July 1, 2019--18.1 Million

A number of friends have given me grief recently, accusing me of being too "gloomy" and obsessed with what I have been writing about the Democratic candidates seeking the 2020 nomination.

I will admit to being obsessed with this, an endlessly long seven months before the Iowa caucuses. Not necessarily a good thing, but since it is urgent that we nominate someone who has the best chance to unseat Trump I feel it is none-too-soon to, well, be at least a little obsessed.

If Biden is the one, so be it; if now after Thursday's debate Kamala Harris is the one, even better.

My gloom, though, has been that neither they nor any of the other frontrunners thus far--for example, Elizabeth Warren (a rising star) or Bernie Sanders (a waning star)--lift my spirits when I imagine them going toe-to-toe with Trump.

But then there were the 18.1 million who watched the debate live Thursday night--the Harris-Biden night--which make me feel less gloomy.

Conventional wisdom suggests that the public has the good sense not to pay serious attention to national elections until after Labor Day just two months before the actual voting. And so to have a record number tuning in to the debate two months before the first of the two Labor Days  prior to the voting suggests an inordinate level of interest in the Democratic campaign on the part of the electorate.

As a result I feel my gloom lifting.

If you add the 15.3 million who watched the first half of the debate (let's call it the Warren half since most observers feel she won) that means a total of 33.4 million watched both halves, easily surpassing the record 24 million viewers who looked in on the first of the Trump debates on Fox in 2016 as his popularity was peaking.

This is significant since pollsters say that most important when attempting to predict voting outcomes of those voters most likely to actually turn out to vote are the number of "engaged" or enthusiastic voters. One measure of this is who pays attention and who gets involved early in the process. By this measure it may in fact be looking better for Democrats than I have been fretfully speculating.

I promise to try to cheer up and even write a few more happy pieces at the request of my friend John. Pieces, he urges, not about politics. And so for Tuesday I will try to finish a piece I'm working on about when as a 10-year-old I turned my family's East Flatbush apartment into a sweatshop.

Kamala Harris