Analysis: Can Trump neutralize Kamala Harris’ promising start?

Donald Trump’s campaign, which failed in its first attempts against Kamala Harris’ new presidential campaign, will seek a more effective base this week after the vice president turned around an election full of surprises.

The former president has been using some of his most trusted political tools — attacking racial identity, creating alternate realities, hurling insults and manipulating the truth. On Sunday (11), for example, he spread a new false conspiracy theory about the size of the crowd at Harris’s rally in Michigan last week.

But his efforts to oust his new opponent and her policy of ignoring his provocations have highlighted his own weaknesses more than hers, underscoring how Harris could offer a new option for voters.

When the former president called Harris “dumb” at a Montana rally on Friday night (9) or falsely claimed last month that she “just happened to be black,” he may have pleased his core voters.

But these kinds of comments risk alienating women and swing-state voters, as well as reversing gains he has made among minorities he has proudly championed for months.

Trump’s campaign was also forced to deny on Saturday (10) a report in The New York Times that said he had referred to Harris as a “slut” in a private conversation while lamenting the momentum of her campaign.

Trump’s wild news conference last week and a weekend of outbursts also suggest the Republican nominee is far from accepting change in a race that seemed headed his way three weeks ago, when optimistic Republicans left their convention predicting a landslide victory.

But a tour of battleground states by Harris and her new running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, has generated a euphoria Democrats haven’t experienced in years. It has infuriated Trump that his debate victory over President Joe Biden has only led to a new battle — one he is more in danger of losing.

In three weeks, Harris has created a potential turning point — offering voters a breath of optimism after a dark period in modern history with her mantra that Americans “don’t want to go back” to the chaos and acrimony of Trump’s tenure.

Harris’s approach is working — for now — in returning the race to a close contest. Polling averages show her reversing Biden’s deficits.

A New York Times/Siena College poll released Saturday, for example, showed no clear leader in the crucial battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — a tighter race than when Biden led.

The poll had no bearing on the November outcome. But it encapsulated the rapid shift in the campaign, and Trump’s team felt compelled to release a memo alleging that the polls had “the clear intent and purpose of reducing support” for the former president.

The new Democratic ticket’s success in not only fending off Trump’s initial attacks, but also in using them to expose what Harris sees as extremism, has created an unexpected problem for her team.

Harris’s switch to the Democratic leadership and Biden’s withdrawal from the race three weeks ago have lifted his party to a place that would have seemed impossible a week before its national convention in Chicago. But Trump now faces an energized party, reversing one of its biggest advantages when Biden led the ticket. And novelty and hope are proving to be powerful political forces once again.

Campaigns are never static, however, and while Harris could benefit from a condensed run-up to November, there are still nearly three months left. Trump remains a formidable political force and a fierce adversary.

And having united his party around him, especially after last month’s assassination attempt, he is still likely to benefit from structural factors, including voter pessimism about the economy, that would normally help shape the election.

The former president is expected to focus on that theme on Wednesday (14) in North Carolina, with a speech that his campaign says will focus on how “hardworking Americans are suffering because of the dangerously liberal policies of the Harris-Biden administration” and prices that are “excruciating.”

Assuming he follows that script, his appearance — in a state Democrats hope to win back — will begin to test whether a focus on key issues will offset the initial wave of enthusiasm for Harris’ candidacy. Trump also announced that he will give an interview Monday night (12) to Elon Musk on the auto and space pioneer’s X platform.

Trump has been sharply criticizing the vice president for avoiding unplanned moments in news conferences or interviews. And she will face increasing questions about when she will provide more details about the policies she would pursue as president, both at home and abroad.

Harris told reporters on Saturday (10) that she would begin laying out a policy framework on the economy this week. As a sudden drop in the stock market last week showed, she is vulnerable to adverse economic news that could influence Americans who feel insecure.

The vice president seems aware that a new phase of her campaign is approaching after last week’s impressive tour with Walz.

“What we do know is that the stakes are very high. And we can’t take anything for granted at this point,” she said at a fundraising event in San Francisco on Sunday (11). “We’ve had a good few weeks, but we still have a lot of work to do.”

