Getty Images/ Samuel Corum
With Kamala Harris plainly baked in as the new Democratic candidate, Donald Trump is going to have to up his game.
As long as it was Joe Biden, Trump was headed to a landslide.
Now it’s not such a sure thing, especially as the liberal media and donors have fallen back in lockstep after their “palace coup.”
All the voices that were stomping on any discussion of Biden’s age until his debate disaster exposed the coverup are now pumping up Harris.
While they should be completely discredited, they’re now spewing misinformation for the Dems.
Team Trump would do well to not give in to personal attacks and make this an election based on identity and gender (exactly what they want!) but remember: It’s the issues that the country cares most about.
And that’s where she’s on shaky ground.
It’s not just that she owns the entire Biden-Harris record, from the deadly Afghan bugout to 20%+ total inflation, declining real wages, etc.
On immigration: She was officially Biden’s “border czar,” supposedly tasked with addressing the “root causes” of the crisis back in 2021.
Since she gave her big “Don’t come!” speech that June, at least 8 million have come anyway, from every corner of the world . . . and she just doesn’t talk about the border anymore.
On crime, she was an outright #DefundthePolice advocate in her run for the 2020 nomination. (So much for all puffery now about her time as a prosecutor.)
On energy, she called for a $10 trillion giveaway of taxpayer money to the “alternate energy” industrial complex and the crushing of America’s existing power sources, including a national ban on fracking — which helped make America an energy superpower in the Trump years.
She ran hard to Biden’s left back then . . . and had to drop out before anyone voted.
Yes, she’s also weird, with the cackling and the “what can be, unburdened by what has been” blather and so on — but voters will see that for themselves.
And the rest of the campaign, and (cough) independent media, can and will point it out.
There’s no need for Trump to do it: Just as in his debate with Biden, he only needs to give his opponent the chance to damn herself.
Anything more than that will just risk eliciting sympathy for her with swing voters and setting off inane “Trump was code-talking racism/sexism/whateverism” cycles in the media.
She’ll go after him on abortion, but he should just stick to his guns there: The states is where it belongs; don’t deviate.
After the assassination attempt, the former president’s been showing increased gravitas — he’s got a solid perch on the moral high ground now.
Per the Quinnipiac poll, he has his highest favorability ratings ever since coming down the escalator in 2015.
The other side is going to try to play him — to provoke him into losing his cool with the “prosecutor vs. felon” line.
It is a potential haymaker that we’re sure Trump will be able to spot coming from a long way away.
Harris is profoundly beatable, on the issues and on her record: Corner her on those fronts and she’ll fall apart.