Just over a week ago, at the Rolling Sun literary festival in Westport, the two-person panel was asked to identify who they thought would win the US Presidential election. My cowardice outweighed my sense of contextual duty, and I refused. Professor Diarmaid Ferriter, however, had more courage, naming Donald Trump as the likely winner.

What was fascinating about the audience reaction was how muted it was. More of a shrug than a shocked collective indrawn breath. Yup, that shrug said. It’s over. Kamala’s done.

Until the last ballots are counted, we cannot know if Ferriter was correct. Democrat supporters can continue to hope. But what we do know is that the Harris campaign, so filled with joy and possibility at the outset, has reduced and wrinkled like an abandoned balloon, and – it can be argued - largely because of Democrat inability to follow public emotion. Instead of registering the public positivity generated by the combination of Harris and Walz in every venue, led by her amazing smile, instead of keeping going on their media-avoidance, which was working a treat, the campaign yielded. It yielded to the voices (led by Trump) bellowing that Harris wasn’t able for rigorous questioning by media.

There’s a word for what happened. Perseveration. No, not perseverance. 

Perseveration. It’s a thing pilots in trouble do. They repeat the actions that have failed to work. It’s a function of panic and pressure. 

You can train a pilot away from that lethal behaviour. A presidential campaign, with its inevitable scared group-think in the face of incoming poll and other data, is much more difficult to manage.

Walz fumbling the ball in his debate with JD Vance was possibly a catalyst. He (and inferentially, Harris) were no longer lovable on sight, demonstrably more competent and principled than their opponents. Then the Harris interview where she said she’d shoot an intruder in her home scared those around her, although no evidence suggests it moved floating voters – the only ones who matter – away from her. It is clear that a feeling grew that something different had to be done, and that included Harris subjecting herself to one-to-one interviews. Particularly with hostile interviewers on hostile stations. That would show ‘em.

What it showed, in the case of a TV interview on Fox, was that Kamala Harris has boundless courage and refuses to be silenced. The Democrats were air-fisting when she demanded to be allowed to speak. What they missed was that when given space, she said nothing, using many words, which is an unfortunate characteristic. 

Mainstream media, the following day, majored on her fight back, but left no impression of the delivery of a quotable, memorable appeal. Which speaks to an unacknowledged Harris problem, which, like the clue in the Edgar Alan Poe story, is and always has been, in plain sight: that, once she’s being negatively questioned, something happens to her cognitive process with the result that she cannot obey the most basic rules of public political communication. She cannot give imaginable specifics. She cannot tell stories, paint pictures, deliver the lines that would halt a floating voter and make them go “maybe.” 

Perseveration – defined as “the continual involuntary repetition of a thought or behaviour” became more energetic and committed in the last week. The Obamas did their best, but their best looked panicky and almost reproachful of the electorate. They were instructive and anxious, her more anxious than him. 

Next up was the presence of showbiz stars, some appearing with Kamala in states where she never had a realistic chance of winning. Here again, the impression left was dangerously close to the impression left by Hillary Clinton’s campaign: both hang around with billionaire A-listers. That was never going to persuade struggling floaters to vote for Kamala and Walz.

Around this time, joy was abandoned in favour of attack. As was humour. Trump – you should pardon the expression – trumped Harris with those shots of him serving fries out the window of a McDonald’s. Relatable in one second. Compare that with a brief video put out by her campaign. Planted beside an American flag, she talks for just over a minute, from notes. Why no autocue? Probably because Trump has publicly claimed that she’s incapable of speech without an autocue. So she feels she must react and correct him.

Not only is she not using an autocue, but she’s misusing her notes. Any fool with experience in media training would have told her to put the card/script forward and tilted, making it easy to glance down and hoover up the key words. Instead, it’s so badly positioned that she’s repeatedly looking down, reducing eye-contact with the viewer and appearing hesitant. This, remember, in a video filmed by her own campaign, over which they had total control.

That video left no vision of an American future under its first woman president. None. It was devoted – as was the Clinton campaign in its final days – to attacking Trump as a latter-day Nazi. It didn’t work for Hillary, why would it work for Kamala? 

The floating voter wants hope. They always do. Hope and excitement and possibility. 

Instead of that, Kamala Harris gave them a re-run of Hillary’s dispiriting run, with some added nasties, like Liz Cheney supposedly wooing Republican women by inviting them to secretly vote for Kamala and then lie to their family about it. Now, there’s a Unique Selling Point that is guaranteed not to sell.

Opinion polls rarely catch the point at which campaigns run out of steam. They can’t. It’s emotional, rather than statistical – the excitement and conviction soften to a lethal degree. Harris may still get it over the line. But if she doesn’t, its because of the Democrat addiction.