WHY HAVE DEMOCRATS PLAYED THE HITLER CARD? In the last few weeks, Vice President Kamala Harris’s national polling lead over former President Donald Trump has been shrinking. Look at four prominent polling averages.
In late September, Harris’s lead in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls was 2.2 points. Today it is 0.2 points. In late August, Harris’s lead in the FiveThirtyEight average was 3.7 points. Today it is 1.8 points. Also in late August, Harris’s lead in analyst Nate Silver’s average was 4.1 points. Today it is 1.6 points. Finally, in late September, Harris’s lead in the New York Times average was 3 points. Today it is 1 point.
In addition, a new poll that is part of all the averages, from the Wall Street Journal, has Trump leading Harris by 2 points, 47%-45%. In the Wall Street Journal’s last poll, in August, Harris led 47%-45%. In the new poll, Trump has actually extended his lead over Harris on important issues like the economy and inflation, the border, crime, and the Mideast conflict.
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At the same time, Harris has unleashed a new barrage of attacks on Trump. Those attacks have reached a bizarre conclusion with Harris declaring Trump a “fascist” and Democrats describing Trump as a Hitler-loving autocrat. For many on the Right, used to many years of Democrats describing Republicans as Nazis, it was both an outrageous and an entirely expected conclusion to the campaign.
The shift to a Trump-is-Hitler campaign theme is a direct result of Harris’s failure to prove to voters that she is a substantive candidate for president. All presidential candidates have to prove that they are up to the job. Harris spent her first weeks as a candidate enjoying a sugar high of wildly positive media coverage. During that time, she said almost nothing about what she would do as president. She unveiled a bare-bones agenda, like her proposed $25,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers, but she never really grappled with the full range of responsibilities and powers of the presidency.
During this time, Harris mostly hid behind softball media interviews. But she had chances to prove her substance. There was the Bret Baier interview on Fox News, the 60 Minutes interview on CBS, and, last night, the town hall on CNN. Harris was not able to present a convincing case for why she should be president.
For example, at the town hall, a college professor asked Harris, “If you could accomplish only one major policy goal that required congressional action, what would it be and why?” Harris, incredibly, had no answer. She talked and talked, the classic Harris word salad, but never got around to actually naming a major policy goal that she would pursue with Congress. She had no answer to a supportive voter who asked what her top action item as president would be. How basic can you get?
The voters see this. The reason Harris has plateaued, and perhaps begun to fall, is that she has not proven that she is a substantive candidate. Now, with millions of people having already voted and with less than two weeks left before Election Day, it is very unlikely that she can do so in the time remaining. It’s just too late for that.
So now the campaign has moved on to bashing Trump. It appears that will be the theme of Harris’s “closing statement” planned for Washington, D.C., next week. It was always clear that Democratic voters were more motivated by animus toward Trump than affection toward either President Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. That will be how the campaign ends.