Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

The presidential election, if you can go by polls these days, appears essentially to be tied.

With all due respect to reputable pollsters, I am not sure there is any way for polls to be accurate these days.  Often, respondents who are asked to express a view don’t express an accurate one.

Still, I think Kamala Harris has one thing going for her in the final days of the campaign.  In a name:  Donald Trump.

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. put it this way:  “If the race turns Harris’s way, it will be because she used Trump’s wild rhetoric against him.”

More from Dionne:

“Vice President Kamala Harris has an indispensable ally as she closes her presidential campaign.   She carries messages from him nearly everywhere she goes.   His name is Donald Trump.

“At a United Auto Workers union hall in Lansing, Michigan on Friday, she showed video of Trump demeaning the labor of autoworkers by describing them as simply taking parts ‘out of a box’ and putting them together — ‘we could have our child do it,’ he claimed — and declaring his hatred of overtime pay.

“On Saturday night in Atlanta, the video presentation focused on a shamefully dismissive comment by Trump about Amber Thurman, who died in 2022 after being unable to access medical care because of the state’s abortion restrictions.  Trump, Harris said, was ‘cruel,’ and ‘still refuses to take accountability, to take any accountability, for the pain and suffering he has caused.’

“For Republican-leaning voters who can’t stomach Trump but are reluctant to vote Democrat, she has highlighted the threat he poses to freedom and constitutional democracy.  Clips of Trump describing his political opponents as ‘the enemy within’ and threatening to use the military against them make the point more dramatically than anything a critic could say.

“And if Harris is looking to back up her new ad calling Trump ‘unhinged, unstable, unchecked,’ he provided pornographic evidence by admiring the size of golfing luminary Arnold Palmer’s p____.”  [I use the blank because I can’t find a way to type the full word, but you get the drift, right?]

Dionne continues that “Trump’s indiscipline offers Harris a chance to seize back the momentum she enjoyed from three surges:  Her buoyant emergence after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, the success of the Democrat convention, and her pummeling of Trump in their single debate.”

Like some analysts, Dionne suggests that Harris’ closing forays should focus on female voters and “an overlapping group of college-educated moderates and moderate conservatives.”

Or, what about Black voters who, some analysts argue, are turning toward Trump?

For my part, here in the cheap seats out West, I find that hard to believe, at least in large numbers that could include the election result. 

Similarly, Dionne writes,  “Black political leaders largely dismiss talk of a substantial defection to Trump among Black men — ‘I almost brought my husband here with me to dispel that,’ Detroit City Councilmember Latisha Johnson joked at a Harris early-vote rally here on Saturday.”

One other thrust for Harris.

Dionne says she can “into Trump’s blue-collar vote by reminding union members of Trump’s attitudes toward labor, as she did at the Lansing UAW rally, hitting Trump hard on tax cuts for the wealthy and contrasting the loss of manufacturing jobs under Trump with the revival of manufacturing under Biden.” So, I say, Harris go!  Take Trump with you to every venue and report how ba