There was a time when the slugline “Reality Check!” was a much-trumpeted feature of the American media. It was the moment when your favourite TV network, or newspaper, stood back from an important news item, sifted the available information, interpreted the facts, and offered a conclusion. Watching that dramatic debate the other day between the manchild Trump and Harris, the deputy turned incumbent, those days appeared to be gone.

In the coinage of the current commentariat in the United States, Vice-President Harris “spanked” former President Trump. She “pitched the perfect game”, producing “the Harris smackdown”, while Trump was “barking mad,” “drunk on his ego and narcissism,” and “descending to his true self.” The New York Times, no less, the Paper of Record lest we forget, concluded: “Trump brought Darkness, Harris brought Light.” Note the capital letters.

But listen to pollsters and you learn that in the Electoral College, so devilishly created by the Founding Fathers, some very smart odds-makers still give Trump an edge — albeit by a whisker, and albeit with a serious warning for the candidate coming out of that debate. In the words of one Nate Silver, the only bookie-cum-pollster who gave Trump a shot at beating Hillary Clinton in 2016: “This was Trump’s election to lose. And he just might.” 

Trump still has a number of historically proven advantages in the head-to-head contest

Certainly, Trump can blow it. In these pages, having spent an extraordinary afternoon with him, I once credited the fellow with “mad genius”. Maybe it’s the ageing process — certainly, it’s his natural inclination to hear only himself — but candidate Trump has been flailing ever since Joe Biden gave up and handed this election fight to Kamala Harris. The man who once looked unbeatable has been struggling to make sense of it all — reduced to fulminating about why he doesn’t have that old President to kick around any more.

What is clear, however, is that Trump still has a number of historically proven advantages in the head-to-head contest. Despite the uptick in the economy of late under the Biden administration, the polls show that three-quarters of Americans believe the country is going in the wrong direction, with the economy the number one issue. Prices have risen by 20 per cent under Biden and Harris, and the polls have Trump leading her by 10 points plus on that front. 

Then there’s his hot-button issue of migration, and who immigrants are. Yes,Trump has peddled baseless conspiracy theories, and made himself the butt of comic memes, by spewing out the lie of Haitian immigrants eating the cats and dogs of a small town in Middle America. But more than 60 per cent of the country believes immigration is a real crisis — and half of America favours mass deportations, Trump’s latest gambit on the campaign trail.

“Forget about his penchant for lies, and his appetite for a dictator’s powers,” concludes one Democratic pollster, openly fearful of a repeat of Trump’s victory in 2016, “That’s baked into the decision of his supporters, to vote for him, come what may … On our side, we still have to bring our people home, and out, to vote for Harris. It’s an election where policy comes way behind feelings.”

Hard to know who to blame for that. Trump’s ranting, or his delusional claims about what his first term at the White House achieved, represent one factor in a campaign that has so clearly become Election Lite — bereft at times of serious policy discussion. Where’s the beef? On the other hand, factor in the Democrat strategy of keeping Harris away from detailed proposals on issue X, Y and Z — given her obvious loyalty to the unpopular Biden legacy, and more importantly, given her “ideological fluidity” (what a euphemism) on everything from fracking for oil and gas at home to Israel and Gaza abroad. Whither the beef?

“Our candidate has to stick to the issues, and Trump has been missing the opportunity to do so,” says Nikki Haley, once Trump’s rival for the Republican Party nomination, now a supporter in his camp. She points to polls that still say Trump represents change to 60 per cent of voters while Harris symbolises more of the same for almost as many. “We win on the pivotal issue of change, trust me.” 

Then look closely at the Electoral College, specifically the seven Swing States that will decide this battle. Harris, according to the latest numbers, leads narrowly in critical battlegrounds such as Michigan and Wisconsin, and is now competitive in the likes of North Carolina and Georgia, also ahead in the popular vote nationwide. But the lesson of 2016, and Trump’s unforeseen victory over Hillary Clinton, was that her clear superiority in votes cast across the country did not signal victory in those tight, key states, where, to quote that Democrat pollster:  “we know many folks go for Trump in the end, having told us they would not, their badge of shame hidden.”

This leads Nate Silver to believe that “Trump is still in reasonably good shape” and that the Democrats are wise to insist Harris remains the underdog in this final countdown. Yet he warns that “if that toss-up coin comes up tails for Trump, he’ll have let the election slip out of his grasp”. 

Certainly, the man who loves calling others losers is capable of losing. Still, despite the sound and fury about his temperament, and his vision, and his grasp on the truth, the election is still Trump’s to lose.