Harris faces questions about campaign strategy in final stretch
BY ALEX GANGITANO AND NIALL STANAGE - 10/23/24 5:41 PM ET
Democrats are hoping Vice President Harris can turn her campaign around amid perceptions — fueled by recent polling — that former President Trump has the momentum in the final stretch of the race. Concerns are rising, even among those supportive of Harris, about elements of her campaign strategy.
Harris held no campaign rallies on either Tuesday or Wednesday, focusing instead on two sit-down interviews, with NBC News and Telemundo, and a CNN town hall event.
She will visit Texas on Friday, a red state that she has no realistic chance of winning. Her campaign has indicated she will use that trip to focus on the Lone Star State’s restrictive abortion laws, underscoring an issue where she has a big advantage over Trump.
But a trip to a safe GOP state inside the final two weeks of an uncomfortably tight election seems a questionable decision to some skeptics. Trump is forecast to have a 87 percent chance of winning Texas, according to Decision Desk HQ/The Hill’s prediction model.
On top of all that, Harris began the week with a one-day tour of the “blue wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin with former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.). Team Harris believes the endorsement of figures like Cheney could help pull undecided voters into the vice president’s column.
But critics, especially on the left, questioned the wisdom of taking the hawkish Cheney — the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney — to Michigan. The Wolverine State is home to more than 200,000 Arab Americans, many of whom are outraged about the Biden-Harris administration’s staunch backing of Israel through its assault on Gaza and invasion of Lebanon.
“If someone would have told me that in 2024 we would be celebrating the endorsement of a war criminal like Dick Cheney by a Democratic nominee,” Dearborn, Mich., Mayor Abdullah Hammoud (D), whose city is majority Arab American, told The Hill TV’s “Rising” on Wednesday.
Hammoud said with evident dismay that the elder Cheney’s endorsement “does not work in this community.”
Even though he is a Democrat, Hammoud said he was telling people simply to vote, especially in downballot races, not whom to vote for.
“When you arrive at the top of the ticket … what I endorse is that you vote your moral conscience,” he said.
The conflict in the Middle East aside, however, there is of course an argument to be made for the moves Harris is making.
Supportive Democrats believe her appeal to the center ground can help win over the sliver of undecided voters who could deliver victory — and avoid a repeat of the party’s 2016 nightmare, when Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in a shocking outcome.
“The next two weeks is a needle-in-a-haystack hunt for undecided voters. The airwaves in battleground states are completely cluttered, so the Harris campaign has to use novel voter turnout innovations like untraditional campaign surrogates and media platforms, and micro- persuasion,” said former Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), who ran the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2011 to 2015.
Harris has also been emphasizing Trump’s most controversial or outlandish comments, playing clips of him during her rallies. She gave remarks Wednesday to highlight former White House chief of staff John Kelly’s comments that Trump fits the definition of a “fascist” and that the former president wanted the military to be like “Hitler’s generals” in terms of loyalty.
Israel argued that using Trump’s own comments is a strong strategy in the final days.
“They also have to continue to exploit Trump’s disturbing impulses, like referring to January 6th as a day of love, to remind moderate voters not to put him back in the White House. Bottom line, Harris must make this a referendum on Trump, Trump has to make it a referendum on Harris. Whoever succeeds at that task, wins,” Israel said.
Harris’s decision to travel to Texas in the final homestretch of the campaign can also be seen as an effort to bring back the momentum that resulted in the Democrats having better-than-expected midterm election results in 2022, just months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Suburban women in particular turned out for Democrats that cycle. The vice president’s campaign hopes using the Texas abortion law — which effectively bans abortions about six weeks into pregnancy — as a warning of what could come nationally in a Trump presidency, which in turn could drive their supporters to the polls.
Jim Messina, former President Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, told The Hill that Harris’s campaign will focus on key demographics in their final get-out-the-vote efforts.
“There’s a stupid argument in my party that says you either turn your voters out or you persuade. The campaigns that win at the presidential level do both, and that is the campaign that Kamala Harris has built,” he said.
Messina added, “She has the biggest field operation on the ground that we’ve ever seen to turn her vote out and to focus on certain groups that are important for her to win: African Americans, Latinos, young people. And then she has a persuasion machine to reach and expand certain blocs like women voters.”
All of those moves, though, are coming at a time when Trump has climbed in the polls, erasing the battleground-state lead that Harris had enjoyed at higher points of her campaign, such as during the Democratic National Convention or in the wake of her sole debate with Trump, which she was widely perceived to have won.
