According to standard measuring methods, the race is quite close, a virtual tie. According to me, that is quite hard to believe.

The genuine conservative Republican base seems solidly in Donald Trump’s camp. Some might have been more comfortable with an alternative, a governor. But they were convinced by the specter of four more years of the Biden-Harris Clown Car spewing airport luggage thieves and other incompetents. 

The Democrat base is historically larger than the GOP’s. Teamsters aside, it seems solidly behind Kamala Harris, if only out of relief that the nominee is no longer that chronic Delaware beach-goer. 

To keep the base intact, Harris is sparing them the scary details of her radical left agenda and relying again on Trump antipathy. That mimics Joe Biden, who talked about “normalcy” four years ago to spare voters undesirable concerns over his inflation-igniting spending intentions, anti-military bias, determination to smother energy independence, dubious Israel support, and cockeyed DEI policies.

When it comes to considering who might provide the best leadership for the nation that we all inhabit, those folks already know everything, or everything they want to know. In short, looking ahead to Nov. 5, their eyesight is 20/200, which means legally blind.

That's politics counting on voter inattention to miss things like his not refilling oil reserves and this: A Trump supporter tried to wear a MAGA hat into an Arizona Cardinals game, but was forced to throw it away.

The NFL team later apologized to the woman for a “misunderstanding.” But the red hat now rests in a fetid landfill somewhere, along with the notion that censoring apparel is something confined to Middle East theocracies.

This all leaves decision-making power in the hands of a block of voters of significant but unknown size, often called Independents. I think they're judicious Undecideds, who, these last six weeks, are going to watch Harris say nothing of substance and Trump be Trump. So much at stake in their choice.

We talk a lot about the population being polarized on partisan grounds, which seems true. Recent polls appear to confirm that Registered or Likely voters are pretty much evenly split at the moment, and the race is too close to call. 

That might make sense since there are six long weeks left.

The RealClearPolitics average of the presidential race generally finds Donald Trump and Kamala Harris tied under 50 percent, or one of them up a point or two. Polls after their debate detected no Harris bump for what media called her big win. In some polls, Trump actually gained support.

The first thought is, How can that possibly be? 

The former president is now a convicted felon, still facing scores of counts in multiple venues designed to cripple his finances and political efforts. He’s been the target of numerous hoaxes and leaks, distorted media coverage for years, threats to his business empire, two impeachments, and two assassination attempts.

As Byron York, one of the most astute veteran political reporters, wrote: 

It’s a wonder Trump is still standing, much less that he is tied in a presidential contest. 

Yet, the former president still seeks reelection.

After 22 months, the 78-year-old has been campaigning daily with his familiar intensity, vicious media scrutiny that he’s endured for years, constant traveling, regular news conferences, endless courtroom hours, squeezing in at least one partial game of golf recently, and taking numerous interviews, including on TV late at night when he can still smile and joke.

I’m having a hard time chuckling these days, and I’m just watching.

Pitted against him is a woman who’s about 20 years younger and just got into the race in July. Fresh from doing nothing of substance for nearly four years and serving word salads, Harris was handed the nomination just a month ago by a cabal of unidentified party elites.

That involved ousting Joe Biden, who was overwhelmingly anointed nominee by some 14 million suddenly-discarded primary votes.

This, of course, means that Harris coasted through the primary season piggybacked on Biden’s success. And she was also completely free of the kind of intense daily scrutiny by voters and media on the grueling trail. 

Caveat: That also means that Harris — remember, she abandoned her sinking 2020 campaign before any voting — got no practice this time either. 

Harris, who reportedly dislikes preparation and shows it, also received none of the issue education that comes with competitions, town halls, and debates in a variety of states that rarely matter come general election time.

Biden, or whoever was telling him what to do in 2020, did not select Harris as VP partner because she had "future commander in chief" written all over her short resume of failing up the ladder of politics. 

Gavin Newsom disagreed. But Harris was the cabal’s only realistic alternative in its desperate grasp at retaining the White House and denying victory to the despised turncoat Trump. He’s the former donor who gave them so much money but hijacked Hillary Clinton’s rightful inheritance under the GOP banner.

