Days after Vice President Kamala Harris was suddenly sworn in as the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris energized her supporters with what her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, called “bringing back the joy.”
But as the campaign against former President Trump entered its final week, his joy took a backseat. As Democrats seek to shore up their votes and win over the last few undecided Americans, they are increasingly appealing to a more primal emotion: fear.
Speaking to a crowd of black elected officials and community leaders in Arizona’s capital on Wednesday, Harris’ brother-in-law and adviser Tony West said the election was “critically important.”
“Some people say this is the most important election since 1860,” he said, adding, in case anyone missed his reference, “since the Civil War.”
Minutes later, former President Clinton followed suit.
“I’m not running here for anything. It’s because I want to protect the future of my grandchildren,” he said.
“I’m really concerned about our democracy, but right now people are so distracted by their own difficulties that they’re like, ‘Oh, I’ve seen Trump before.'” He was going to do all these bad things, but he didn’t do it. So he won’t be able to do it next time,” Clinton continued, adding, “This crowd needs to know he’s serious.”
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Can January 6th and the abortion ban mobilize voters?
The threat they pose to President Trump has always been a big part of the Democratic Party’s message. But the party has consistently debated where to strike a balance between that theme and advancing Harris’ future plans.
One side argues that voters have consistently put the economy at the top of their list of priorities and wants more specificity about what Harris will do to improve the economy.
The campaign warns that many voters are not listening to President Biden, who has repeatedly talked about President Trump as a threat to democracy. They point out that despite Biden’s attacks, the percentage of voters who have a favorable opinion of Trump increased from spring to early summer.
Other camps countered that persuasive voters didn’t heed Biden’s warnings because of the messenger, not the message. The group contends that concerns about the president’s age and apparent decline led many voters to set aside their concerns about President Trump.
Some argue that Harris has gained the best possible position to settle the race with President Trump on economic issues. They say the increased attention to Trump this late in the campaign could remind voters why they hate him.
Late in the race, Harris clearly made a big bet on that side. This is a fateful choice, and if she wins, she will definitely be praised, but if she fails, she will be judged endlessly.
Last week, she campaigned in three of the seven battleground states – Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – with former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, who has warmed to President Trump over the threat to democracy. I’ve been doing it.
Harris said Wednesday at a CNN town hall in Pennsylvania that Trump would be “a president who admires dictators and is a fascist.”
On Friday, he held a campaign rally in Houston featuring Beyoncé. why? Although there is little chance that Texas will vote for Harris, the audience focused on the state’s abortion ban, which is among the most restrictive in the nation.
Harris has repeatedly warned that if President Trump were elected, she would seek similar bans across the United States. Some of her recent campaign ads feature women who suffer under Texas law.
The former president denied he would approve a nationwide abortion ban, but declined to answer specific questions about what kind of restrictions he would support.
On Tuesday, Ms. Harris is scheduled to speak at the Ellipse in Washington, the same venue where Mr. Trump told a crowd of supporters on January 6, 2021, to stop Congress from certifying Mr. Biden’s victory. This is where they encouraged people to march to the Capitol. Aides told reporters that the speech would hinge heavily on Trump’s threat to democracy, even if the theme was not made clear by the venue alone.
Targeted voters: soft Republicans…
Harris’ closing arguments target two key groups of voters: so-called soft Republicans and Democrats, including many young voters who have not yet decided to vote.
The vast majority of Republicans will vote along party lines, as partisans almost always do. However, Mr. Trump lost some Republican voters to Mr. Biden in 2020, and Ms. Harris’ campaign is making a huge effort to expand that portion and outperform Republicans in key battleground states. I’ve paid.
This is the gist of what happened with Mr. Cheney. Like Harris, Cheney called the former president cruel, unstable and “free-spirited.”
Their efforts recently received a boost from former Trump aides, including former White House chief of staff John Kelly. In interviews with The New York Times and The Atlantic, Harris called her former boss a “fascist” because he said he wanted military subordinates like “Hitler’s generals.”
