The manufactured “joy” proclaimed by the Democratic Party upon the coronation of Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s nominee has been replaced by a desperation no more exemplified than by the latest push to declare former President Donald Trump to be another Adolf Hitler.
During a town hall on CNN on Wednesday, Harris publicly embraced the Democratic Party’s go-to attack for Republican presidential candidates that goes back decades, telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper that she, in fact, believes that Trump is a fascist.
The declaration that her opponent is akin to Hitler came the day after Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, published a partisan hit job featuring quotes from Trump’s disgruntled former chief of staff, John Kelly, claiming that Trump is a fascist who admires Hitler.
The Democratic Party has been calling Trump some variation of a fascist for years, whether it is calling him a “threat to democracy” or warning of a doomsday authoritarianism if he returns to the White House. But since President Joe Biden abandoned his reelection bid amid historically bad poll numbers, the party and Harris have spent the majority of the campaign attempting to manufacture a narrative of “joy” while using abortion policy as the primary driver of the campaign’s messaging.
The thinking has been that Harris had to pitch a positive vision for the country to differentiate herself fully from Trump and Biden. That has all changed in the waning days of the campaign. Gone are the promises to lower costs, and gone is the promise to deal with the crisis at the border. Voters are just not buying what the Harris campaign is selling on the economy or illegal immigration.
In a race that the Democratic Party believes it should be winning, Harris is locked in a dead heat with a candidate who carries so much baggage that, by any conventional measure, should not be competitive at this stage of the campaign. Nothing is delivering the knockout blow to Trump. The lawfare campaign against him has fallen short at every turn, and he is now more popular than he has ever been.
So, what do Harris and the Democratic Party do when they run out of options to defeat Trump? Fall back on old habits and declare him to be Hitler, just like they’ve done with practically every Republican presidential nominee.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
No matter how much the Harris campaign and the media may prop up the Atlantic story to bolster their case that Trump is a fascist, it does not change the fact that the messaging shift reeks of desperation. Furthermore, given that voters have a fond recollection of Trump’s first term, it is unlikely to move the needle in any meaningful way.
Harris’s problem isn’t that Trump has fooled voters about who he is. It’s that they just aren’t buying what she is selling. And at this point, there isn’t much time left to change that.