By Glynn Wilson –

CATOCTIN MOUNTAINS, Md. – From on top of the mountain looking down at the world over the internet, it looks like a blue sea change is rolling across the country. Even Mother Nature on this blue planet appears to be cooperating somehow, if the weather around here is any indication. It’s the nicest second half of July and early August in years, if not decades, with lower than average temperatures and lower humidity.

Of course I’ve been on top of a mountain in the forest. That helps. But even Storm Debby only came ashore as a category one hurricane, and then was downgraded to a tropical storm overnight and rained her way into the Northeast toward the Atlantic. We needed the rain anyway, farmers around here tell me.

President Biden Sits Down for Interview

On Sunday, proving that he is a class act and a true American patriot, President Biden did what critics have been griping at him to do for weeks. He agreed to a sit down interview with Robert Costa for “CBS Sunday Morning” and removed all doubt that the main reason he agreed to step aside was a political calculation: Beating Donald Trump was the top priority. Him and his KKK buddies.

Biden said he abandoned his bid for a second term because he did not want to create “a distraction” for Democrats. “I thought it was important to maintain this democracy … We must, we must, we must defeat Trump,” Biden insisted.

The president attributed his decision to step aside to pressure from his own party. “A number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was going to hurt them in the races,” he said. “And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic … and I thought it’d be a real distraction.”

He said that he initially intended to be a bridge to the next generation in running for president in 2020.

“When I ran the first time, I thought of myself as being a transition president,” he said.

Biden suggested that he had originally resolved to seek re-election because he saw Trump as a singular existential threat to American democracy who had to be stopped. He cited the former president’s support from white supremacists and referred to the deadly demonstrations in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 that Biden said inspired him to run in 2020.

“Every other time the Ku Klux Klan has been involved, they wore hoods so they’re not identified,” Biden said with a straight face on national television. “Under his presidency, they came out of those woods with no hoods, knowing they had an ally. That’s how I read it. They knew they had an ally in the White House. And he stepped up for them.”

The president vowed to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris and praised her choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate.

“He’s a great guy,” he said. “As we say, if we grew up in the same neighborhood, we’d have been friends. He’s my kind of guy. He’s real. He’s smart. I’ve known him for several decades. I think it’s a hell of a team.”

Biden expressed no second thoughts about whether he could still do the job as president, despite concerns about his age and physical and mental capacity. He denied that his poor debate performance that led Democrats to pressure him to step aside revealed any larger issues about his capacity at age 81.

“Look, I had a really, really bad day in that debate because I was sick,” he said. “But I have no serious problem.”

As for his own legacy, Biden said he hoped it would be that he “proved democracy can work,” “got us out of a pandemic” and “produced the single greatest economic recovery in American history.”

By dropping out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris, however, he will also be remembered as a class act, a true patriot, and someone who put the country, the constitution and democracy over personal ambition.

He did express some regret for not doing more to take credit for the expansive $1 trillion bipartisan program to rebuild the nation’s roads, bridges, airports and other infrastructure.

“The biggest mistake we made,” he said, was that “we didn’t put up signs saying, ‘Joe did it.’”

It was not all his fault. The administration put out press releases almost every day showing how the money was being spent all over the country to help community after community. Very little of it was covered by the mainstream media or the press or broadcast media in those communities. If he had held a massive White House event everywhere a million bucks was spent, it would have smacked of politics and campaigning for reelection and he would have been criticized for that.

We covered many of those stories. But very few of our friends, fans and followers shared those stories either. It was just not the crazy, sensational clickbait people go for these days on social media.

The Polls: Harris-Walz Pickup the Lead Over Trump in Three Major Battleground States

New surveys of voters in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania this week offer the latest indication of a “dramatic reversal in standing for the Democratic Party since President Biden abandoned his re-election bid,” as The New York Times put it in the poll coverage on Sunday.

A blue sea change is coming. Whether it will be a tsunami wave and a landslide victory, we will have to wait until the votes are counted after Nov. 5 to see.

Vice President and Democratic Party nominee for president Kamala Harris leads former President Donald Trump in three crucial battleground states, according to new surveys by The New York Times and Siena College. Harris now leads Trump by four percentage points in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, 50 percent to 46 percent among likely voters in each state. The surveys were conducted from Aug. 5 to 9.

It is especially significant since she is hitting the 50 percent mark and the result is outside the margin of error for the first time. Biden never did get to 50 percent, and Trump has never been close to 50 percent anywhere nationally.

The polls, some of the first high-quality surveys in those states since Biden announced he would no longer run for re-election, come after nearly a year of surveys that showed either a tied contest or a slight lead for Trump over Biden.

On question after question, the poll finds that voters don’t seem to have major reservations about Kamala Harris, Nate Cohn writes.

While the reshaped race is still in its volatile early weeks, the Times points out, Democrats are “now in a notably stronger position” in these three battleground states that have long been key to the party’s victories — or defeats.

Harris’s numbers are an upswing for Democrats from Biden’s performance in those states, even before his much-maligned debate showing that destabilized his candidacy. In May, Biden was virtually tied with Trump in Times/Siena polling in Wisconsin and Michigan. Polling conducted before and after the debate in July showed Trump with a narrow lead in Pennsylvania.

