As we head into debate week between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Trump has the winds in his sails. Multiple courts delivered Trump a clean sweep of court cases on Friday, and his victories continued through the weekend with good polling. It's Trump's race to lose, and Harris has a growing mountain heading into the debate.
The first significant victory for Trump was Judge Juan Merchan delaying sentencing of the hush money case until after the election. Sentencing will now occur on November 26, well after the election. That decision will give Trump's legal team more time to build an appeal and get past the immediate politics.
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Next up, appeals courts in North Carolina and Michigan agreed with the arguments from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to drop him from the ballot in those states. Kennedy has dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump. Election authorities in both states had rejected Kennedy's request. They were going to send out ballots in North Carolina with Kennedy's name on it.
All those plans were put on halt, and new ballots will get printed, and Kennedy gets his victory. Whatever the voting habits of the average Kennedy voter, the decisions were seen as a blow to Harris, who was seeking to keep Kennedy on the ballot to pull votes away from Trump.
If you don't believe those ballot decisions are political, look at other third parties. While Kennedy is being told he can't get off the ballot, Democrats are actively seeking to block Green Party candidate Jill Stein from the ballot in swing states like Wisconsin. It's taking court cases to keep her on the ballot in those states.
That's three legal cases all falling Trump's way within a few hours of each other on Friday. It helps clear the way for him in the battleground states and removes the potential for the hush money case to impact the race again.
On Sunday, the good news continued. The New York Times / Siena College poll, widely considered one of the best polls, showed Trump regained a one-point lead over Harris in the election. Last month, Harris had opened up a four-point lead over Trump, which reflected Democratic enthusiasm at its peak.
The Times's primary polling and data analysis, Nate Cohn, said Harris's support stalled after a "euphoric August." Writing on Harris, Cohn notes, "She was benefiting from an ideal news environment: an uninterrupted month of glowing coverage from President Biden's departure from the race in July to the Democratic convention in August. It's possible she was riding a political sugar high; if so, it would make sense if she came off those highs in the two uneventful weeks since the convention."
Nate Silver plugged that poll into his model, and Trump's odds of winning the race increased even more to a new high of 63.8% against Harris.
As I wrote in July, this was a sugar high for Harris. Now that we're beyond Labor Day, things are settling down, and the race is settling back to the pre-sugar high numbers. It's a close race on a national level, with Trump showing real strength in critical swing states like Pennsylvania.
All this news sets us up for the debate. Kamala Harris is entering the debate, and her numbers are starting to ebb. In many ways, this is similar to where Biden was sitting before his first debate. Trump increasingly has the upper hand in the race, with Harris trying to get anything to stick.
While Trump has talked to essentially anyone with a pulse and a microphone, Harris has eschewed interviews, press conferences, or anything other than teleprompter rallies. Because Trump has been everywhere, and this is his third time running, the impact of this debate is lower for him.
For Harris, the exact opposite is true. Harris has to introduce herself to America, roll out multiple policy programs, and convince everyone that the sugar-high version of her depicted in the media is real.
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That's a tall order to cram into a single debate. Democrats pushed all their chips into this one debate, and with cracks showing in the campaign, they now need a home run to maintain course. If Harris is merely average in the debate, that likely won't be enough to move the trajectory of the race.
Court cases, polling, and more are falling into place for Trump. There's still a lot of time for both candidates, but momentum is shifting. Harris needs a dramatic game-changer to shift things back in her favor, while Trump wants to push the race back to when Biden was still on the ticket.
The debate is Harris's first chance to do that, and with Trump answering, the pressure is on Harris to deliver. We'll learn what she's capable of soon.
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