The road to the White House goes through major markets in swing states — Atlanta, Raleigh, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Milwaukee, to name just a handful.
With this in mind, an open question as the presidential race evolves toward its final form of Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris: Which of the two major-party campaigns is best equipped to appeal to and turn out people outside its respective base, the once-every-four-years voters likely to decide the nail-biter contests in the battleground states?
Who has a message suited to less-than-partisan female voters or the young, for example?
Until a few days ago, the polls were saying former President Trump was winning the argument — making inroads with black and Hispanic voters against decrepit President Biden, capitalizing on the contrast established at last month’s presidential debate.
But as we know, the game has changed. And that’s bearing out in the national polls each day, which are suggesting the tide is turning against the GOP ticket at a most inopportune time.
Recent surveys show a margin-of-error race nationally. In a Reuters poll conducted Monday and Tuesday, for instance, Harris leads Trump, 44% to 42%. And a Marist/NPR survey run Tuesday shows Trump up 46% to 45% in a two-person race, while Harris ties him at 42% in a field including other candidates such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Libertarian Chase Oliver, Jill Stein and Cornel West.
The remarkable thing about these numbers? They follow a series of events that should have buoyed Trump: his survival of an assassination attempt, a Republican National Convention that showcased his doting family and a united party and the running-mate choice of JD Vance, with whom Trump says he has “chemistry.”
And they come as Republicans have spent years defining Vice President Harris as a ridiculous figure — from monikers like “Cackling Kamala” (a Trump-campaign device) to aspersions about her long-ago relationship with ex-San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. Apolitical women will particularly see these attacks as fresh proof of their struggle to get respect from men who would marginalize once they’re done objectifying them.
Will they identify with Kamala Harris and her TBD veep pick? Or will they side with Trump and JD Vance, who memorably called Dems like Harris — he named her specifically — “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made” and “want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”
That’s the question that should keep senior Trump campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles up at night.
And rank-and-file Republicans, of whom just 3% believe Harris can win, per a poll YouGov conducted this week.
Team Trump appears to be doubling down on its scorched-earth Harris policy, as The Bulwark’s Marc Caputo notes. It plans to dust off the Lee Atwater 1988 playbook, attempting to define former prosecutor Harris with various “Willie Horton”-style attacks in a move bound to backfire.
For one thing, Trump has already derived maximum benefit from a “tough guy” image. Unlike George H.W. Bush running to succeed Ronald Reagan, he hasn’t had to deal with magazines charging him with being a “wimp.”
For another, there is a vast difference between the hapless Michael Dukakis and a sitting vice president who can engage the Democratic fundraising machine that went dormant in recent weeks.
And finally, this simply isn’t 1988. There’s no turning back the clock — especially against a candidate mainstream media will give every opportunity to succeed, in addition to scads of paid spots for the next 100+ days. And especially against a candidate women and black voters — key parts of the Democratic coalition — will want to boost.
Indeed, Dems are betting on it being 2008 again, with a generational candidate against a past-his-prime presidential hopeful and a callow running mate. Team Trump needs to be sure to prove them decidedly wrong, as John McCain and Sarah Palin failed to do back then.
Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio says the race will reset — eventually.
He asserts voters’ “discontent over the economy, inflation, crime, the open border, housing costs” will end the Harris “honeymoon.”
For the sake of Trump, Vance and the future of the GOP, Fabrizio had better be right. And it needs to happen soon, before Harris starts leading outside the margin of error in polls, at which point her election will seem inevitable to the casual voters who will decide November.