Much of the newfound Democratic strength stems from improved voter perceptions of Harris. Her favorability rating has increased 10 percentage points among registered voters in Pennsylvania just in the last month, according to surveys. Voters also view Harris as more intelligent and more temperamentally fit to govern than Trump.

Still, the results show vulnerabilities for Harris. Voters prefer Trump when it comes to whom they trust to handle the economy and immigration, issues that remain central to the presidential race.

The polls offer an early snapshot of a race that was transformed in little more than two weeks. The whirlwind of political change seized the nation’s attention and reinvigorated some voters who were approaching the rematch between Biden and Trump “with a deep sense of dread,” the Times reports.

It is unclear how much of Harris’s bounce in the polls stems from the heightened excitement surrounding her ascension to the top of the ticket, or whether that momentum will last. Candidates traditionally gain a few percentage points in the days and weeks after announcing their running mate. Harris announced her selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on Tuesday, as voters were responding to the Times/Siena surveys in Michigan and Wisconsin.

“There is little doubt that replacing Biden on the ticket has turbocharged Democratic enthusiasm about the election,” the Times says. “Among Democrats, voter satisfaction with their choice of candidates has skyrocketed since Ms. Harris entered the race, up 27 percentage points in the three swing states since May… Democrats are now more likely to say they are satisfied with their candidate choices than Republicans, a reversal from three months ago.”

In the three battlegrounds, Harris is in a stronger position than Biden was in May with most demographic groups, including white voters without a college degree. She is faring better with key parts of the Democratic Party’s coalition that had begun to erode under Biden, most notably Black and young voters. But she also appears to be holding on to older voters, who were some of the president’s most ardent supporters.

The share of voters who said they trusted Harris to handle economic issues was higher than the share Biden received in May, though she is still nine points behind Trump on an issue where the Republican nominee has long held the advantage.

And let’s not overlook this key issue. Harris has a 24-percentage-point advantage when it comes to whom voters trust to handle abortion, an issue considered one of the strongest for Democrats. In May, Biden held a 13-percentage-point advantage here.

Trump’s attacks on Harris as “not smart” and “incompetent” have not landed with most voters, the Times says surveys show. Nearly two-thirds of voters see Harris as intelligent, more than say the same about Trump. A majority of white voters without a college degree — a demographic that typically favors Republicans — even admit that Harris is indeed “intelligent.”

Yet 42 percent of voters said Harris was too liberal; 37 percent said the same about Biden last October. Trump and his campaign have tried to define Harris as a left-wing extremist from San Francisco who is out of touch with swing-state voters.

In recent days, Harris has disavowed some of her previous stances on issues including border enforcement and fracking, as well as her support for a single-payer health care system.

The changes to the Democratic ticket have not altered the issues at the heart of the race. Voters in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania still rank the economy, abortion and immigration as their top concerns, even though the state is a more than a thousand miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump still leads on the economy and immigration, while Harris is more trusted to handle abortion and democracy.

As is often the case in times of economic uncertainty, many voters are looking to back a candidate who represents change, the Times says. Trump still holds the mantle of the “change” candidate in the race, though Harris appears to have made inroads from Biden’s previous standing. Voters are now about equally likely to say that either Trump or Harris would bring about the right kind of change, according to the latest surveys.

Beyond views of Trump, the polls captured mixed feelings about his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio. Vance had a rocky debut on the campaign trail after a number of past comments drew fresh scrutiny, including a remark in 2021 that the United States was being run by “childless cat ladies” like Harris.

Across all three states, Vance is viewed broadly unfavorably by independent voters: About one-third said they were dissatisfied, and another 17 percent described themselves as “angry” about his selection. Strikingly, he receives lukewarm support from a notable number of Republican voters. While 43 percent said they were excited about their vice-presidential nominee, 38 percent said they were satisfied but not enthusiastic.

Walz, by comparison, received higher marks within his own party. In Pennsylvania, the only state where the poll was taken entirely after Walz was announced as Harris’s running mate, 48 percent of Democrats said they were excited about the vice-presidential nominee. (In Wisconsin and Michigan, some interviews were completed before Harris announced that she had chosen Walz.)

The new polls also included crucial Senate races in the three swing states. Democrats hold a slight edge among likely voters in Michigan and larger leads in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

As recently as a few months ago, Democratic Senate candidates were running far ahead of Biden, a sign of the president’s political weakness. Harris, by comparison, is running roughly on par with her party’s Senate contenders in the three states.

Other Polls

Other polls are showing growing leads for Harris and the Democrats too, although Trump holds on to a 1 point lead in Arizona, and a larger lead in North Carolina.

Real Clear Politics Primary & General Elections

Conclusion

So let’s hope this sea change holds and turns into a blue wave and a landslide.

As Tim Walz is now saying out there on the campaign trail, “Let’s just not go through this thing that it’s so close,” Walz says, urging all those in attendance in the massive and enthusiastic crowds – far surpassing any crowd size Trump has ever seen – to get 10 other people to the polls to vote.

“Let’s just win big, people. Let’s just win BIG!”

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