Donald Trump has inhabited Democrat and Deep State heads and nightmares ever since. To deny the first black-female vice president a chance at the Oval Office would make victory for the DEI party a longer shot at defeating the former president than that deceased Pennsylvania assassin had at the right side of Trump’s head.

Democrats sure have media on their side. Did you see that pair of verbal assassins on the ABC News debate? They did their partisan best to help Harris. 

She did not stare at the camera for 10 seconds with her mouth open. She recited her vague lines as best she could. The so-called “moderators” fact-checked only her opponent. 

So, media declared Harris the clear winner over Biden, who wasn’t really her opponent, but that was the most convenient measuring stick for a win.

The people telling Biden’s vice president what to do have decided their best shot at holding on to the Oval Office and their jobs is to keep Harris away from speaking off-script as much as possible. They know most media will silently cooperate.

Enough voters in just the right places just might fall for another historical first, as they did for Barack Obama.

As long as Harris doesn’t scare anyone away with her long-term leftist policy specifics, like taxing unrealized capital gains. The word “vague” has many synonyms – indistinct, murky, fuzzy, unclear, blurred, hazy, indefinite. Harris is calling upon every one of them to avoid detailed policies. 

Here’s Harris last week explaining to a silent Oprah her plan to control the cost of living:

In terms of both rightly having the right to have aspirations and dreams and ambitions for your family and working hard and finding that the American Dream is, for this generation and so many recently, far more elusive than it's been, and we need to deal with that.

Never mind that Kamala Harris would give the United States a president dumber than a doorknob, a tarnished one. Her mouth works, but it’s not connected to an intelligent brain. That's just one example.

Here she is explaining the computer cloud:

No longer are you keeping those private files in some file cabinet that's locked in the basement of the house. It's on your laptop, and it's then therefore up here in this cloud, that exists above us. It's no longer in a physical place, right?

Here’s Harris explaining artificial intelligence, which she doesn't have either:

Here’s Harris describing the ongoing national health crisis you may have missed. She states it has killed more than 220 million of the total 335 million Americans.

Because of this, Harris has won the endorsement of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Iran’s hackers were caught trying to give her some confidential Trump campaign stuff. 

Recently, some 60 percent of Teamster members voted to endorse Trump. Harris will not get their endorsement. But the union's leadership decided neither will Trump. That’s how modern union democracy works. 

Given all the Republican’s legal troubles, lingering Trump Derangement Syndrome, the tilted playing field, and referees bought and paid for, Harris should be significantly ahead. 

She’s counting on a TDS replay from 2020 when 70 percent of Democrats said they were voting against Trump more than for Biden. 

During and after the June debate with Biden, a different Trump was on view – serious, presidential, sharp recall of his achievements and Biden’s faults. To my eyes, that Trump would be pulling away in the polls by now.

Once Harris was installed as Biden 2.0, the acerbic, name-calling Trump re-emerged. The former president even commented on that, saying in one speech that his staff urged him to change. His audience’s reaction convinced him not to. 

With all her benefits, why isn’t Harris pulling away?

One major, though little-noticed reason, is that the Harris election campaign is simply the Biden reelection campaign with a couple of add-ons. It’s being run out of Wilmington, Delaware just blocks from Biden’s home where he vacations so much.

These are the same folks who brought you: 

• nine percent inflation, 
• the supply-chain crisis, 
• medicine shortages, 
• the lethal — and still unacknowledged — Afghan exit, 
• more than 10 million illegal and unvetted immigrants salted throughout the country, 
• selling 200 million barrels of the national oil reserve without refilling, 
• and the backstabbing of ally Israel, the only functioning Middle Eastern democracy.

Other than that, the Biden-Harris administration seems like a totally competent crowd eager to continue this performance for four more years as part of a Harris-Walz administration trying to present itself as change. 

Polls in past years have undercounted Trump support, perhaps willfully, perhaps because many Trump supporters, so-called “shy voters,” hesitate to reveal their choice. For now, we must also hope that enough Americans are sufficiently judicious to perceive the ominous cloud that is the Biden-Harris record.