The Harris/Walz campaign must be seeing some troubling internal polling numbers. Changing tactics at this late stage in the game is a bit difficult to explain otherwise. Of course, there is the cogent observation that, up to now, the Harris/Walz campaign doesn’t seem to have engaged any tactics at all, other than keeping Kamala Harris away from anything unscripted and un-stage-managed, to keep her word salads to a minimum, and to keep bright lights away from Tim Walz’s forehead to avoid blinding members of the media.
Changing tactics they are, though, and the new angle seems to be ramping up negative attacks against Donald Trump.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is planning to more aggressively attack former President Donald Trump in the remaining weeks ahead of the November election, a new phase aimed at trying to move the small number of undecided voters her way, according to five Harris campaign officials.
The change is driven, in part, by internal campaign data showing that sharper messaging against Trump could persuade some still-unsure Americans to support Harris, according to three of the campaign officials. The effort is set to include new ads and harsher language on the campaign trail that highlights Trump’s past actions and rhetoric that Harris officials hope will tip these voters away from backing the former president.
Because nobody’s ever tried negative ads against Donald Trump before?
Look, Donald Trump’s media coverage has been overwhelmingly negative since he came down that golden escalator in 2015 to announce his candidacy. Democrats loved Trump when he was just a real-estate guy from Queens, and when he was a reality TV guy. They certainly loved him when he was donating to their campaigns – which, yes, he did. But when he announced not only as a Republican but as a populist, America-first Republican, suddenly he was an arch-demon and the legacy media decided he must be destroyed – and they have done their best to do so ever since.
Trump survived all of this media attention. And the public has been inundated with it. It seems unlikely in the extreme that a few more negative ads from the Harris/Walz campaign will shift the needle. These new campaign ads will, after all, be nothing more than a spit into the hurricane of negative media coverage the legacy media has heaped on Donald Trump.
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One Harris campaign official gave some details on the record, according to the NBC News piece (linked above):
“We are going to draw more contrasts everywhere we can,” Harris campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond said in an interview. Given Trump’s own rhetoric in the campaign, Richmond added, “I don’t think there’s any expectation that you criticize him with kid gloves.”
Yes, please, by all means, draw more contrasts. Contrast the unemployment rate between the Trump and Biden administrations. Contrast interest rates. Contrast inflation. Contrast gasoline and home heating oil prices. (We had our oil tank filled yesterday, at nearly $4 per gallon.) Contrast grocery prices. Contrast housing prices.
There’s a lot to contrast. This election, after all, is somewhat unique in that both candidates have a track record; Donald Trump can point to his first term, which – up until the COVID mess – was pretty good, economy-wise. Kamala Harris is trying to distance herself from the debacle that was Joe Biden’s only term, although her running mate isn’t helping by running around shouting “We can’t afford four more years of this!” Not to mention all the… help Kamala Harris is getting from her boss.
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This is a minefield that the Harris campaign may want to think twice about treading. Donald Trump has been playing this game for eight years now; there is nothing new you can throw at him at this late stage in the game.
