Kamala’s campaign is in trouble – they still don’t know how to tackle Trump

The post-Biden buzz has faded for the Democrats and Kamala Harris is having to dip back into the ‘end of democracy’ tactic, leaving the Republican candidate free to... flatter a golfing legend. However, as Jon Sopel demonstrates, the race is nowhere near finished

The Democratic candidate and current vice-president speaks at a campaign rally in swing-state Georgia (AP)

Donald Trump was at a rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania this last weekend, and he was in full flow. He went on a ramble about the town’s most famous son, the former golfer Arnold Palmer. The anecdote went on for a full 12 minutes. And let’s face it, with Palmer there is a lot to talk about. He took the coveted green jacket at the Masters on four occasions and won every other major, including the Open twice.

He was credited with taking a lot of the snobbishness out of golf and making it a game for the everyman. But this was not the subject of Donald Trump’s lengthy discourse on Palmer. No, it was the size of his penis. A dead golfer’s manhood had somewhat surprisingly come up (fnarr fnarr) in a way no one could have anticipated.

“This is a guy that was all man,” the former president said. “This man was strong and tough, and I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh my God, that’s unbelievable’.”

All of which would seem to totally vindicate Kamala Harris’s strategy of depicting her opponent as a weirdo, and “not a serious person”, as she told Democrats at the party’s convention in Chicago in August.

But it’s not working. The wind seems to have gone out of Harris’s sails. She’s not sinking, but she does seem becalmed, mainsail flapping. While Trump – even with dead-man’s-penis stories – is inching forward.

There are endless polls, but just to give you a flavour: the latest poll of polls on 538.com has Nevada, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania tied, Trump up one point in North Carolina, Harris up one in Michigan, and Trump up two in Arizona and Georgia. Factor in the +/- 4 per cent margin of error and you see how we are in, as the great Manchester United psephologist Sir Alex Ferguson might say, squeaky bum time.

The tightness of the race has resulted in a Harris pivot. At a CNN Town Hall on Wednesday night – again in Pennsylvania – she called Trump a fascist. The “weirdo” strategy seemed to be gone; she was reverting to the Biden playbook of painting the former president as a threat to democracy.

If you meet anyone who tells you with certainty that they know it is going to be a Trump victory or it’s Harris who will prevail, just walk on

But here’s the central tension at the heart of the Harris campaign. Is she the change candidate – optimistic, good vibes, a new broom; or is she the incumbent – continuity Biden? It’s hard to be both, and as this race enters its final stretch she’s sounding more and more like the current president as she tries to throw sand in the gears of the Trump wagon (not yet a bandwagon, but he seems to have more momentum than her).

In this respect, Harris finds herself in the same position as every politician who has come up against him since he went down his gold escalator in 2015 to announce that he was running for the presidency. How do you score political points against someone who is as much an entertainer as he is a politician? Who simultaneously makes his audience laugh with off-colour anecdotes and fires them up with promises of vengeance against his detractors.

Although Trump may career wildly off message in his rallies (that drive the professionals on his campaign insane), there is a twin-track strategy. In the blitz of TV and digital ads the focus is tight: Americans were better off when he was president and he will make people richer again; under Kamala Harris the border has become a sieve.

Donald Trump doesn’t need to define himself. For better or worse, everyone knows who he is and what he is. But who is Kamala Harris? An awful lot of Americans are not entirely sure.

Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign event in Las Vegas, Nevada (AFP via Getty)

So what her campaign is left with – and the long list of people who’ve been bested by Trump will empathise – is to throw anything and everything against the wall to see what sticks. Because at this stage of the campaign – if the polls are right – what else can you do?

If you meet anyone who tells you with certainty that they know it is going to be a Trump victory or it’s Harris who will prevail, just walk on. They don’t know. No one knows. Trump doesn’t know; nor does Harris. Everything is within the margin of error. Neck and neck, on a knife-edge, going down to the wire, too close to call – and every other political cliche that has ever been minted. You might have a gut feeling, but that’s it.

Let me demonstrate.

Let me tell you that without a doubt, Trump is going to win. Polls have never properly picked up the shy Trump voters. Even in 2020 his support was underestimated, and he always over-performs. He enjoys a big lead on the economy, and his counterfactual – that there were no wars on his watch – resonates. And the border? Well, when he was president he was building that wall; with Kamala and Biden the doors were unlocked to allow a flood of illegals.

Also Trump is best when he’s on the attack – he was beaten in 2020 when he was put on the defensive over his incoherent record. But now he’s back as the insurgent. His support is solid, his base is fired up. He’s peeling young, male (and possibly misogynist) Black voters away from the Dems. Elon Musk is pouring money in and lending him X/Twitter’s algorithm. He’s going to win. And win big.

Harris has got this. Overnight she made the race competitive and she is still neck and neck in seven states, where Biden only had a core strategy of the rust belt: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. More importantly, she has a huge lead among women, motivated as never before because of the change in abortion laws after the overturning by the Supreme Court of Roe v Wade. And she is their voice.

Not only that, look at the hundreds of thousands of young people who have registered to vote since Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish came out and urged their fans to back her. They have BIG followings. Add to that the lorryloads of money Harris has raised in the past three months, and she can comfortably outspend the Trump campaign in these final days. Also, forget shy Trump voters, this time round it is shy Harris voters. The Republicans who backed a more moderate figure like Nikki Haley in the primaries and can’t abide Trump are moving over to Harris for the sake of democracy.

For goodness sake, when you can count the father-and-daughter duo of former vice-president Dick Cheney and former congresswoman Liz Cheney – both ultra-conservatives, among your supporters, you’re on a roll. Among those registered to vote, she seems to have the edge. Furthermore, the Democrats have a better ground game that will swing into action on election day. And heavy early voting looks very pleasing for the Harris campaign. She’s got this sewn up.

You see what I mean? You may go wherever your instinct takes you.

Now if you have ploughed through this, hoping that the column will come down decisively on one side and call it, I have one word for you:

Sorry. But I can, if you want, tell you what my gut says…