What if Donald Trump wasn’t playing it stupid and Kamala Harris wasn’t playing it smart? Trump likely would be elected president for another four years.
Right now, Vice President Harris’ presidential campaign is all about the atmospherics, and it’s on purpose. She’s a younger, fresher face for voters after years of watching Joe Biden decline before our eyes.
She’s ebullient in front of large rallies in key swing states. She’s smiling, she’s laughing, she’s glowing.
She’s letting the polls percolate and recalibrate and they’re swinging in her favor.
She’s avoiding the anyone-but-Trump press, and they’re letting her slide. After three weeks as the Democrat presidential candidate, she’s answered a scant few reporter questions totaling less than two minutes. They were softball questions to boot.
After being anointed by the Democrat Party power players and donors that were in a full blown panic over the Biden candidacy, Harris is basking in the afterglow of his dethroning.
We still have no idea how she’s going to lower inflation, fix the southern border crisis, or deal with Iran, Russia and China. We don’t know what her tax policy is. But for now, for the reinvigorated Democrat base, that doesn’t matter. Biden was dead, Harris is alive.
She’s going to surf her wave of newness all the way to the Democratic National Convention that begins on August 19th. Then, she’ll come out of the convention with another bump in the polls.
After the convention, Harris will finally sit down for an extended interview with a journalist of her choosing. Then, she’ll gear up for a crucial debate with Trump on September 10th.
She will be rehearsed and mentored by her handlers to try to make sure she doesn’t come across as the vapid, goofy and simple-minded politician she has sounded like in the past.
Remember when she admitted to NBC’s Lester Holt that even though she was the immigration czar and she hadn’t been to the southern border it was OK, because she hadn’t been to Europe either? And remember when Israel was prepping its Rafah operation and she declared she had studied the maps and their was no way a million Gazans could be moved out of harm’s way but Israel did it in two weeks? Yeah, that kind of brainlessness.
While all this stuff is going on in the Harris campaign, Trump is being his stupid old self.
A couple of weeks ago at the convention of the National Association of Black Journalists, he questioned her racial identity. He could have garnered kudos for even showing up to such an anti-Trump gathering, but he couldn’t resist being stupid.
He makes up weird names for Harris, like Kamabla. What the heck does that mean? He called the recent decline in the stock market the Kamala Crash and accused her of bringing on the Great Depression of 2024. No, it wasn’t and no, she didn’t.
He calls her dumb and low IQ. He mispronounces her name. He derisively calls her Laffin’ Kamala and Lyin’ Kamala. And here I thought lyin’ was reserved for Nancy Pelosi. Oh well, it’s all stupid.
What Trump is doing is reinforcing with crucial swing voters that he’s dislikable and has a low regard for women. He should be talking succinctly and intelligently about the economy, taxes, immigration and crime. Harris is vulnerable on all of these issues.
Trump should be exploiting the doubts about Kamala Harris’ experience to keep America and its allies safe in a dangerously evolving world He should be coming across as the reassuring choice to the American electorate. He should be clearly articulating his vision for a second term, instead of rehashing what he did from 2016 to 2020.
The truth is, after almost ten years either running for president or being president, the Trump act is tired. He’s tired. Trump is the old white guy now. There is a lot to like about some of his policies but his personal attacks are a distraction. They also let Harris avoid substantive questions about the crucial issues facing the United States and the civilized world.
If only the race was between Kamala Harris and Nikki Haley. Whatta race that would be! Two women on opposite sides of the political divide, offering a clear-cut choice to the voters based on policy and positions, not insults, name-calling and warmed over grievances.
Nikki Haley would have made it easy for non-Trump Republicans to vote for her. She would have made it easier for voters dissatisfied with four years of blue rule to vote red. She would have elevated our political discourse, reassuring Americans and allies alike. The press would have been forced to ask Harris important policy questions that Haley would raise, instead of allowing her easy layups by asking her to react to the latest Trump insult.
Maybe we’ll get that chance in 2028, who knows?
But for now, we got what we got and it ain’t good.
The September debate is crucial for both candidates. Trump has to act normal and offer more than just, If I were president, this or that wouldn’t have happened, or Harris is a Communist and she’s going to turn America into the Soviet Union.
For Harris, she needs to come across as serious, with sane solutions for lowering inflation and reigning in illegal immigration. She has to convince voters she’s a centrist and not beholden to the Bernie Sanders and The Squad radicals of her party. And during the debate, if she delivers one of her word-salad soliloquies, she will prove to the undecideds there’s no there, there.
Kamala Harris can be beat, but Trump’s shtick is as worn out as a Borscht Belt comedian’s standup routine.