ELECTION ANALYSIS: A Tale of Two Midwestern VP Candidates, An Aloof Senator, and Why Ohio Is a Signpost for Harris’ ‘Non-campaign’
In a pivotal election year, unusual attention has been directed to the Vice Presidency. Why? Candidates’ VP choices often represent an overture to a weak polling demographic, or a candidate needs a self-effacing wingman who won’t upstage the top of the ticket. But typically Vice Presidential candidates do not make a significant difference.
Why is 2024 different? The hullabaloo surrounding JD Vance and Tim Walz shows a different kind of race. And, though Donald Trump is likely to carry Ohio, a shaken up Senate race with Sherrod Brown sitting out the DNC, and Kamala Harris’ shadow ‘non-campaign,’ shine the spotlight on Ohio’s role in the contest — and Americans in search of substance.
Kamala Harris’ ‘Non-campaign’
Ohio is indeed the ‘heart of it all,’ when it comes to presidential politics. Joe Biden’s unusual 2020 victory thanks to slim margins carrying a handful of counties in swing states was the first time a presidential candidate won the general election without also carrying Ohio since John F. Kennedy in 1960. After 2020, Cleveland.com declared Ohio was finished as an election tell. But this contest may tell a different story.
Harris’ third week on the campaign trail has yet to see her camp debut any policy commitments, illuminate America’s stance on the world stage under her prospective administration, or hold a single press conference. The endeavor, rumored to be engineered behind the scenes by Barack Obama, according to ex-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, is practically Seinfeldian — a campaign about nothing.
The paramount objective for @KamalaHarris is to win this election. If a press conference helps her win, she should do it. If not, she shouldn’t do it. It’s just that simple. She has no “moral obligation” to talk to the press. Tone it down folks.
— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) August 14, 2024
Regime Change Specialist Michael McFaul on Harris.
Though legacy media are running cover for the lack of information from Harris herself coming out of the Harris-Walz outfit, there are cracks in the facade: “Would it kill you guys to have a press conference,” CNN asked a Harris spokesman.
If you notice, Democrats haven't been pontificating as much about "democracy" lately after they launched a donor putsch to install a new nominee who got zero primary votes, won't reveal policy positions, and is hiding from the press
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) August 14, 2024
“But Americans want to know what they’re getting in a commander in chief,” notes the Wall Street Journal on Harris’ “avoidant” campaign.
The contrast with the Trump camp has been striking. In addition to rallies in Montana and North Carolina in the past five days and a press conference at Mar-a-Lago last week, Trump held forth in a two-hour fireside chat Monday night with Elon Musk on X, heard by millions. The talk focused on critical immigration, government spending, and energy policy discussions, all the ways Harris is so far synonymous with Biden.
Enter the Vance-Walz fray. With Trump sticking to his policy guns on the trail — trade, immigration, and “no more wars,” as he told North Carolinians Wednesday — and Harris silent apart from adoring headlines appearing from thin air, the focus on Vice Presidents comes into view.
.@JDVance: "Everything about Kamala's campaign is fake. A fake joy that comes from being promoted to a new position instead of using the position instead of using the position you already have to do your job. It's a fake ticket that never earned a single Democrat primary vote.… pic.twitter.com/hVNuqocyJt
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) August 14, 2024
Perhaps the Harris campaign is hoping Walz will shore up support among white males, perhaps her camp can get away with Walz’s embellished military service without hurting her chances, and perhaps it won’t matter Walz stood by when Minneapolis burned.
But the campaign silence is deafening, and Vance is sharp in ways that have provoked panicked reactions from the Harris media apparatus. In a resentful tirade, Walz attacked Vance’s unlikely path to the Ivy League. Why?
J.D. Vance fires back at Tim Walz after he mocked him for attending Yale:
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) August 7, 2024
"What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage. Do not pretend to be something you’re not. And if he wants to criticize me for getting an Ivy League education, I'm proud [...] I was able to… pic.twitter.com/0qt3waifq2
Vance’s path from poverty and dim prospects through the Marine Corps to Yale Law and venture capital represent the American dream in ways with which Ohioans identify. Will attacking Vance, who in many ways is a stand-in for Ohioans’ hopes, pay off?
