Jeffrey Blehar writes for National Review Online about the latest efforts to boost Kamala Harris’ support.
We have nothing but the polls (polls nobody quite trusts, regardless of what we publicly aver, recalling the misses of 2016 and 2020) to measure against an unprecedented series of political “black swan” events: A legendary debate disaster reveals a conspiratorially hidden condition; a candidate, after having all but secured the official nomination, is forced out in an internal coup to be replaced by his ill-equipped and cipherous understudy; the Republican ex-president opponent is nearly assassinated, more than once. What does it all add up to? Only fools are certain. …
… But, for now, the most recent polls have turned against Harris — she is in fact becoming less popular over time — and thus the mood among Harris partisans has gotten grim. This plane doesn’t feel like it’s going to land without disintegrating on contact with the ground. And so emergency glass is being smashed and panic buttons stabbed across the Democratic coalition: Bill Clinton returns from the dead to rally voters in the Sunbelt, Barack Obama trots out and lectures black men in a huff in Pittsburgh, and Kamala Harris reads from a teleprompter to challenge Donald Trump’s physical fitness — all of them desperately searching for the disappearing working-class male Democratic voter.
Hollywood has been doing its part, too, although I suspect that the Harris campaign and the rest of the media wish they would have left well enough alone. By this point I hope you have all seen the series of third-party pro-Harris advertisements scripted and shot by one of Jimmy Kimmel’s former head staffers. You know the ones I’m talking about, right? In which men boldly explain to the camera how they’re (1) really, totally, I promise 100 percent heterosexual flank-cut slabs of authentic unpretentious dudeliness, which means they’re (2) man enough to support Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in 2024, and What’s your problem, undecided male voter?