Donald Trump may be 77 years old, but there’s no denying the man’s energy. He’s got get-up-and-go to spare, and his much younger running mate seems to have little trouble keeping up. Meanwhile, Kamala “Queen of Word Salads” Harris and her running mate, Tim “The Great Walz of China” are having trouble keeping up. And there’s more to it than just the number of events; it’s where those events are being held that’s interesting.
As former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris spend the run-up to the last stretch of the 2024 election barnstorming through battleground states, a contrast has emerged: Trump has single-handedly outpaced both Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, in campaign events for the month of September as he shows no signs of slowing down — a strategy his campaign is employing to focus on counties vulnerable to flipping.
In September, Trump held 21 public campaign events including remarks, rallies, press conferences and town halls. That’s compared to Harris’ 13 campaign events; Walz had seven campaign events, according to campaign schedules ABC News has reviewed. On top of Trump’s jam-packed campaign schedule, his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, alone held 14 events in the month of September.
Trump and Vance have been hitting the battleground states hard, with good results:
…in recent weeks, Trump has been campaigning across multiple battleground states, which have included multiple appearances in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina, as he enters a crucial phase of his campaign and vies to make a final pitch to voters ahead of Election Day.
“I go to a lot of places, we’re definitely outworking the opposition. She’ll go to one place in three days. I say, ‘Why can’t I do that?'” Trump quipped at a campaign stop in Savannah, Georgia, late last month.
A quick look at the battleground state polls would indicate that whatever the Trump/Vance campaign is doing, they need to keep doing it.
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But it’s not just the battlegrounds. Trump is making the Harris camp react to him, holding campaign events in deep-blue territory and making the Harris people play defense. It’s never a good idea to let one’s opponent define the terms of engagement, but that’s precisely what the Trump/Vance campaign is doing: setting the pace, moving into what should be safe Harris/Walz territory, defining the terms.
Granted, it’s unlikely in the extreme that Trump/Vance will take either New York or California, two of the places where Trump is holding events. That would only happen in a 1984 Reagan-style landslide, which looks unlikely in this election, given the polarization in our country right now. But it’s still worth doing, and as we get closer to the election, we can expect the Trump/Vance campaign to keep up the pace, to keep up the attacks, to keep the initiative, and in the next few days, to work to close the deal.
It’s as Sun Tzu wrote in “The Art of War”:
Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.
There are heavy, dark clouds hanging over the Harris campaign right now, and the thunder is starting to rumble.
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