Mark Halperin, the author and journalist who has chronicled the rise and fall of presidential aspirants for decades, believes Vice President Kamala Harris’s fate has been spelled out in a new poll that brings nothing but bad news.
The former NBC commentator and ex-No Labels leader revealed new polling in an interview that shows Harris suffering deep losses in key demographics and is leaving her advisors feeling “bullish” on former President Donald Trump’s chances of victory. “What’s happening now with Kamala Harris is an experiment,” Halperin told 2WAY TV in an interview. “Can you win a short campaign with an untested candidate? And what I’m telling you in private polling is she’s got a problem now. It’s not cheering for Trump. It’s not predicting Trump will win, [but] she’s got a problem.”
He pointed to a recent New York Times poll indicating Harris is up 3% nationally, a position that puts her on the “bubble” of a lead which isn’t guaranteed. At the same time, the Wall Street Journal reported on Harris’s struggle to connect with working-class voters in places like Wisconsin where internal polling from Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s (D-WI) campaign has shown Harris trailing Trump by the same margin. “There’s no path without Wisconsin,” Halperin said. “Wisconsin and Michigan are looking worse than before.”
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Sean Spicer, the former Trump White House press secretary, theorized about why Baldwin would share such poor results for Harris with the public. “It’s kind of a Hillary Clinton redux,” he said. “You want to make sure people know what’s going on.” Fellow guest Dan Turrentine agreed it’s the “trend lines” that Democrats see headed in the wrong direction. “If you go back the last three or four weeks in Michigan and in Wisconsin, not that Harris was up seven and went down to four or down to one. It’s gone from three to two to one to tied… and so you do have to sound the alarm bell.”
WATCH:
“I just saw some new private polling that’s very robust. Private polling,” says @MarkHalperin. Kamala Harris “is in a lot of trouble … In the conversations I’m having with Trump people and Democrats with data, they are extremely bullish on Trump’s chances in the last 48 hours.… pic.twitter.com/KF3tSM2sLo
— 2WAY (@2waytvapp) October 9, 2024
In July, Halperin reported that President Joe Biden and advisors were weighing whether he should drop out of the race, a decision being considered in the weeks following his disastrous debate performance against President Trump. His prescient prediction proved true.
Halperin has been a heavyweight in Washington politics since reporting on the turmoil that rocked John McCain’s 2008 campaign after the fateful selection of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. His book, “Game Changer,” reached No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list and was quickly adapted into an HBO movie. In 2010, he signed with MSNBC to become the liberal network’s newest political analyst and in 2016 participated in Showtime’s coverage of the Trump-Clinton contest with its limited series “The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth.” He was summarily fired by both networks in 2017 after multiple women came forward alleging repeated sexual harassment. In 2021, Halperin signed with No Labels, the quixotic third-party group that nearly upended the 2024 contest with a well-funded independent candidate; he backed out in 2023, citing a lack of editorial control over decision-making. For his troubles, Halperin received an annual salary of around $260,000, making him the group’s highest-paid senior employee.
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