With recent polling showing that Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are very much in a dogfight for the presidency, many Democrat supporters are questioning choices being made by the Harris campaign, The Hill reported Wednesday.
Although Trump continues to hold almost daily campaign events in crucial battleground states to shore up his base and appeal to undecideds, Harris opted not to hold rallies Tuesday and Wednesday and instead appear on highly controlled television interviews. The vice president has scheduled interviews with NBC News, Telemundo, and a CNN town hall event, The Hill reported.
Likewise, some other recent decisions have supporters scratching their heads. On Friday, Harris will visit deep red Texas, a state where she has just a 14% chance of winning, according to Decision Desk HQ/The Hill's prediction model.
The campaign has also drafted former and current Republicans who have staked their claim as "never-Trumpers." Yet their presence on the campaign has given some longtime Democrats reason to pause. Harris has enlisted the support of former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and has been endorsed by her father, former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney.
"If someone would have told me that in 2024 we would be celebrating the endorsement of a war criminal like Dick Cheney by a Democratic nominee ..." Democrat Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud told The Hill. Hammoud, whose city is majority Arab American, added that Dick Cheney's endorsement "does not work in this community."
"When you arrive at the top of the ticket, what I endorse is that you vote your moral conscience," Hammoud said.
Incidentally, Hammoud's sentiment was shared by Trump, who posted Tuesday on Truth Social: "Lyin' Kamala has stooped so low as to pick a woman to campaign with her who lost her Congressional Race by the largest margin, 40%, in history. The record holder is Crazed Warhawk Liz Cheney, whose father, Dick, convinced Bush to go into the Middle East and KILL."
Still, other Democrats believe bringing in some dismayed Republicans can help with elusive undecided voters.
"The next two weeks is a needle in a haystack hunt for undecided voters," former Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., who ran the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2011-2015, told The Hill. "The airwaves in battleground states are completely cluttered, so the Harris campaign has to use novel voter turnout innovations like untraditional campaign surrogates and media platforms, and micro-persuasion.
"Harris must make this a referendum on Trump and Trump has to make it a referendum on Harris. Whoever succeeds at that task, wins."