CHRIS CRUCIAL: 🚨 The Blue Wall is cracking 🚨

PLUS: Harris hits the billion-dollar mark! 💰

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1. Blue Wall blues for Harris

I am a BIG fan of Scott Tranter and the folks at Decision Desk HQ. They don’t get as much publicity as some other election prediction sites but they’re smart as hell and committed to getting it right.

So I read with interest Scott’s weekly email update late Tuesday night — in particular this passage:

Whoever wins PA has an ~85% chance of being the next President -- our model has Harris at a 52% chance to win PA and also a 52% chance to win the Presidency --- things are close but we have noticed a slight trending away from Harris over the past month....

1 month ago today, our PA polling average had Harris at +1.1, and today, it’s Harris +0.3 -- this trend, while slight, is consistent across all the upper Midwest states where Harris still maintains a slight probabilistic advantage in WI and MI, but has ceded ground in the forecast and polling averages over the last month (losing 1 point in MI polling average and 2.5 points in the WI polling average)

Scott is usually ahead of the curve — or at least the public conventional wisdom — and he was again this time.

Because on Wednesday afternoon, Quinnipiac University released new polls in each of the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Here are the results:

PENNSYLVANIA: Harris 49%, Trump 46%

MICHIGAN: Trump 50%, Harris 47%

WISCONSIN: Trump 48%, Harris 46%

And here’s where the race was in those same three states in Quinnipiac polling released in mid-September:

PENNSYLVANIA: Harris 51%, Trump 45%

MICHIGAN: Harris 50%, Trump 45%

WISCONSIN: Harris 48%, Trump 47%

The conclusion, according to Q poll analyst Patrick Murray? “The Harris post-debate starburst dims to a glow as Harris enters the last weeks slipping slightly in the Rust Belt.”

The Q poll is not the only evidence of Harris slippage either.

Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin, the Democratic nominee for Senate, has been warning recently that the numbers in the state are headed in the wrong direction for her side.

“I’m not feeling my best right now about where we are on Kamala Harris in a place like Michigan,” Slotkin said at a recent virtual fundraiser. “We have her underwater in our polling.”

The story in Wisconsin is similar. On Tuesday, the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter moved Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s race from “lean Democratic” to “toss up” amid internal polling that suggests Democrats are not performing as well as they had in the state.

And, on Wednesday the Washington Post ran a deeply-reported story about Harris’ efforts (and struggles) to activate the black vote in the state. That piece included this scary paragraph for Democrats:

For decades, Wisconsin’s Black community had among the highest turnout rates in the country. In 2012, with Obama on the ballot, 78.5 percent of the state’s Black voting-age population went to the polls, according to census data. But that rate began to plummet in 2016, when 46.8 percent of the state’s Black voting-age residents cast a ballot, falling to 43.5 percent in 2020.

Before Democrats despair too much, the Decision Desk election model still gives Harris a better than 50% chance of winning all three Blue Wall states. Here are the projections, with the change over the last month in parentheses:

Michigan: Harris 62% chance of winning (-2.01% change)

Pennsylvania: Harris 52% chance of winning (-0.43% change)

Wisconsin: Harris 52% chance of winning (-4.12% change)

And, as I have noted before in this space, the Blue Wall has voted for the same candidate in every presidential election since 1988.

However, what’s clear — from Scott’s analysis and a comparison of the September and October Q polls — is that the trend lines in the Blue Wall states are not moving in the right direction for Harris.

Which is a massive problem for her — unless she can turn it around and soon.

Let’s assume that Harris, as the Q polls suggest, loses Michigan and Wisconsin and wins Pennsylvania. Here’s what the map looks like:

So, basically a jump ball — with Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina deciding the next president.

If I am Trump, I am thrilled with that prospect. Because, according to the Washington Post polling averages, he’s ahead in Georgia and Arizona and tied with Harris in North Carolina and Nevada:

What if Trump won Georgia and Arizona? The map would then look like this:

As in: He’s the president — no matter what happens in Nevada or North Carolina.

