Who would have guessed voters might be looking for something more from a future commander in chief than the joy and positive vibes Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign is offering?
Democrats believed the media-created excitement surrounding their otherwise inept standard bearer could carry her all the way to the White House in November. They were mistaken. Unfortunately for them, the euphoria peaked too soon and then faded, leaving the Harris campaign in an unenviable state of desperation.
Up until early October, everything went according to plan. Although Harris underperformed the previous polling results of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016 and President Joe Biden in 2020, she was still ahead of former President Donald Trump nationally by more than 2%, and she looked strong in the battleground states. Moreover, with one brief exception, she had maintained a lead over Trump in the betting markets while studiously avoiding any real media scrutiny, aside from a few interviews with friendly journalists.
Although it’s impossible to say for certain whether Trump’s triumphant return to Butler, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 5, the site of the first assassination attempt against him, was the catalyst for the shift in the race, the next day, he reclaimed the lead in the betting markets (which has increased every day since) and Harris’s momentum stalled. As of Wednesday, Trump’s lead in the RealClearPolitics average of betting odds stands at 14%.
Why is this significant? According to Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey, “The betting markets seem to anticipate polling shifts by somewhere between a few days and a week or so. This data would indicate that Harris can expect more erosion in her standing in the final three weeks before Election Day.”
What could explain this sudden shift? First off, the U.S. electorate usually has some sort of late preference cascade as voters lock in on their choices. It’s not unusual to see this, although betting markets may make it easier to spot as it happens. Sometimes, polling only shows it in retrospect. In an environment where net disapproval of the incumbent administration is -14.7, and the net wrong-direction sentiment is as large as -32.9 (the current RealClearPolitics aggregate scores), a late collapse in the incumbent’s position is scarcely surprising.
A second reason for the shift may have been Harris’s remarkable statement on The View several days after Trump’s Butler rally. When asked if there was anything she would have done differently than Biden over the past four years, she replied, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”
This was an extraordinary admission from an incumbent candidate who has been trying to sell herself as an agent of change.
As of Wednesday, Harris’s lead in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls has fallen to 1.7%. Trump is currently ahead in six of the seven battleground states, and his lead in RealClearPolitics‘s average of polls in these critical states is 0.7%. These numbers may not sound dramatic, but they constitute a distinct change in the race.
Acutely aware that Harris’s momentum had stalled so close to Election Day, her desperate campaign scheduled a media blitz, hoping it might reset the race. The strategy backfired.
The most damaging event was Harris’s 60 Minutes interview with CBS News’s Bill Whitaker, who had the audacity to ask some tough questions. (If all journalists conducted interviews like he did, this race would not be so close.)
Whitaker asked Harris how she planned to pay for all of her proposals, including the $25,000 giveaways to first-time home buyers and tax credits to small business owners, measures that would add $3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.
She replied, “When you invest in small businesses, you invest in the middle class, and you strengthen America’s economy. Small businesses are the backbone of America’s economy.”
We’ve heard some variation of that answer in nearly every interview she has done.
Whitaker challenged the vice president on her many flip-flops on major policy matters. He asked why the administration “loosened the immigration policies as much as [they] did.”
Although Whitaker kept pushing for some real answers, Harris continued reciting the same canned talking points we’d heard multiple times before.
Harris’s stubborn refusal (or perhaps her inability) to answer questions directly is contributing to her loss of support. Even New York Times political correspondent Michael Bender noted last week that Harris “keeps answering the question she wants, not the one that was asked.”
“The only reason to send Harris out on this media blitz would have been to shore up an already eroding position,” Morrissey said. “The betting markets may not even be a leading indicator in that sense, but they have caught the whiff of desperation nonetheless. And as Morrissey’s First Axiom of Dating and Politics states, desperation is not an aphrodisiac.”
Many of us were surprised that Harris had committed to a Wednesday evening interview with Fox News chief political anchor Brett Baier, something she would never have agreed to had she been in a stronger position. Baier is known for his journalistic integrity and will press Harris for honest answers.
To be sure, an appearance on Fox is a risky venture for Harris, particularly so close to the election. However, she needs something big to jumpstart her momentum.
One thing is clear: Even if you’re a Democrat, a campaign fueled by joy and good vibes can only take a candidate so far.
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Elizabeth Stauffer is a contributor to the Washington Examiner and the Western Journal. Follow her on X or LinkedIn.