Debra Thompson is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail.
The surprising, joyful, unbridled enthusiasm surrounding Kamala Harris’s historic presidential campaign is making it hard not to feel a shimmer of optimism that Democrats might just be able to pull this off, after all.
The latest poll numbers indicate that things are looking up for the Democrats, with Ms. Harris now tied or with a narrow lead over her opponent Donald Trump in six battleground states. Polls can be misleading and it’s always important to be aware of margins of error, but it seems that in a very short time Ms. Harris has consolidated Democratic support and, importantly, won over more than a few independents, putting states that might have swung Republican under President Joe Biden’s leadership back in play.
Democrats, elites and masses alike have rallied around Ms. Harris. Her campaign events are packed and teeming with energy. Democratic voter registrations have surged in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Ms. Harris’s campaign raised US$310-million in July alone, with two-thirds coming from first-time donors. As the Democratic National Convention begins today, the party looks like it has emerged stronger than ever from a chaotic debut to the summer campaign season.
Against this rising tide of Democratic support, the Republicans and former president Donald Trump can’t seem to land a solid punch against Ms. Harris.
The Republican campaign strategy against Mr. Biden was a simple, clear, and effective portrayal of strength versus weakness. That is, the strength of Mr. Trump as a leader, the economy for at least some of his presidency (the economy falling off a cliff during COVID-19 notwithstanding), the imagined strength of America’s reputation abroad, the feigned juxtaposition of a country that was becoming great again, held in contrast with a recalcitrant, incoherent, Mr. Biden, weakened by his age and declining mental acuities, stewarding an economy battered by inflation and the rising cost of being alive, unable to manage the out-of-control factions within his own party, including those who whispered among themselves that perhaps he was past his prime.
But now that he’s pitted against the energetic novelty and uninhibited glee of the Harris campaign, it is Mr. Trump who appears to be the incoherent, blundering old man in the race.
The Trump campaign has been floundering for positive media attention lately. Mr. Trump had a disastrous appearance at the conference of the National Association of Black Journalists on July 31. His charge that Ms. Harris “turned Black,” and suggested that someone should “look into” her racial identity fell flat in front of an audience that knows the history of the one-drop rule and the complicated determinants of multiracial self-identification within Black communities.
Then, at a press conference on Aug. 8, Mr. Trump tried to attack Ms. Harris for not granting interviews to the press, saying that “she’s barely competent” and “she’s not smart enough to do a news conference.” But it turns out that how Americans get information is (sometimes unfortunately) less important than the fact that we get it. Leaks and conjecture produce the news just as well as a Meet the Press interview.
Even Mr. Trump’s recent interview with billionaire Elon Musk was more newsworthy for the technical issues plaguing Mr. Musk’s social media platform X than the two hours of Mr. Trump’s ramblings.
Mr. Trump is clearly annoyed that someone else is taking the media spotlight from him. It’s a little understandable. The man was, after all, shot in the ear just a few weeks ago. In the before times, the attempted assassination of a former president and current presidential candidate might have dominated the news cycle for more than a minute.
There’s also the possibility that this is the honeymoon phase of progressives’ feelings about their new presidential candidate. New relationship energy always sparkles, and rarely lasts.
Or, it could be that being a relatively unknown entity has become, as Tony Keller recently wrote in the Globe, a powerful political attribute for Ms. Harris. Her presidential platform has been, thus far, a little vague on actual policy details. Stalwart Democrats are clearly already on board, but at some point, the Democrats will have to spell out what a Harris presidency will stand for if they want to bring out new voters and convince independents – as well as the Never-Trumpers in the Republican Party who have been ostracized by the conservative base – to vote blue in November.
Until that happens, Mr. Trump will likely keep lobbing personal attacks at Ms. Harris – something he said he’s “entitled” to do at a press conference on Thursday – hoping that something might stick. It’s a strategy that ostensibly worked against “Crooked Hillary” and “Sleepy Joe.” So far, though, it hasn’t made a dent against Teflon Kamala.