Harris Sails; Trump Flails - Rob Horowitz

Harris Sails; Trump Flails - Rob Horowitz

The political winds firmly at her back, Kamala Harris sailed through week 3 of her campaign, holding 10,000 people plus rallies with her new running-mate Tim Walz right beside her in the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada. The enthusiastic reception at each of these stops dominated the national and local news.  Focused on an upbeat vision of America’s future, these appearances were buttressed and amplified by new ads filling in the vice president’s biography and framing her as a champion of the middle class.

 

In a telling contrast. Donald Trump punctuated a particularly light week of campaigning with a one-hour news conference in which he aired his familiar grievances, told some new tall tales, and displayed moments of extreme annoyance and petulance.  He continued to falsely insist that he won the 2020 election, champion the January 6 “hostages” while failing to take any responsibility for his own role, and disgracefully attack Harris’ biracial identity.

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The most bizarre moment (and there were plenty from which to choose): when the former president told the assembled reporters that the crowd for his speech on January 6 was the same or larger than the one for Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.  More than 6 times as many people were present for King’s speech than for Trump’s. 

 

That’s the least of it, however.  Even for Donald Trump, comparing a speech in which he falsely and bitterly refused to accept the results of an election in a desperate last-minute effort to cling to power to an iconic speech full of hope and optimism in which King challenged America to live up to its founding documents and realize its full promise is politically tone deaf.  This is even before you get to the fact that Trump’s speech was immediately followed by his supporters invading and defacing the Capitol, forcing a delay in the usually routine ratification of the Electoral College results, and injuring 174 police officers in the process.

 

As Harris continues to move ahead in the polls, now leading nationally and in a sufficient number of the key battlegrounds, Trump continues to flail.  While the former president’s campaign is attempting to roll out a potentially potent and poll-tested line of attack on Harris’ as too liberal, Mr. Trump’s amping up the racism, and reprising his 2020 election falsehoods are in the way of effectively delivering this message.  At the same time, Mr. Trump who remains unpopular is reminding swing voters of what they dislike most about him.

 

At a time when voters are dissatisfied with the status quo and want change, Harris, with her emphasis on what she will do as president, her relative youth, and her upbeat tone, has emerged as the “change” candidate in the race, despite being the incumbent vice-president. In this effort, she has been greatly assisted by Donald Trump’s harping on his backward-looking gripes that mainly center on how he believes he has been mistreated.  At this moment, Harris looks like the future and Trump, the past.  That what makes the chant of “We’re Not Going Back” at Harris rallies politically effective.

 

It is important, though, to realize that this is a moment in time. This race remains close.  Despite his hollow protestations that he is still “leading by a lot,” Donald Trump understands that his lead has slipped away, and his top campaign advisors know that with certainty.  That explains his change of attitudes on debates. At the beginning of the Harris’ candidacy, the former president announced he would not appear at the scheduled ABC debate, arguing that was an agreement with Joe Biden, not Harris.  He led off last week’s off-the-rails media conference, proclaiming that he was now going to do the ABC debate and challenged the vice president to two other debates.

 

For right now, however, Kamala Harris is at least metaphorically singing “Happy Days Are Here Again,” and Donald Trump is “crying in his beer.” In American politics, it's nearly always better to be the future-oriented, happy warrior.