After a week of polling following Joe Biden’s sudden withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race, the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is officially close. The former president has a narrow lead nationally and in swing states, giving Democrats novel hope. But it also leads to downright self-deception.
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On Saturday, several videos began circulating on social media from The Villages in Florida, purporting to show a huge turnout for a golf cart parade promoting Harris.
If you don’t know who Barbie Hall is, she is a Democrat running for Congress in The Villages. That congressional seat is currently held by Republican Daniel Webster, who won by nearly 30 points in 2022. In other words, this is a very red Area of Florida, which even today is a very red Condition.
Yet Hall posted all day about what a large deal this was. In fact, her comments made their way all the way up the Democratic food chain. Here, DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison explains that Florida is now in play.
Nikki Fried is the former Florida agriculture commissioner turned failed gubernatorial candidate (she lost in the primary to Charlie Crist, an almost equally bad candidate). But because failure is a Democratic tradition, Fried was immediately named chair of the Democratic Party in her state. That went about as well as you’d expect.
So what a large deal was this golf cart parade? The current population of The Villages is about 79,000 people. According to Hall, there were “over 200 golf carts” at the event (which seems to be an overestimate based on the videos). Let’s be generous and say that each golf cart could seat two people. That’s 400 people who showed up at the height of Harris’ honeymoon to drive around a bit. Does that sound like a large deal to you? Or does it sound completely irrelevant and not at all indicative of anything happening in Florida?
Frankly, I hope the Democrats really believe that. Please pump millions of dollars of circumscribed resources into the Sunshine State in the vain hope that Nikki Fried and Co. can deliver in November. Start running ads right now. Have the Vice President hold a rally there.
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think Harris is a real threat and harder to beat than Joe Biden. She can certainly win this thing if Republicans don’t take her seriously, but there’s a difference between respecting your opponent and clinging to their delusions. Florida is not in play, no matter how many golf cart parades there are in The Villages.
