With the end of her abbreviated presidential campaign in sight, Kamala Harris is trying to put the focus squarely on Donald Trump and allegations he presents a threat to democratic institutions, echoing the strategy used by Joe Biden before he ended his reelection bid.
It's a bet that fear of the former Republican president can rally Harris supporters and nudge undecided voters to her side in the final days. Harris' challenge will be connecting philosophical questions about American democracy with the everyday concerns of individual Americans on such things as abortion, the economy and the border.
The effort will be on full display Tuesday, when Harris delivers what her team describes as her closing argument from the Ellipse, the grassy space adjacent to the National Mall in Washington. It’s the same place where Trump stood when he urged his supporters to march on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to challenge what he called a rigged 2020 election.
By her choice of location, the vice president is drawing attention to Trump critics' claims that the ex-president is intent on having unchecked power, an issue that also animated Biden's aborted reelection campaign. Biden spoke frequently about the battle for democratic values — sometimes, according to his critics, to the detriment of economic and other more concrete concerns.
Since replacing Biden at the top of the ticket, Harris has tried to reassure voters that she will bring down the costs of groceries and housing. She's also put more distance between herself and Biden, promising “a new approach” if elected.
But Harris also increasingly talks about Trump as an existential threat, with his description of Jan. 6 as “a day of love” and the latest revelation that his former chief of staff called him a fascist. She has echoed that allegation, while Trump and his campaign have called recent articles on the matter part of highly politicized efforts to derail his campaign through blatant lies.
"Comrade Kamala Harris sees that she is losing, and losing badly, especially after stealing the Race from Crooked Joe Biden, so now she is increasingly raising her rhetoric, going so far as to call me Adolf Hitler, and anything else that comes to her warped mind. She is a Threat to Democracy, and not fit to be President of the United States — And her Polling so indicates!" Trump posted Wednesday night on Truth Social.
Harris has made an effort to reach out to Republicans who are uneasy about Trump, urging them to unite behind her candidacy to safeguard American ideals.
The speech for Tuesday's event is still being written, although there are glimpses of the message in her recent public remarks. On Thursday in Philadelphia, she described the election as “a very serious decision.”
“You have the choice of a Donald Trump, who will sit in the Oval Office stewing, plotting revenge, retribution, writing out his enemies list,” she said. “Or what I will be doing, which is responding to folks like the folks last night” — a reference to undecided voters who questioned Harris at a televised town hall on Wednesday — “with a to-do list.”
Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s national press secretary, said Harris’ message is a sign that she’s losing, and that “the walls are closing in.”
“That’s why Kamala is resorting to the attacks Democrats have been hurling at President Trump for years,” she said. “Unfortunately for Kamala, despite these old and tired lies, President Trump is still more popular today than he ever has been since 2016.”
Trump's favorability rating has been strikingly consistent for several years, although it did fall for a time, to 36%, in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack, according to Gallup polling.
It was a far more robust 46% last month.
Harris had a 44% favorability rating last month, an increase from 34% in June, the month before she replaced Biden as the Democrat candidate. He left the trail weeks after a disastrous debate performance against Trump, which focused attention on Biden's age and fitness to serve for another term.
On Thursday, Harris was set to campaign in Georgia with former President Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen, and she's headed to Texas -- a bastion of the political right -- on Friday for an event with Beyonce focused on abortion rights.
Faiz Shakir, a political adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, said attacking Trump has been “a tried-and-true tactic” for years.
Biden demonstrated that days before the midterm elections with a speech at Union Station in Washington. Although he mentioned popular programs such as Medicare and Social Security, he focused more on fears that electing Republicans would embolden Trump antidemocratic efforts.
“I hope you will make the future of our democracy an important part of your decision to vote and how you vote,” Biden said.
Democrats performed better than expected in the midterms, and about 4 in 10 voters said the future of U.S. democracy was their primary consideration when voting, according to AP VoteCast. Among Democrats, it was about 6 in 10.
However, Shakir was skeptical that a similar approach was the best approach this year.
“They kind of have given up on, in my view, the argument of persuasion, that we want to tell people something new or different about Kamala Harris," he said. "Instead we want to remind you of the worst of Donald Trump.”
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said Harris should be doing “a little of both" by talking up her plans for the middle class and attacking Trump’s statements.
“We know what a second Trump term would look like — it would be attacking all of the things that we hold dear,” Shuler said.
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