The Democrats handed Kamala Harris the presidential nomination on a silver platter following Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump. Her rise to the top of the ticket sparked a surge of enthusiasm and a flood of cash into the Democrats’ efforts to keep control of the White House. Polls that once had Trump poised for a decisive victory suddenly showed Harris in the lead. And now it's falling apart.
In the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen all the signs of a campaign that knows that it is struggling to close the sale and that Trump has the momentum right now. And now her team is trying literally anything, hoping it will shift the race back in her favor.
Over the weekend, Harris decided that with nothing else working, she’d try to make Trump’s age an issue. It was ironic. Democrats tried to flip the script on the age issue well before Biden and Trump debated, and it didn’t work. Yet she thinks playing that card on Trump now will suddenly work?
In a way, it was predictable. Kamala is notoriously bad at communicating, and she’s been on one train wreck after another in interviews with friendly networks. This attempt to pivot the election narrative away from the issues and try to gin up nonexistent concerns about Trump’s mental acuity is likely to blow up in her face.
As CNN’s Scott Jennings pointed out, this tactic only highlights her vulnerabilities.
On Tuesday, Jennings noted the irony of Harris focusing on Trump’s health when she’s been a key figure in hiding the truth about Biden’s condition for the last four years. “If I were Harris, I wouldn’t be leaning too heavily into who’s hiding what kind of medical conditions of people who wanna be the president given her role in lying about the condition of Joe Biden for the last four years,” Jennings remarked.
He’s right. Conservative media has been questioning Biden’s mental and physical health since the 2020 campaign. It was the Democratic Party and the mainstream that pushed back on this narrative. Harris has often claimed to have been integral to the process of making policy decisions, referring to herself as the “last person in the room with Joe Biden.”
It’s hard to claim any moral high ground when you’ve spent years covering up Biden's lack of fitness for the presidency.
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Secondly, Harris’s repeated attacks on Trump’s age don’t offer any new substance. As Jennings put it, “I don’t think this works for her… You’re punching Donald Trump in the same way every other Democrat we’ve ever heard from for the last eight, nine years has punched this guy.”
Once again, this is spot-on. Voters have largely made up their minds about Trump. The problem undecided voters have is that they don’t know enough about Kamala and her vision. For her to pivot away from defining herself to attacking Trump is an act of desperation.
Voters already know whether they love or hate Trump. What her campaign hasn't figured out yet is that she hasn't made a compelling case for why voters should support her.
“If she cannot sell her own candidacy any better than just punching on him … if I were in her camp ... I just don’t know it’s gonna be enough,” Jennings added.
Harris can try to get somewhere with this line of attack, but it will likely backfire on her. That she's even trying it at all is a sign that her campaign is falling apart.