On Thursday, Ms. Harris unveiled two new ads featuring quotes from Mr. Kelly.
Harris and Cheney held their events in the very suburbs where Republican fortunes have declined during the Trump era. Oakland County near Detroit. and Waukesha, a suburb of Milwaukee.
These mostly white, college-educated suburbs were key to Biden’s 2020 victory.
Harris’ aides are betting that their campaign can squeeze even more power from these areas, especially women voters, this time around. After the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturning longstanding national abortion rights in Roe v. Wade, suburban women accelerated their pushback against Republicans. Their shift was the driving force behind Democratic victories in three northern battleground states in that year’s midterm elections.
Cheney, who had voted strongly against abortion in Congress, was even willing to support Harris on the issue, telling voters in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that voters who consider themselves “pro-life” were more likely to understand the strict nature of abortion. He said that could justify voting for Harris. Bans like Texas.
“I think there are a lot of us around the country who have been pro-life advocates, and they’ve looked at what’s been going on in their states since the Dobbs decision, and they’ve seen that state legislatures We’ve seen laws that prevent women from getting the legal rights they need to get the care they need,” Cheney said in Pennsylvania. “It’s not sustainable for our country and it has to change.”
…The same goes for the wavering Democratic Party.
Polls show Harris is lagging in support among people of color, particularly men, and she needs to improve her support among mostly white, college-educated women in the suburbs.
This was the backdrop to an event between Mr. Clinton and Black leaders in Phoenix, where he, Mr. West and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice told the audience they wanted to rally supporters and support undecided voters. He encouraged them to redouble their efforts to achieve this goal.
“More than 50% of the public knows that President Trump should not return to the White House, and approximately 45% of the public believes that President Trump cannot do anything wrong,” Clinton said. “There’s a piece of it that forces you to make a decision.”
A small portion of that includes a disproportionate number of young voters. Nine percent of registered voters under 30 say they don’t know how they will vote, according to a poll released Friday by the Harvard Institute of Politics.
Overall, Ms. Harris leads Mr. Trump 53% to 33% among registered voters under 30, and 60% to 32% among younger likely voters, according to the poll.
Compared to Biden’s ranking in the spring, Harris improved significantly among young white men and women, and gained dramatic support among young women of color, according to polls. But among young men of color, her margin has eroded slightly.
Black community leaders at the event offered a variety of theories about why some young black men continue to distance themselves from Harris.
“It’s important that we do more to support young black men,” Tempe Mayor Corey D. Woods said in explaining Harris’ economic plan. “It’s a matter of their ability to listen more.”
Cloves Campbell Jr., a former Arizona state legislator and publisher of the Phoenix-based newspaper Arizona Informant, took a slightly less optimistic view.
“There are still men who don’t want to vote for women, and there are still others who haven’t made up their mind. If you combine those, it’s going to be a close race,” he said.
Jevin D. Hodge, 30 years old and just shy of the age limit for the Harvard poll, recounted what he heard at a recent private event with other young black men.
Some participants said, “My vote doesn’t matter.”
“The Democrats have done nothing for me,” one said.
“He’s a businessman. He’ll do things differently,” one person said, referring to Trump.
“A lot of black men feel forgotten,” said Hodge, who narrowly lost the 2022 parliamentary election here. “But as someone who lost by 0.5 percent, I tell them your vote matters.”
The outcome of this unusually close presidential election could determine whether Ms. Harris is able to persuade enough voters on the fence to buy into her message in the final stages of the campaign.
what else to read
This week’s poll: Harris and Trump voters disagree over election security, vote count and hacking concerns.
Saturday’s article: Americans are divided on whether American culture and lifestyle have changed for the better since the 1950s, with Republicans and Democrats holding opposing views.
Featured in the LA Times: Inside a flawed immigration system: Millions of undocumented workers and the certification programs most don’t take advantage of
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