Jeffrey Blehar writes for National Review Online about a clear mood swing within presidential campaigns.
[W]hile I remain officially agnostic about how it will all turn out — ask me on November 6 and I’ll give you a solid prediction — with half a month to go, the Harris campaign and its partisans clearly believe that they’re losing, while Trump and his fans are acting both in public and private like they are cruising toward victory. Will this turn out to have been a grandly ironic combination of premature panic and unearned confidence? All anyone can say right now is that Trump is riding a wave of good polling, and the “bad vibes” for Kamala … have now given rise to a cluttered cacophony of terrified Democratic voices.
For if there is any substantive value to “momentum” or “vibes,” the Harris-Walz campaign is on an express elevator to hell, going down. Two weeks remain in what seems to be a historically close race, and nearly every polling number, whether nationally or in swing states, has begun to turn against the Democrats. The weighted polling models, such as Nate Silver’s or that of 538 (now owned by Disney/ABC), have all flipped from narrowly favoring Harris to narrowly favoring Trump. Democrats have now fallen into a Styroneque depression, moaning disconsolately about how all of this is the media’s fault, for lack of anyone else to plausibly blame until the race is officially over. (Then, in the event of a loss, it will be knives out for Harris, Biden, and anyone stupid enough to be caught between them and the mob.)
The panic-button reaction from the Left right now is best epitomized by this priceless piece from aged hack Michael Tomasky, writing for the tatterdemalion remains of the New Republic: “The Media Has Three Weeks to Learn to Tell the Truth About Trump.” His primary command? The New York Times needs to start writing “accurate” headlines, ones like “Trump Fans Flames with Xenophobic Lies.”