Kamala Harris’s campaign for president has stalled. The momentum generated by her coronation in Chicago last month has dissipated.
It’s possible that his peak popularity has already passed, and that his much-hyped “vibe” is just a memory, whatever it was.
He remains in a stronger position than his boss Joe Biden, who was floundering against Trump before being forcibly removed by Democratic Party bigwigs. But he has already lost momentum after a stellar start to his presidential campaign. He is certainly not distancing himself from his rival and may even be backing off a bit.
By any measure, the race for the White House in 2024 remains very close.
The latest national polls give Harris a two- to three-point lead over Trump, which is within the usual margin of error for polling. Trump can lose the popular vote and still win the presidency, as he did in 2016. More importantly, polls in key battleground states are even closer, so both sides still have everything at stake.
Kamala Harris’s campaign for president has stalled. The momentum generated by her coronation in Chicago last month has dissipated.
The latest national polls give Harris a two to three point lead over Trump, which is within the usual margin of error for polls.
CNN’s latest poll gives Trump a five-point lead in Arizona, Harris a six-point lead in Wisconsin and a five-point lead in Michigan. In both states, Harris is doing significantly better than Biden.
But in Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania the gap is minimal, and just one point between them. In Pennsylvania, perhaps the key state of all, the gap is almost equal, with both candidates getting 47 percent.
Harris’s best hope is that Trump continues his petty, unfocused, aimless campaign, based on pathetic personal insults rather than attacking his miserable record and policy shifts. There is little indication that Harris knows how to get her campaign back on track without Trump’s help. Harris’s team has hermetically sealed off from all unscripted human interaction.
Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, are not running a textbook campaign. Oddly, they don’t have much power. But at least between them they have given more than 30 interviews, allowing for some degree of scrutiny of their stance.
Harris survived last week’s tightly controlled CNN interview without any major gaffes, though she failed to establish herself as a powerhouse. Her campaign managers are unwilling to take any more risks. They are keeping her out of harm’s way by avoiding media scrutiny and impromptu interactions like the plague.
This is being taken to ridiculous extremes. As he walked from his limousine to Air Force Two on Monday, he ostentatiously placed headphones in both ears, held the phone in his hand and acted as if he were listening intently.
This is a well-known ruse to avoid media questions, stating “I can’t talk, I’m on an important call.” The problem is that Harris isn’t very good at it. She was clearly cosplaying (badly) and someone should tell her that when she wears headphones she doesn’t need to hold the phone to her ear. Harris is well-loved in Hollywood, but this performance didn’t win her any Oscars.
It’s rather unfortunate for someone who aspires to be leader of the free world, but one can understand her team’s concerns. There’s something disturbingly false and shallow about her.
On Wednesday, at a rally in New Hampshire, she went off-script to condemn the latest heinous shooting, this time at a Georgia high school. You could almost hear Team Harris’s heart beating. And rightly so, because her ad-lib about the tragic murder of four people began with her ad-lib: “I love Gen Z. I just love Gen Z.”
It’s weird. Democrats like to paint Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, as weird people. I get that, but I think Harris could also be categorized in the same category.
I suspect Harris will have to fight to get her campaign back on track almost as much as Trump. She is running a presidential campaign that looks like a Potemkin village: look behind the facade and there is nothing there. Her website is not yet loaded with anything so vulgar as a policy. It is a pop-up campaign that has lost its novelty and already looks frayed around the edges. After all, pop-ups are not built to last.
Nor did Tim Walz, her running mate, turn out to be the asset she had hoped for: the down-to-earth, no-nonsense Western dad chosen to counter Trump’s attacks that she is a San Francisco radical.
It turns out that humble Tim, actually a left-wing governor of a left-wing state (Minnesota), is all too often oblivious to the truth for someone who would be one step away from the Oval Office. Or, as my elderly mother would have said, he is a liar.
He lied when he ran for Congress in 2006 about his 1995 arrest for drunk and reckless driving, and was caught driving under the influence in his home state of Nebraska at 96 mph in a 55 mph zone. He claimed it was all a misunderstanding. In 2018 he had to admit it was entirely true.
He lied again when he claimed that he owed his two children to IVF treatment that he said Vance wanted to ban. His wife had to explain that she had not resorted to IVF. Vance (or Trump) do not want to ban IVF either.
He lied for the third time, claiming he had carried weapons “in war” when, during his entire time in the Army National Guard, he had never been deployed to a war zone.
And he was at least tempered with the truth in taking credit as a football coach for turning a team of losers into state champions. Turns out he was a volunteer assistant coach, not the head coach.
Walz has become synonymous with promulgating self-serving half-truths.
Some of his extended family in Nebraska have said they will vote for Trump. To be fair, they have only a vague connection to him. More damaging was his brother’s saying he was not the “kind of character” one would want in the White House. And brothers can cause serious problems for prominent candidates. Just ask Jimmy Carter.
Nor did Tim Walz, her running mate, turn out to be the asset she had hoped for: the down-to-earth, no-nonsense Western father chosen to counter Trump’s attacks.
Moreover, Walz seems as determined as Harris to avoid proper media scrutiny. When asked at a Minnesota fair about the killing of six hostages, including an American, in Gaza, he simply turned tail and ran. This was not the time to extol his vice presidential credentials.
The campaign is reportedly refusing to subject him to any significant media questioning, arguing that he “might not have full control of Harris’s position on every issue,” which I think is fair enough. Harris doesn’t either.
Both Harris and Trump are currently focused on their battles for the base. Both are campaigning to ensure maximum turnout from their cult following. Neither is doing much to reach out beyond their base to moderates and independents who have not yet decided how to vote. Whoever does that first and effectively will likely win in November.
This is what makes next Tuesday’s Trump-Harris debate in Philadelphia so crucial. It was rightly said that the first party to get rid of its gerontocratic candidate would take the lead. The Democrats did just that, and that’s why they’re back in the race.
Now the outcome could eventually be determined by which candidate can appeal beyond his or her base.
I doubt we’ll ever see a debate as decisive as the one in late June that dashed Biden’s hopes of running again. But the winner on Tuesday night will be the one who can reach beyond his true supporters. The stakes couldn’t be higher.