If you somehow missed the Teamsters news this week your best bet is to go back and read what Beege wrote here. The very short version is that after polling its membership, it became clear that a solid majority supported Trump over Harris. Ultimately, the group declined to endorse anyone for president which doesn't make a lot of sense unless you consider that unions are almost universally left leaning. So the decision not to endorse Harris was a pretty big deal and really a win for Trump, who took it that way.

Today, Politico has a story up saying Democrats are privately pretty worried about this non-endorsement. It's a possible sign that, despite what the polls show, Trump has a lot of blue collar support in the rust belt.

“Candidly, Trump has a solid, solid base of working-class people that have bought into his message,” said Jimmy Williams, president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, which has endorsed Harris. “It’s movable and it’s been moving. But it’s not like some tide that’s turned.”

Some Teamsters leaders have questioned the methodology of the polling showing Trump winning majority support among the union’s members. But one pro-Harris union official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely, spoke in dire terms about it. The person said it is a “red flag” that is reminiscent of the 2016 election, when Hillary Clinton underperformed among union households despite winning the majority of top labor endorsements.

“Hard not to have HRC flashbacks right now, to be honest, that stuff might be wrong beneath the surface,” the official said. “I hope it’s not.”

HRC flashbacks sounds awful. I think the accepted treatment for that is to visit Wisconsin and blame subsequent symptoms on Russia.

In any case, another anonymous Democrat in Pennsylvania told Politico that Harris was in danger of blowing it by not resorting to the oldest page in the Dems' playbook. "She should be coming in on Medicare and Social Security like non-f***ing-stop," they said.

But of course the Harris campaign doesn't have a candidate who can take questions and give answers so they are handing the scare-mongering into TV ads which claim Republicans support "severe cuts to Medicare and Social Security." So far it doesn't seem to be working.

One poll, conducted on behalf of the labor-aligned Alliance for Retired Americans, found that Democrats had just a 1- to 2-percentage point advantage on those issues compared with the GOP. The group’s pollster described it as “concerningly tight, given the party’s historic advantages on these issues,” according to a memo released last month...

“When races are decided by thousands of votes, and you see a warning sign, like numbers on Social Security and Medicare, you need to take it seriously,” said Jason McGrath, a Democratic pollster who led the survey.

Another Democratic strategist in Michigan sounded a bit desperate. They told Politico, "She’s got to shore up those voters." But, again, how do you do that when you're also worried about the next word salad that will come out of your candidate's mouth?

Still, the Trump camp isn't in a position to celebrate. Several polls show him now trailing slightly in Pennsylvania. A Washington Post poll published yesterday said it was a dead heat:

Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump are locked in a statistical tie in Pennsylvania, according to a Washington Post poll of a state that many analysts see as the battleground most likely to determine the outcome of the presidential election...

After excluding minor candidates, Harris and Trump are both at 48 percent among likely voters, with Harris at 48 percent and Trump at 47 percent among registered voters.

This race could come down to a few thousand votes, with men mostly siding with Trump and women mostly siding with Harris. Democrats are right to worry their candidate could blow this, but with the race this close you get the sense that it could be decided by national or international news neither candidate can control.

If, for instance, there's another assassination attempt (let's hope not) or an escalating war with Israel, that could be decisive in the final days. There's enough political valence to almost any major event to shift a few thousand votes. What Trump has going for him now is that he's better at thinking on his feet than Harris who seems to require a lot of careful preparation and a tele-prompter to tell us what she believes.