Meanwhile, Vance, like Trump, is laser-focused on offering policy considerations to Americans.
BREAKING: Republican vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance, says he wants to boost the Child Tax Credit to $5,000 per child from its current $2,000 in an attempt to incentivize Americans to have more children.
— Leading Report (@LeadingReport) August 12, 2024
The threat of Vance is nuts-and-bolts focus on policy that speaks to Americans, and it is competence. In a word, it’s everything the Harris-Walz ticket lacks — it’s substance.
With Vance and Trump both formidable operators on the debate stage and Trump hammering trade, immigration, energy, and peace through strength at his rallies, Ohio still has indicators for the rest of the country even if Trump is expected to carry the state.
Ohio Stakes: The Brown-Moreno Showdown
If there are two warning signs of the country’s need for substance, for anything really, to come out of the Harris-Walz campaign, they can be seen in Sherrod Brown’s race for a fourth term against GOP challenger Bernie Moreno and Ohio’s landmark shift in voter registrations.
Brown is notably sitting out Monday's DNC in Chicago. What would he gain from attending? Brown is a master of retail politics and putting his head down to focus on exactly the issues that drive Americans to Trump, such as manufacturing and trade. The Democratic Party’s swing leftward and media glam are unlikely to speak to issues facing voters in America’s agricultural and industrial heart. The convention, if it will be anything like Harris’ ‘non-campaign,’ is unlikely to offer Brown’s constituents meaningful food for thought.
Brown has been able to skate by in spite of voting with the Biden-Harris administration 98% of the time, according to pollster Five-Thirty-Eight. In other words, he will be ‘working remotely’ for Harris while conspicuously absent from the convention.
[READ: Can Sherrod Brown Survive in the Age of Trump?]
Brown leads Moreno by four to five points according to most polls. Brown’s survival depends on successfully ducking the Harris non-campaign frenzy, and he has remained aloof to most Biden-Harris flashpoints so far.
Whether voters look past Brown’s veneer of concern about manufacturing jobs in Ohio and see his decidedly left voting record in the Senate will shape the race.
Ohioans in Search of Substance: Voter Registration Spell Trouble for Dems
The other signpost of Ohio’s lifting the veil on the real substance of the election is voter registrations. Perhaps more significant than any poll, data on party affiliation changes in voter registration could spell trouble for both Brown and Harris.
Across 25 states that track voter registration at the state level, from 2020 to July 2024, Democrats saw a net loss of 3.5 million registered voters, while Republicans gained nearly 400,000, amidst a major shift toward independent voters, a pivotal bloc for Trump in 2016.
NEW: July Voter Registration
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) August 12, 2024
🔴 Republicans: +252,794
🔵 Democrats: -19,088
November 2020 to July 2024
🔴 Republicans: +393,365
🔵 Democrats: -3,584,321
Data via @MichaelPruser pic.twitter.com/VgekR9BmEG
Ohio tracks voter registrations at the county level, so it wasn’t included, but data aggregated from Ohio’s 88 counties parallels other states.
According to The Scioto Post, as of May 2024, 37,000 Democrats changed affiliation to Republican, while 20,000 Republicans went left. Strikingly, though, more than 300,000 democrats changed their registration to unaffiliated, while Republicans lost only 160,000 to unaffiliated. Nearly 300,000 more switched from unaffiliated to Republican while only 114,000 unaffiliated voters became democrats.
The swing to disaffiliation, and to Republicans, may flash warning lights to Brown and the Harris campaign alike, that Ohioans seek more than the ‘non-campaign,’ and more than aloof quiet from Brown on the Biden administration’s immigration policies.
With housing affordability at an all time low, runaway inflation that has seen grocery bills double, and now shaky jobs reports, it remains to be seen what’s on offer from democrats for an Ohio that has twice elected Trump.
Follow ohio.news for updates, news, and analysis.
