Interesting insights on the state of the race from David Plouffe, senior advisor to Harris and never known to be an optimist.
Plouffe: "I can't speak to the public polls. I spend very little time looking at them...most of them are horseshit. Some of them maybe close but generally I'd say any poll that shows Kamala Harris up four to five points in one of these seven states,ignore it. Any point that shows Donald Trump up like that, ignore it. This thing's very close; it's a margin of race but again I'd rather be us than him because I think we have the ability to get to 49 and a half or 50. I'm much more confident about that than Donald Trump but it's going to be close all the way in so I think we're doing what we can to to be conservative in the data"
"I think I it may be that our internal data is exactly right but if I were to hazard a guess I think it may be under counting her [Harris] strength amongst Republican leaning independents so, we won't put that in the bank but let's hope that's right"
Plouffe: "You'll have more younger voters as a percentage of it...as people age [in & out of] the electorate. Turnout is the hardest thing for any campaign to predict so obviously you've got historical data, you've got polling. So you're asking people whether they're going to vote or not; you draw some conclusions based on that. We're beginning to get early vote data in:who's requested ballots, who sent them back. In a lot of states within 10-12 days we'll have people voting in person early so that's really when you begin to get a sense of how many people who are first time voters are showing up in that early vote. How many of them didn't vote in '20. How many voted in '20 but not '22."
"Our assumption is [turnout] is going to be in the 2020 range...this is a more interesting race to people. I think that Kamala Harris has created a lot of energy on our side. The enthusiasm gap has been eroded that Trump had in [his] 2024 1.0campaign"
The one thing that I think is pretty constant and I think most observers of this would agree...is his sort of base of foundation is built on a rickety element which is: all of these people who don't have vote history, who may say in a poll they're going to vote, but as you and I know that's the toughest thing to do in politics, is to get that cohort all the way through the funnel."
"We like what we're seeing in the early vote data so far. We particularly like what we're not seeing on the Trump data, which is there's not an army of incels showing up in early vote with no voting history so you know, maybe they'll show up on Election Day we'll see. But so far there's not a leading edge that something crazy is afoot there."
"But I'd say a couple things one is I think Kamala Harris may surprise at the end of the day with either straight up Republicans or independents who [lean]Republicans. We're seeing continued strength there and that matters a great deal given how big those cohorts are...and we're being conservative there as well we're not overstating our numbers internally but I think you see the leading edge of things that could be quite positive". Plouffe elaborates: "And then again I think Trump is just incredibly reliant on voters who've either never voted before, haven't voted in a longtime, [or] never voted Republican. So you know that's a big challenge.
On Trump not doing another debate and his rallies
Plouffe: "I could spend three hours talking about what's going on here with the psychology. I mean what's clear is his campaign, they knew what happened in the first debate. They don't want him to debate again. I also think they see his rallies which are a disaster."