As the 2024 election nears its conclusion, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are wrapping up their campaigns by leaning into their healthcare pitches.
While Harris' message hinges on access to abortion, Trump's focuses on letting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "Make America Healthy Again."
Democrats have honed in on abortion as a key issue, leaning on it heavily in the presidential race, following the Supreme Court's reversal of the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in June 2022.
Since forming an unlikely political alliance, Trump's message on healthcare has largely been delegated to Kennedy – one of the country's foremost vaccine skeptics, who holds no medical or public health degrees.
Both candidates' messages are likely a final effort to rally their respective bases as they seek to get the vote out to the polls.
Hoping to repeat the Democrat success story of the 2022 midterm elections, Harris has made access to abortion a central feature of her campaign, pledging to "restore what Donald Trump and his hand-selected Supreme Court justices took away from the women of America" in remarks on the Ellipse outside the White House last week.
The Democrats' better-than-expected performance during the midterms two years ago has been largely attributed to voter anger over the Supreme Court's ruling which scuttled Roe.
According to a KFF poll from September, the issue of abortion resonated most with Democrat and Democrat-leaning independent women voters of reproductive age.
Trump's healthcare message may also be a bid to shore up the support of voters who would have preferred to cast their ballots for Kennedy before he dropped his presidential bid and endorsed Trump over the summer.
"The RFK Jr. message is receptive to many a Trump voter due to the skepticism about Dr. Anthony Fauci and how COVID was handled by the federal government," Stan Barnes, a veteran GOP strategist, told The Hill.
Barnes told the outlet that it's doubtful that undecided voters in Arizona – his home battleground state – are responding to it.
Although Trump runs the risk of alienating some in the moderate wing of the GOP, Barnes said that the campaign hasn't seemed overly concerned about the possibility.
"As we know, there is very little traditional strategic thinking about the Trump approach to campaigning and accumulating supporters," he said.
Kennedy has made no bones about his desire for a top position within a second Trump administration, seeking to apply his "Make America Healthy Again" agenda to the federal health agencies.
When it comes to food and medicine, Trump has promised to let Kennedy "go wild," saying on Monday in Pittsburgh that he would let his former independent rival "pretty much do what he wants" if voters returned him to the White House.
"I want him to do something really important for our country – make people healthier," Trump said. "Do whatever you want. You just go ahead, work on the pesticides, work on making women's health. He's so into women's health, and you know, he's really unbelievable. It's such a passion."
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