Now, Trump has the lead in every one of the seven battleground states — even if sometimes by the tiniest margins — according to the polling averages maintained by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ.
Harris retains a small lead in national polls, but the situation in the battlegrounds has led Decision Desk HQ to give Trump a 52 percent chance of prevailing overall. That’s a sharp change from Harris’s high point, when she was given a 57 percent chance of victory.
Harris might yet win out in the end.
But if she falls short, there will be a lot of second-guessing of her campaign and their moves in the final weeks.
Date: October 24, 2024 at 04:29:37 From: akira, [DNS_Address] Subject: Re: Harris faces questions about campaign strategy in final stretch
it's a shame you've been so unwilling to scrutinize Trump and his candidacy here as closely as you have Harris. I thought that kind of critical thinking was something you admired.
Date: October 24, 2024 at 11:50:01 From: ryan, [DNS_Address] Subject: Re: Harris faces questions about campaign strategy in final stretch
so what, go with what you know?
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Date: October 24, 2024 at 11:41:54 From: ao, [DNS_Address] Subject: Re: Harris faces questions about campaign strategy in final stretch
"he’s an obnoxious guy"
Only to be outdone by his ass licking minions.. especially the nose holders that forsake their morals to indulge his hateful rhetoric. They are the scourge of the Earth.
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Date: October 24, 2024 at 11:17:18 From: akira, [DNS_Address] Subject: Re: Harris faces questions about campaign strategy in final stretch
Could you tell me exactly what you think a Harris administration would do that could be that bad? I'm not trying to yank your chain. I'm really just trying to understand the mindset ofpeople like you who don't like Trump but think he'll be a better president.
Date: October 24, 2024 at 12:11:30 From: old timer, [DNS_Address] Subject: Re: Harris faces questions about campaign strategy in final stretch
pretty simple, he did a good job running the country as potus. after 4 years of biden/harris our country is struggling, the world is closer to a world war, not a lot of good happening. she failed as a candidate 4 years ago, has never even competed in a primary, she wouldn’t change anything from biden yet then insists she will be different from biden. she can’t seem to answer simple questions in the interviews i’ve seen and her approval ratings as vp shows people didn’t even think she did well at that job
your question is would a harris administration be that bad which is framed well because there is no sign it would be good
Date: October 24, 2024 at 21:20:05 From: ryan, [DNS_Address] Subject: Re: Hartmann has the receipts, we're better off economically now.
one thing the rumpers never mention...it was the recovered economy that lardass inherited from obama they are missing...but rump managed to fuck that up too...
Date: October 25, 2024 at 08:28:32 From: shadow, [DNS_Address] Subject: Re: Hartmann has the receipts, we're better off economically now.
Of course they can't mention that...then everyone who doesn't pay attention might know they had nothing to do with it...
Obviously GOPers don't pay attention to anything that doesn't serve their agenda...lol...
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Date: October 24, 2024 at 12:35:45 From: Redhart, [DNS_Address] Subject: Re: Harris faces questions about campaign strategy in final stretch
No, he didn't. He did a shit job of running the country, got people dead, did damage with our allies, set the table for record inflation..and the corruption and division, omg.
We are so much better off 4 yrs later than when he left last time.
Worst president ever.
Harris was my senator and state ag. She's been the vp...I have followed her work and I like her a great deal and trust her so much more than her opponent who has done nothing but hurt our family, and pledges to go right back to damaging us should he be allowed back in (instead of sent to prison as he should have been).
The Biden administration, of which she was a part of..though not the head of, exceeded my expectations on the economy and other domestic policies. She obviously learned a great deal in the last 4 years and it shows.
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Date: October 24, 2024 at 11:26:00 From: ryan, [DNS_Address] Subject: Re: Harris faces questions about campaign strategy in final stretch
i think ot's big problem is he doesn't like a woman having any control, and telling him what to do...
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Date: October 24, 2024 at 09:58:50 From: ao, [DNS_Address] Subject: Re: Harris faces questions about campaign strategy in final stretch
Bots only do what they are programmed to.
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Date: October 24, 2024 at 09:15:58 From: Redhart, [DNS_Address] Subject: Re: Harris faces questions about campaign strategy in final stretch
Yeah, that doesn't seem to be his job. He's to discredit Harris and keep negative focus on her and try to stop any talk of what Trump is doing that is 10 times worse.
he's not slick about it.
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Date: October 24, 2024 at 08:51:24 From: shadow, [DNS_Address] Subject: Re: Harris faces questions about campaign strategy in final stretch
“I thought that kind of critical thinking was something you admired.”