That’s plenty of “ifs,” obviously. All we can say for certain right now is that the race is close and is very likely to remain that way all the way through November 5.

But, the Blue Wall is the whole game for Harris. She HAS to win two of those three states. If she loses two of them or all three, there’s just not a ton of plausible paths for her to get to 270 electoral votes.

And, right now, her numbers in the Blue Wall are going in the wrong direction.

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2. Kamala Kash

Whether or not she is elected president next month, Kamala Harris will go down in history as one of the great political fundraisers ever.

On Wednesday, several media outlets reported that the campaign had crossed the $1 billion (yes, billion with a “b”) mark in fundraising for her presidential bid.

Which is stunning — especially when you consider that Joe Biden dropped his own presidential bid on July 21. Meaning that Harris has been a presidential candidate for less than 3 months.

By comparison, in all of 2024 to date, Donald Trump has raised $853 million.

How do those hauls stack up to past presidential races? In 2020, Biden raised $1,044,187,828 to Trump’s $773,954,550. Four years earlier, Hillary Clinton raked in $563,756,928 to $333,127,164 for Trump.

You might note in those numbers that Trump was outraised in 2016 and 2020 — as he will be again in 2024. You might also note that Trump won the 2016 race despite Clinton raising $200 million more.

Money is nice to have in politics —you’d always rather be the candidate with more to spend than the one with less to spend — but it’s not always determinative.

Which brings me to this passage from a Washington Post story posted today:

Her campaign leadership is worried that they still might not have enough to win — and that news of the windfall could hurt the campaign by dampening fundraising in the final weeks.

People familiar with the campaign strategy, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans, said Wednesday that the campaign continues to face significant headwinds that will require more money over the coming weeks. They said each of the seven targeted swing states remains within the margin of error, requiring costly spending plans.

“Talking about this type of big money doesn’t convey the sense of urgency to do every single thing in all of the big and small ways,” one person involved said in a text message Wednesday. “We are in the margin of error. This will come down to grinding it out.”

Food for thought.

3. Biden hammers Trump on hurricanes

With Hurricane Milton barreling toward Florida, President Joe Biden went off on former President Donald Trump for his false claims around the administration’s handling of natural disasters.

“The last few weeks, there’s been a reckless, irresponsible and relentless promotion of disinformation and outright lies,” Biden said during a White House briefing on preparations for Milton. “It’s undermining confidence in the incredible rescue and recovery work that has already been taken and will continue to be taken. It’s harmful to those who need help the most.”

Trump has — and continues to — make a series of debunked assertions about Biden, Kamala Harris and how the White House has reacted to Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Among the fact-checked falsehoods: That Biden refused to speak to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, that FEMA money was spent on housing undocumented immigrants and that FEMA is only giving $750 to people who lost their homes in the storm. (Read this from CNN for a thorough debunking.)

“They’re saying people impacted by these storms will receive $750 in cash and no more,” Biden said, referencing the fabricated rumor. “That’s simply not true. They’re saying the money needed for this crisis is being diverted to migrants. What a ridiculous thing to say. It’s not true.”

Biden even took aim at a tweet from Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene that suggested something even more nefarious was afoot:

Of that, uh, idea, Biden said: “We’re controlling the weather — it’s beyond ridiculous. It’s got to stop, moments like this. There are no red or blue states.”

NOTABLE QUOTABLE

“I’m basically a truthful person.” — Donald Trump

ONE GOOD CHART

This is incredible — the New York Times charted the topics covered by Donald Trump in a single recent speech. Notice the amount of “digression” time.

SONG OF THE DAY

Bartees Strange is probably the coolest person who calls D.C. home. (What about me? I live in northern Virginia 😂😂😂). I absolutely loved his 2022 record “Farm to Table.” His new album, which I cannot wait for, is out February 14. But he’s started to release music from it, including this one called “Sober.”

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