris is perceived as a continuation of Joe Biden's administration, which is consistently evaluated negatively (66% disapprove of the current US president's performance according to Pew Research Center data). Against this background, Donald Trump continues to be the preferred choice of his fellow citizens when it comes to managing the country's most important issues related to the economy and illegal immigration. Last but not least, in fact, Kamala Harris was one of the least active and visible vice presidents in the last two or three decades. Perhaps for this reason, a sufficiently high percentage of her fellow citizens are not actually aware of what policies she is proposing (as many as 36%, according to YouGov/CBS Poll data). However, only a month after the casting of their presidential candidate, the Democrats seem to have fulfilled their maximum plan of the moment - their new contender for the White House is "back in the game".
"Sometimes you have to take a hit for the sake of the kids," added Nancy Pelosi, after she had already stated on CNN that she had done what she had to do. With that bribing smile Al Pacino used to invite Keanu Reeves back into the devil's arms. Still, the former speaker of the House of Representatives fired the bullet that has had the most impact in this campaign.