Kamala Harris’ campaign for president has stalled. What momentum came out of her coronation in Chicago last month has dissipated.
His peak popularity may be over, the ‘vibe’ he had for most of it is a memory, whatever.
He remains in a stronger position than his predecessor Joe Biden, who ran against Trump before being forcibly removed by Democratic Party officials. But he has lost momentum after a stellar start to his presidential bid. He certainly doesn’t back down from his challenges and may even back down a bit.
However you cut it, the 2024 race for the White House continues to heat up.
The latest national polls give Harris a two- to three-point lead over Trump, which is within the usual polling margin of error. Trump can lose the popular vote and still win the presidency, as he did in 2016. More importantly, the polls in key battleground states are closer, so both sides still have a lot to play for.
Kamala Harris’ campaign for president has stalled. What momentum came out of 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 polling margin of error.
The latest CNN poll gives Trump a five-point lead in Arizona, Harris a six-point lead in Wisconsin and five points in Michigan. In both states, Harris did better than Biden.
But in Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania nip and tuck, with barely a single point separating them. In Pennsylvania, perhaps the most important swing state of all, even-Stevens with two candidates at 47 percent.
Harris’s best hope is that Trump continues with an unfocused, unfocused campaign based on sloppy personal insults rather than record attacks and policy flip-flops. There’s no telling if Harris knows how to get the show back on the road without Trump’s help. Harris’s team has been hermetically sealed off from all unscripted human interaction.
Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, hardly ran a textbook campaign. It is curiously underpowered. But at least between them he has given more than 30 interviews, so it can be examined where he stands.
Harris survived a controlled CNN interview last week without major problems, although she was hardly a woman of note. His campaign manager didn’t think to take any more risks. He kept them out of harm’s way by avoiding media scrutiny and unscripted interactions like the plague.
This is being carried to ridiculous lengths. When he walked from the limo to Air Force Two there he ostentatiously put headphones in both ears, holding the phone in his hand and acting like he was listening intently.
This is a well-known ploy to avoid media questions, signaling ‘can’t talk, I’m on an important call’. The problem is Harris isn’t very good. He’s clearly cosplaying (badly) and someone should tell you that if you’re using earbuds, you don’t need to hold your phone to your ear. Harris is loved by Hollywood but in this performance he is not an Oscar winner.
It’s all a bit pathetic for someone who wants to be the leader of the free world. But you can understand his team’s concerns. There was something disturbingly phoney and shallow about him.
On Wednesday at a rally in New Hampshire, he went off script to condemn the latest shooting atrocity, this time at a Georgia high school. You can almost hear Tim Harris’s heart palpitating. With good reason, because he extemporising about the tragic murder of the four began with his riffing: ‘I’m Generation Z. I only love Generation Z.’
Weird. Democrats like to paint Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, as eccentrics. I can see that. But I think you can file Harris in the same category.
I suspect Harris will struggle to get his campaign back on track almost as much as Trump. They run the Potemkin village of the president’s offer: look behind the facade and there is nothing. His website is still unencumbered by vulgar policies. It’s a pop-up campaign that has lost its novelty and is already looking frayed at the edges. Pop-ups, after all, aren’t built to last.
Nor was Tim Walz, her running mate, an asset she hoped for — her homeless, no-nonsense, no-nonsense father was chosen to counter Trump’s attacks that he was a San Francisco radical.
It turns out that Tim down at home, actually the left-wing governor of a left-wing state (Minnesota), is too often ignorant of the truth for someone just a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. Or, as my old mother used to say, she became a fiber.
He fibbed while running for Congress in 2006 about a 1995 arrest for drunken and reckless driving, caught DUI in his home state of Nebraska doing 96mph in a 55mph zone. It’s all a misunderstanding he claims. In 2018 he had to admit that everything was right.
He fibbed again when he claimed to owe two children for IVF treatment which, he said, Vance wanted to ban. The husband should explain that he does not use IVF. Also Vance (or Trump) wants to ban IVF.
He fibbed a third time by insisting that he carried weapons ‘in combat’ when, during his time in the Army National Guard, he was never deployed to a war zone.
And he is most economical with the truth by claiming credit as a football coach for turning a losing team into a state champion. Turns out he was a volunteer assistant coach, not a head coach.
Walz has become synonymous with self-proclaimed half-truths.
A group of families in Nebraska have said they voted for Trump. To be fair, they were only related to him. Even more damaging is that his sister said he was not the ‘type of character’ they wanted in the White House. And siblings can cause serious problems for important candidates. Ask Jimmy Carter.
Nor was Tim Walz, her running mate, an asset she wanted — her homeless, no-nonsense, no-nonsense father was chosen to counter Trump’s attacks.
In addition, Walz seems like Harris to avoid proper media scrutiny. When asked at the Minnesota fair about the killing of six hostages, including an American, in Gaza he simply ran and ran. This is not the time to raise the vice president’s credentials.
The campaign reportedly refused to comply with a major broadcast interrogation on the basis that “they do not have a full command of where Harris is on every issue”. Which I think is fair enough. Neither did Harris.
Harris and Trump are now concentrating on the battle for the base. Both campaigned to ensure the maximum number of cult followers. Neither has done anything to extend their base to moderates and independents who have not yet decided to vote. Whichever is first and most effective will win in November.
This is what makes next Tuesday’s Trump v Harris debate in Philadelphia so important. It is rightly said that the first party to eliminate gerontocrat candidates will take the initiative. Democrats are doing just that, so they’re back in the race.
Now the final result can be determined by the candidates who can appeal beyond the base.
I doubt we’ll ever see another debate as important as the one at the end of June that dashed Biden’s hopes of running again. But the winner on Tuesday night is someone who can reach beyond the true believers. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
