Kamala Harris has enjoyed three weeks of astonishing momentum by capturing the “hope” represented by Barack Obama’s presidential campaign while copying the “basement” strategy of Joe Biden. Starting tonight at a rally in Philadelphia, she is embarking on a whistle-stop tour of six swing states designed to fire up enthusiasm for her candidacy, while leaving little opportunity for the face-to-face interviews and media scrutiny that could create gaffes that Donald Trump can exploit.
This is her version of Keir Starmer’s “Ming vase” approach.
She has, however, taken one bold gamble today by shaking up her campaign with the choice of Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, as her running mate over the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, in his own Philadelphia backyard, no less.
If this costs her Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral college votes, her decision will be regarded as a disaster. Viewed from a different angle, it is another sign of her caution. The genial, folksy Walz, 60 a former football coach, army officer and teacher, has won the affection of her party after a series of negative blows on Shapiro, who is Jewish, over his long standing support for Israel. Harris is banking on the Obama “hope” part of her strategy to carry her through attacks on her for ducking a difficult controversy. Personal chemistry may be part of the decision. Shapiro, who has a high approval rating in his state of 61 per cent, was thought not to adapt easily to playing second fiddle, while Walz is everybody’s favourite uncle. The Republicans will try to portray him as an out-and-out leftist, but everybody knows a guy like Walz in the midwest.
Harris’s innate caution — mixed with a dash of bold decision-making — is driving Republicans to distraction
Walz is also a tried and tested attack dog, whose attacks on Trump’s running mate JD Vance and other Republicans for being “weird” went viral and suggest he could hammer the unpopular Vance in any vice-presidential debate. He comes from planet normal. Harris hopes that with his help she can gather into her tent all three vital midwestern battleground states including Michigan and Wisconsin, not just Pennsylvania.
Harris’s innate caution — mixed with a dash of bold decision-making — is driving Republicans to distraction. But Obama and Biden’s tactics produced 12 years of Democratic control of the White House, interrupted only briefly by Trump from 2016-2020. Why not borrow from them both?
If Harris can keep a grip on events, there are only two weeks to go before the razzmatazz of the Democratic national convention in Chicago on August 19. Then she will be into the presidential election home stretch, with early voting in some states starting in late September.
Trump, in contrast, is losing his touch and has responded in the only way he knows how — by doubling down on his meanness. The full anti-Obama attack manual is being deployed against Harris. There have been attempts to out her “Marxist” father, a Left-wing Stanford economist, and her “radical” pastor and mentor for criticising America (somewhat obliquely) after the 9/11 attacks. Have the Republicans forgotten they failed to stop Obama from winning? Last week, Trump lashed out at Harris at a conference of black journalists for being “Indian” before “she happened to turn black”.
It was a deliberately offensive hit-job on the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father.
Then at a rally in Atlanta, Trump tore into Brian Kemp, the popular Republican governor of Georgia, his wife, Marty, and Republican election officials for refusing to accept that the 2020 election was stolen. It sounded very like he was making excuses in advance for losing Georgia again. According to Eric Erickson, a conservative broadcaster: “If you want to understand the problem Trump created for himself in Georgia, today on the radio, nine out of 10 callers are women, and they’re all mad at him for attacking Brian Kemp’s wife.”
Charlie Sykes, a writer with the online publication The Bulwark said Trump had entered the “Fat Elvis” stage, playing his greatest hits to a shrinking body of fans. In the coming week Trump’s only scheduled event is in Montana. Perhaps at 78 he lacks the stamina for non-stop rallies and is afraid of giving off low-energy vibes to diminishing crowds. In Atlanta, Trump was mortified to see empty top-row seats at a stadium Harris had filled to capacity. Behind him, in full view of the television cameras, supporters waved puzzling “You’re fired” signs. The words “Lyin’ Kamala” — a nickname that has failed to catch on — were printed in such a light font as to be invisible.
To his credit, Trump has made himself more accessible to interviewers than Harris. On Monday, in a bid to emulate her success with Gen Z, Trump talked for over an hour to Adin Ross, a popular, 23-year-old YouTube streamer. Unfortunately, Ross is also a gamer friend of various white nationalists and the alleged rapist, Andrew Tate. I doubt female voters will be impressed.
As with the appointment of JD Vance as his running mate, Trump claimed his sons encouraged him to appear on Ross’s hyper-masculine show. Barron, 18, is said to be a fan. Apparently, 500,000 watched the live-stream at its peak, more than will show up for Harris’s rallies. But leaning into the “bro vote” rests on the gamble that young men will bother to go to the polls, while Harris is scooping up the more reliable women’s vote. For now, the genders are split: according to a CBS poll this week, women of all ages favour Harris over Trump by 54 to 45 per cent; while men prefer Trump by 54 to 45 per cent.
Harris is not just trying to emulate the excitement that surrounded Obama, but the precision with which he targeted the vote
On Monday, Harris moved into a 1.9 per cent lead in the website 538’s polling average, helped by a Morning Consult poll placing her four points ahead of Trump by 48 to 44 per cent. But not everything is going her way.
Causing further heartburn for the Democrats, Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff, the “second gentleman” of the United States, turns out to have cheated on his first wife with his young daughter’s teacher, who also served as the family nanny. Only the loyalty of Kristen Emhoff, his ex-wife, has prevented this from blowing up into a more of a scandal. Most dramatically of all, yesterday’s stock market plunge has given Trump an opening on who is best able to manage the economy by labelling fears of a recession the “Kamala crash”.
There is still time for Trump to derail Harris’s surging campaign. But she is not just trying to emulate the excitement that surrounded Obama, but the precision with which he targeted the vote. On Friday, Harris recruited David Plouffe to serve as a senior adviser to her campaign, along with other former top aides to Obama. I well remember how Plouffe destroyed Hillary Clinton’s hard-fought efforts in 2008 to become the Democratic presidential nominee.
Every time Clinton thought she was gaining ground on Obama, Plouffe would reply calmly, it’s too late. The “math” was against her. By this he meant Obama was piling up delegates in small, generally insignificant states to the point that she couldn’t catch up. In this campaign, it will be Plouffe’s job to deliver 270 winning electoral college votes for Harris — precinct by precinct in places the Republican party might have overlooked.
In this, as in so much else, Trump has been relying on young “bros” to get out the vote instead of the traditional Republican party apparatus. Perspiration as much as inspiration delivered for Obama.
Harris has shown she is willing to put in the hard work.
