By After seven weeks of excitement surrounding Kamala Harris’s rise to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket, a wave of anxiety swept through the party on Sunday. A poll published by The New York Times showed Donald Trump with a narrow national lead over Harris and a tie in the crucial swing states that will determine the outcome of November’s election. With Tuesday’s debate looming, the momentum that had buoyed Harris since President Biden withdrew from the race has visibly waned.
This election was always expected to be highly competitive, even after Harris took Biden’s place. However, the recent tightening of the polls highlights shortcomings in Harris’s campaign. She had nearly two months to define herself and her positions to voters but chose a cautious approach, aiming to preserve the summer’s positive energy by avoiding clear stances on controversial issues. It’s now evident that this strategy is faltering. As Nate Cohn of The New York Times observed on Sunday, “More than anything, voters say they want to hear more about where she stands on the issues, something her campaign has seemed to struggle to lay out.”
The poll, Cohn explained, also revealed that Trump’s attack ads have begun to work. “Nearly half of voters say she’s ‘too liberal or progressive.’ A majority of voters see her as at least somewhat responsible for the problems along the border. And a majority of voters say she’s a ‘risky’ choice and ‘more of the same’ — hardly an enviable combination.”
The New Republic reported that the Harris campaign finally realized that the vice president needs to do something other than hide from interviews and and rely on “vibes.”
However, they ran into one problem:
The Harris campaign is only now, belatedly, realizing that this is a problem. On Sunday, they finally added an “Issues” section to her website. It includes a slew of policies that the campaign has previously outlined, as well as sections on reproductive and civil rights. Unfortunately for Harris, its release was undermined by a simple but telling error: The page’s source code revealed that parts of the platform were copied directly from Biden’s campaign page.
This is dangerous territory for Harris, given that the Times poll found that more than 60 percent of voters wanted the next president to represent a “major change” from Biden—and only a quarter felt that Harris represented that change. That makes sense, given that she’s his vice president! But it means she should be working overtime to distinguish herself from her boss. Instead, she’s doing precisely the opposite. Unwilling to break publicly with Biden—to criticize his handling of say, inflation, immigration, or Israel—she has simply positioned herself as a younger version of him. Whether that’s intentional on her part or the result of her campaign being run largely by the same people who ran Biden’s disastrous reelection bid is unclear.
The polls are clear: The summer honeymoon is over. This debate will likely be Harris’s best opportunity to shift the polls back in her favor—and to define herself to the millions of voters who are on the fence about her. But it will also require her to take uncomfortable, even controversial positions. She can no longer expect to keep reaping political rewards without taking any risks.
If the rumors about her debate preparation for tonight are true, however, the voting public should expect gimmicks instead of policy proposals.
America’s News Desk noted that the two candidates have been preparing differently for tonight’s clash, according to The Telegraph. Harris has been “locked away in a Pittsburgh hotel rehearsing her attack lines,” essentially practicing a script, while Trump has been taking “policy time” with aides.
The Telegraph reported that the vice president is practicing scripted lines rather than knowing her beliefs and being able to explain them extemporaneously, writing that she “is preparing for the debate with a stand-in Trump, an advisor who has been wearing a wide-shouldered boxy suit and red tie. A full debate stage has been set up at her hotel. and she has rehearsed lines on the economy.”
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