If Vice President Kamala Harris changes her image significantly within the next five weeks, "she's got a good chance to win" in November, Newsmax contributor Mark Halperin said Saturday.
However, Halperin told Newsmax's "America Right Now" that if Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's campaign and allies can define her as a "radical," then he doesn't believe she'll take the race.
"I know I'm going to be asked a lot between now and Labor Day what the chances are, but I don't think we'll know until then," Halperin said, pointing out that Trump's campaign will have its opportunity against her when she's busy picking a running mate, attending the Democratic National Convention in August, and doing her acceptance speech.
"[If] the Trump campaign gears up and its allies to define her as what I call a 'SFR,' a San Francisco radical, and if by Labor Day, the swing voters in the swing states think of her as a SFR, I don't believe she'll win," said Halperin.
But if Harris uses the next five weeks to project a "much different image of herself, including on abortion rights, including on standing up to Donald Trump, I think she's got a good chance to win," said Halperin.
Meanwhile, while Harris was running for president in 2020, she tweeted support for the Minnesota Freedom Fund to bail out Black Lives Matter protesters and has come under fire after two bail recipients were later charged with murder.
Halperin said it's easy to find such individual examples that can be "turned into a pretty powerful characterization of her as someone who'd be the most liberal president in American history," but there are more than just such things.
"That's what she is," said Halperin. "She's been very far to the left, more so than Joe Biden, and that's going to be — to me, that's the game. The whole question of whether she can win or not is whether she's defined that way or whether she's defined by a Beyonce track video."
But the dominant media is reflecting the portrait shown in Harris' first advertisement, not scrutinizing her record, so it's up to the Trump campaign "to get people to focus on her record as opposed to the gauzy impression and image that they're selling right now," he said.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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