The road to the White House will pass through key battleground states, including Atlanta, Raleigh, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Milwaukee.
With this in mind, as the presidential election moves toward its Donald Trump-Kamala Harris finale, an open question remains: Which side of the two major parties is best equipped to appeal to and encourage voters outside of their respective bases — the once-every-four-year electorate that will likely decide the outcome of close races in battleground states?
For example, who has the right message for less partisan female voters or young people?
Until a few days ago, polls had shown former President Trump winning the debate and using contrasts established in last month’s presidential debates to garner support among black and Hispanic voters against a weakened President Biden.
But as we all know, things have changed. And that is borne out by daily national polls suggesting that the tide is turning against Republican candidates at the most inopportune time.
Recent polls have shown the race nationally within the margin of error: A Reuters poll conducted Monday and Tuesday, for example, showed Harris leading Trump 44% to 42%, while a Marist/NPR poll conducted Tuesday showed Trump leading the two-way race 46% to 45%, while Harris was tied with Trump at 42%, with other candidates including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Chase Oliver of the Libertarian Party, Jill Stein and Cornel West.
What’s remarkable about these numbers is that they come after a series of events that should have been an encouragement to Trump: surviving an assassination attempt, a Republican National Convention where he touted his loving family and party unity, and his selection of J.D. Vance as his running mate, with whom Trump said he would get along well.
Republicans have long painted Harris as a fool, hurling everything from the nickname “Kamala Laughs,” a nickname used by Trump campaign staff, to denunciations of her past relationship with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. Nonpolitical women, in particular, see the attacks as further evidence of their struggle to gain the respect of men who objectify them and then alienate them.
Will they sympathize with Kamala Harris and her undecided running mate? Or will they side with Trump and J.D. Vance, who famously called Democrats like Harris (specifically naming her) “a bunch of childless catwomen who are miserable about their lives and the choices they’ve made” and who “want the rest of the country to be miserable, too?”
That’s the question that keeps Trump campaign senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Suzie Wiles up at night.
And a YouGov poll this week found that only 3% of rank-and-file Republicans believe Harris can win.
The Trump campaign appears to be stepping up its scorched earth tactics against Harris. Bulwark Mark Caputo points out that the party is trying to revitalize Lee Atwater’s 1988 playbook by attacking former prosecutor Harris with a variety of “Willie Horton”-style attacks, a move that is sure to backfire.
First, Trump already benefits greatly from his “tough guy” image: Unlike Ronald Reagan’s would-be successor, George H. W. Bush, Trump was never accused of being a “weakling” by the magazines.
And there’s a big difference between the hapless Michael Dukakis and a sitting vice president who can mobilize a Democratic fundraising machine that has been dormant in recent weeks.
And finally, this simply isn’t 1988. You can’t turn back the clock, especially not for a candidate who the mainstream media will give every opportunity to succeed and who will be backed by a ton of paid advertising space over the next 100+ days, and especially not for a candidate who women and black voters, key parts of the Democratic coalition, want to support.
In fact, Democrats are betting on a repeat of 2008, pitting the candidate of a generation against a presidential candidate past his prime and an inexperienced running mate, and the Trump team will have to prove them obviously wrong, just as John McCain and Sarah Palin could not.
Tony Fabrizio, a pro-Trump pollster, said the race will eventually be reset.
He argues that voters’ “dissatisfaction with the economy, inflation, crime, open borders and housing costs” will end Harris’ “honeymoon.”
For the sake of Trump, Vance, and the future of the Republican Party, Fabrizio had better be right. And that needs to happen soon, before Harris starts to lead the polls beyond the margin of error, which would make her victory inevitable for the rank-and-file voters who will decide the outcome of November’s election.