Trump is still struggling with his new opponent

Trump sent his vice presidential nominee, Sen. J.D. Vance, on Sunday’s talk shows to try to stem the Harris tide. The Ohio Republican painted the vice president and Walz as extreme liberals, advocated tough border policies and accused Harris of complicity in Biden administration policies that have left Americans hostage to high prices.

He pressed the Republican attack on Walz, which alleges, without conclusive evidence, that he retired after nearly a quarter-century in the Army National Guard to avoid being deployed to Iraq. CNN reported that Walz ran for Congress in February 2005 — before his unit was notified that it might be deployed to Iraq.

Vance suggested to CNN that his ticket was running against an undefined opponent, but one who bore even more responsibility for the policies of the past four years than Biden.

“What’s different is that we’re running against a different person that many Americans just don’t know,” Vance said.

“I think we need to remind people that President Trump delivered lower prices, lower inflation, a prosperous and peaceful world, and also a secure border, and Kamala Harris’ policies have delivered exactly the opposite. Now, that was easier to do when Joe Biden was there because people associate Joe Biden with the policies.”

However, he was forced to answer for the former president’s often self-destructive comments. In CNN for example, Vance went to great lengths to avoid contradicting Trump’s claim that Harris, the daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother, was not black.

“I believe Kamala Harris is who she says she is,” Vance said. “But I believe, importantly, that President Trump is right that she is a chameleon.”

On CBS, Vance struggled to clear up an impression the former president left last week that he might be open to restricting the mailing of mifepristone, a widely used abortion drug, to patients. The issue fits with Democratic efforts to make Trump pay for rolling back abortion rights nationwide by the Supreme Court, which has the majority he built.

And on ABC, Vance found himself in the awkward position of being asked about Trump’s 2022 hosting of white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, who recently launched a racially charged attack on the Ohio senator’s wife, Usha. Vance described Fuentes as a “total loser” but said “one thing I like about Donald Trump … is that he really talks to anybody.”

Harris’ presidency is an unknown

The Trump campaign won a concession from the Harris campaign on Saturday on an aspect of Walz’s military record.

A campaign spokesperson told CNN that the Minnesota governor “said something incorrect” in a 2018 video in which he said he had handled assault weapons “at war.” But trying to use Walz to expose Harris’s decision-making seems unlikely to make the critical difference for voters who must eventually choose between Harris and Trump.

So an expected debate between Trump and Harris on ABC on September 10 looms as a pivotal new moment in the campaign. Trump insists their first face-off will, in fact, be on Fox a week earlier, but Harris has so far agreed to just one debate.

Early in her vice presidency, Harris has stumbled several times in interviews and interactions with the press. And Trump’s team has tried to provoke her into more unplanned moments.

While she appears to have evolved as a political operative, there is no reason for her advisers to put her in risky situations when her campaign is on the rise, especially ahead of next week’s Chicago convention, when the party’s image-makers will have a near-monopoly on the media as they seek to introduce her to undecided voters during prime time.

But Harris won’t be able to avoid scrutiny for much longer — and shouldn’t, considering she’s running for president. She recently told reporters that she’s considering giving a major interview by the end of the month.

Her campaign rhetoric is aspirational and in line with democratic orthodoxy, but she speaks in general terms. Since becoming the nominee, she has offered no perspective on her thinking in a fragmented world filled with growing threats to U.S. power from adversaries like Russia and China.

Her campaign used the time instead to try to navigate political traps, such as by releasing an ad positioning her as tough on border issues and positioning Trump as an obstacle to effectively curbing undocumented immigration.

Given Trump’s unpopularity, simply being a younger, more optimistic antidote to a dystopian national vision might be enough for Harris to win the election. But until she excels in an unchecked public situation, questions about her political skill will loom over her prospects — especially since her 2020 primary campaign quickly unraveled as her political weaknesses became more apparent.

But as Trump has shown in recent days, he has not yet figured out how to respond to the campaign’s suddenly changed circumstances.