For all the fury and vitriol directed at Donald Trump by Kamala Harris and her allies, the vice president’s campaign looks a lot like Trump’s, with the exception that she is almost 20 years younger and knows when to stick to the Teleprompter.
Is a younger, more disciplined leftist doppelganger campaign enough to beat Trump?
Playing to the hardcore base, stiff-arming the establishment media, a weird last-minute vice presidential pick that smells like fear and arrogance — it makes you wonder whether the same people are running both campaigns. Funny how both Trump and Harris are bashing each other as liars bent on subverting democracy. It might be the only thing Trump and Harris agree on.
Harris’s vice presidential selection process shows disturbing similarities to Trump’s. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) was a last-minute dark-horse who clearly was not fully vetted. The “stolen valor” accusations are a problem for him. And Team Harris failed to see the disconnect between what the progressive left saw as legitimate protest and what many Americans saw as rioting and destruction over George Floyd. Burned out and boarded up buildings in Minneapolis are not a good image.
But what is most like the Trump pick of JD Vance is the bad political calculus. For Team Trump to promote a freshman Ohio senator as if to appeal to the “Midwest” writ large is just as inane as it is for Team Harris to promote Walz for the same purpose. Governors and senators rarely have any appeal beyond their states’ borders, particularly ones with such short tenures. Thinking that all those rubes in flyover country are the same is precisely what a bunch of East Coast elites would think.
Worse, both picks reek of arrogance. Trump, likely thinking he was going to win in November, taps Vance as an unthreatening super-loyalist who can become some kind of apprentice. Harris, riding the relief rally from Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race, picks her own unthreatening loyalist, whose appeal is what he will not irritate the loud online portion of the Democratic base. After all, she’s going to win, she thinks, so why rock the boat? (Worth noting, both Vance and Walz have poor electoral records. Vance trailed the entire GOP ticket in Ohio in 2022, and Walz dropped in vote percentage when he ran for re-election — that’s not supposed to happen).
For the last year, it has been clear that the election will be decided by how much voters dislike the candidates put forward by the parties.
Trump has been scraping along in the low 40s in approval ratings for several years and has never been in positive territory, save for his immediate inauguration (the shortest presidential polling honeymoon ever). The real estate mogul won in 2016 because just enough voters in just enough states hated Hillary Clinton more.
Harris has also been net negative for years. Her recent improvement may be a simple relief rally due to the withdrawal of the much more unpopular President Biden. Yet, she remains net negative in the RealClearPolitics average, down an average of 4.7 percent at this writing. Trump is worse, down 8.1 points. Both have approvals under 45 percent, which means both need to attract new voters to win. And neither one appears interested in doing that.
Looking at the most recent YouGov poll of registered voters, independents are evenly split, at 36 percent for Trump and for Harris, with 13 percent undecided, 9 percent going to the nuisance candidates (a number likely to shrink) and 4 percent who won’t vote at all. If you accept the YouGov margin of Harris plus 2 points (and that may be a small overestimate as she enjoys a post-Biden bounce), that 13 percent-plus is enough to swing the election.
Independents have made it clear for well over a year that inflation is their No.1 concern. In that same YouGov poll, 26 percent of independents call it their top issue, more than double the next concern (health care), and 79 percent call the issue “very important.” Abortion is far back, at 47 percent “very important” (not even top 10) and just 8 percent as top issue.
Yet the ads I see in Pennsylvania and the rhetoric on the campaign trail ignore inflation and touch little on jobs, health care or spending. Instead, the Harris ads are focused on abortion and Trump’s threat to democracy — issues that primarily resonate with Democrats and liberals. For liberals, abortion is tied for the second most important issue, at 14 percent, with 78 percent calling it “very important,” tied for the third most important issue.
The real focus with Harris and Walz is trolling Trump (as if there is new ground to be ploughed there). Trolling does get an enthusiastic response from the Democratic faithful and the social media ecosystem. Just like Trump, Harris plays to her crowd, like a Trumpian-but-on-the-left insult comic.
Of course, Trump is still the same. Still raging, playing to his own crowd, trying out new insult routines. Everything I see from him in Pennsylvania is immigration and crime associated with immigration. Like Harris, he is advertising to his base. For Republicans, immigration is second only to inflation, at 23 percent, a full 16 points ahead of independents. Conservatives call it “very important” at 78 percent, 28 points higher than independents.
Connecting immigration to crime rather than inflation remains the biggest messaging mistake by the Trump campaign. Crime is way down the totem pole, with only 2 percent of independents naming it most important and 57 percent saying “very important” — a massive falloff from inflation. Neither conservatives nor Republicans rank-order crime high, but they do call it “very important” at a rate of 72 percent, 15 points higher than independents.
Trump failing to put immigration and inflation together is absolute political malpractice. His entire media operation should be fired for this fumble.
There is a difference between Team Harris and Team Trump, and it is that Harris has a competent campaign crew, lets them do their jobs and has the discipline to stick to what’s on the Teleprompter. Trump, in contrast, can’t get out of his own way. While Harris was trying to spin her way out of criticism for not picking Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate, the former president decided to post another unhinged rant.
Surprising his campaign staff, Trump called a sudden press conference where he managed to waffle on his pro-life position (the worst thing you can do), keep his inane feud with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp going, cave on the ABC debate, bristle at questions and generally ignore the major issues voters care about in favor of minutiae. But at least he got some free advertising for his Mar-a-Lago club.
With Trump assiduously ignoring the big issues where the Biden-Harris administration is weak in favor of whining and obsessing over his own weird hobbyhorses, Harris may well be able to get away with her own vacuous, parochial campaign. With a touch of discipline and a self-sabotaging Trump, it could be enough.
Keith Naughton is co-founder of Silent Majority Strategies, a public and regulatory affairs consulting firm, and a former Pennsylvania political campaign consultant.