I expect Vice President Kamala Harris to be the 47th President of the United States soon after the polls close on Tuesday. She has the intelligence, temperament, and experience to lead post-MAGA America. Despite the polls reporting half of likely voters supporting the former President, Vice President Harris will attract significant numbers of Republicans to her side of the tally based on the growing list of prominent Republicans endorsing her.
Democrats are also much better prepared to get out the vote than the MAGA party, primarily because of her massive donor base, which is twice that of the former President. The Vice President has more than seven million donors. From September 1 until October 16, the Harris campaign brought in 1.5 million new donors, an average of more than 43,000 daily. She set a record, raising $1 billion in the quarter ending September 30, which gave her considerably more cash to spend.
Former Congressman Ed Towns is in North Carolina helping to get out the vote in his home state at the ripe age of 90 years old. “Charles, I’ve been doing this for a long time,” he said, “and I must say this is the most impressive get-out-the-vote campaign I have ever seen.” He also noted that the GOTV volunteers are much younger than usual. CRISP’s “Our Voices Matter” campaign continues in Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
It is a struggle to get young voters to the polls. Yet, they have made a difference when they do, helping to elect President Biden when half turned out in 2020, an 11-point increase over 2016. The 23 percent who showed up in 2022 was significantly less but enough to quell the expected midterm “red wave.” It was lower than the 28 percent who voted in the 2018 midterms but more than the 13 percent who voted in the 2014 midterm elections. Young voters tend to be more progressive, and the fact they are hearing the Access Hollywood tape for the first time as it goes viral on TikTok could have an effect.
It is impossible to predict who will vote on Tuesday. I stopped following the polls weeks ago, and my stress level diminished significantly. Relying on cell phones for polling results in many nonresponses; we don’t know if the race is as close as the media projects. They were off in 2016 and 2020; I expect them to be off next week. All signs point to a Harris victory.
I thought we may have gotten an “October Surprise” when MAGA comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” during a Trump rally in Madison Square Garden. The backlash was swift and furious. Nearly a million Puerto Ricans live in the seven battleground states: Pennsylvania (473k), North Carolina (133k), Georgia (124k), Wisconsin (65k), Michigan (54k), Arizona (54k), and Nevada (35k). It was reminiscent of Hillary Clinton calling half of Trump voters a “basket of deplorables” weeks before the 2016 election, which may have resulted in a larger turnout for Republicans.
I contacted a couple of my Latino compadres to find out what they saw and heard in their communities and circles. CRISP board member Luisa Lopez, a Dominican, who is the executive director of the Latino Social Work Coalition & Scholarship Fund, reminded me of the enormous diversity of the Latino community, comprised of 20 countries, and, like everyone else, its members are concerned about bread and butter issues. She believes the crass remark will hurt the MAGA campaign but feels the ongoing mobilization efforts in Latino communities in battleground states will pay a considerable dividend.
I called my buddy Steve Kroon, a Puerto Rican friend whom I’ve known since 1968 when we worked at the Christopher Street Post Office in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. Steve would show up every morning as I ended my midnight shift with his drum practice pad and go through his exercises as the other workers teased him. He eventually became Luther Vandross’s percussionist for 24 years, played with notables like Ron Carter, and leads his band today.
Steve was livid in his reaction to Hinchcliffe’s condescending remarks. It would take too many asterisks to provide a verbatim quote. Likewise, conservative commentator Geraldo Rivera was scathing in his condemnation of Hinchcliffe and the MAGA campaign for giving him a platform. Vice President Harris’s closing argument is we are all in this together—E Pluribus Unum, out of many, one. Hopefully, when she occupies the Oval Office, we will get back to being ordinary people who sometimes do extraordinary things.