Democrats fear race may be slipping away from Harris

There is growing fear in Democratic circles that the presidential race could be slipping further away from Vice President Harris.

To be sure, Democrats still think Harris can defeat former President Trump. The margins are so close in the seven battleground states likely to decide the contest, a shift toward either candidate or a mistake in the polling could be decisive. 

At the same time, Democrats are privately expressing worry that battleground polling appears to be moving in Trump’s direction over the last two weeks.

Cracks in the “blue wall” of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are starting to show, with Senate incumbents in both Pennsylvania and Wisconsin now in toss-up races, according to the Cook Political Report. 

The three northern states generally move in the same direction in the presidential race, but Harris has been losing ground to Trump in polls, particularly in Wisconsin. In Michigan, doubts among Arab American voters are worrying Democrats. 

None of this is making Democrats feel better about an Election Day that is now less than two weeks away.

“Everyone keeps saying, ‘It’s close.’ Yes, it’s close, but are things trending our way? No. And no one wants to openly admit that,” one Democratic strategist said. “Could we still win? Maybe. Should anyone be even slightly optimistic right now? No.” 

Another strategist was even more dour when asked about the current state of play: “If this is a vibe election, the current vibes ain’t great.” 

Harris could have another path to victory that would involve winning Pennsylvania, losing another blue wall state but winning North Carolina and Nevada. But neither of those states are firmly in her camp, nor are two other swing states, Arizona and Georgia. 

Jon Ralston, a veteran political journalist in Nevada, also reported a rare statewide lead among Republicans who have voted early in the state. 

“It’s too soon to call it a trend, but this was a huge day for Republicans in Nevada,” Ralston wrote in his popular blog at The Nevada Independent. He later noted that overnight, Democrats had cut into the Republican advantage, but the GOP maintained a 2 percentage point lead as of Tuesday. 

Democratic strategist Jim Manley, who served as a senior aide to then-Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) during his tenure as Senate majority leader, acknowledged that the rash of news was discouraging. But he said he still feels optimistic about Harris’s chances. 

“It’s pretty damn frustrating for it to be so close given how extreme and unhinged Trump’s rhetoric has become in the last couple of weeks,” Manley said. 

“I just hope and trust they’ve got a plan,” he said of the Harris campaign.  

Other Democrats interviewed by The Hill on Tuesday also voiced some optimism. Some pointed to Harris’s robust schedule in the closing days of the campaign, when she is expected to spend the bulk of her time in the battleground states.

While Trump trolled Harris for being out of the public eye for much of Tuesday — the vice president was conducting two interviews — she will travel to Houston on Friday to appear before a large crowd to speak about abortion rights.

Traveling to Texas, which is not a swing state, has raised some eyebrows.

But campaign aides say the moment will be a powerful one as she begins her closing campaign argument by appearing alongside women who have been impacted by the state’s strict abortion laws. It’s a moment they believe will play across the country and generate attention.

“She needs these big moments,” one consultant close to the campaign said. “Polls show that abortion is one of those issues that will continue to drive women in both parties to the polls.” 

Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons, who served as Harris’s communications director until early last year, commended his former boss for running “a spectacular campaign.” He said she had taken risks — including appearing in a Fox News interview last week — and effectively turned Republicans such as former Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) “into another running mate.”

Democratic strategist Brad Bannon said while the race is a dead heat, “Harris is more popular than Trump, which means her vote has more growth potential than he does.

“She is doing much more than Trump to reach out of her base,” Bannon said. “The best example is her round of stops with Cheney in swing suburbs that Nikki Haley won in Republican primaries.” 

“The swing voters are more personality than issue-driven, and Trump’s persona is rapidly disintegrating.” 

At the same time, Democratic strategist Joel Payne added that “both campaigns have hard things to do in the closing days.  

“I’d prefer to have to do the hard things that Harris has to do instead of Trump,” Payne said. “But make no mistake: This is a turnout election, and her team is going to have to close strong with their get-out-the-vote operation to win this thing.” 

A former aide in the Obama White House said the race could go either way, and no one should be surprised by either result. 

“It feels like two things are true at the same time,” the aide explained. “It’s either … of course she was always a flawed candidate, nobody likes her, she’s tainted by Biden, and all of the macrofactors have slid away from Team Blue — it’s becoming a border, economy, foreign affairs election.”

“Or, of course — he was a terrible candidate, ran a horrible, crazy campaign, had no real ground game or fundraising and then acted like an insane person.”

“It’s sort of the opposite of 2016, which was, ‘How could this happen?’ This feels more like, ‘Of course this happened.’ … We just don’t know which yet.”