After a week of polling following Joe Biden's sudden departure from the 2024 presidential race, the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is officially tight. The former president holds a small lead nationally and in the battleground states, giving Democrats new hope. It's also leading to some outright delusion.
On Saturday, several videos from The Villages, Florida, began to circulate on social media. They claimed to show a massive turnout for a golf cart parade promoting Harris.
If you don't know who Barbie Hall is, she's 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 itself is now a very red state.
Still, Hall was posting all day about how much of a big deal this supposedly was. In fact, her proclamations made it all the way to the top of the Democrat food chain. Here's DNC Chair Jaime Harrison declaring that Florida is now in play.
Nikki Fried is the former Florida agricultural commissioner turned failed gubernatorial candidate (she got blasted in the primary by Charlie Crist, an almost equally bad candidate). But because failing up is a Democrat tradition, Fried was immediately put in charge of the Democratic Party in her state. That's gone about as well as you'd expect.
So, just how big of a deal was this golf cart parade? The current population of The Villages is around 79,000 people. According to Hall, there were "over 200 golf carts" at this event (which seems like an overestimation based on the videos). Let's be generous and say that every single golf cart contained two people. That's 400 people showing up at the height of Harris' honeymoon period to drive around for a little while. Does that sound like a big deal to you? Or does it sound completely irrelevant and not at all indicative of anything happening in Florida?
Frankly, I hope Democrats actually believe this stuff. Please go dump millions of dollars in finite resources into the Sunshine State in the vain hope that Nikki Fried and company can deliver it in November. Heck, start placing ad buys right now. Have the vice president hold a rally down there.
I've made no bones about the fact that I think Harris is a legitimate threat and tougher to beat than Joe Biden. She can absolutely win this thing if Republicans don't take her seriously, but there's a difference between respecting one's opponent and abiding by their delusions. Florida is not in play, no matter how many golf cart parades The Villages has.