DEXTER, Mich. – Veteran political strategist Alex Castellanos sees only one path to victory for Kamala Harris: shedding her image as an elite San Francisco liberal to win over working-class Rust Belt voters.
“There’s friends in the movie business in Hollywood who tell me that the hero and the villain in the movie always fight over the same thing: money, power, or the girl,” Castellanos told The Post.
“And I think in this movie, both sides have to fight over the Rust Belt. That’s the only path to 270.”
Although he acknowledges Kamala’s current momentum, he believes higher-ups in the Democrat Party are pessimistic about her ability to win undecided voters.
“Democrats who know her in full all have said she’s a weaker candidate than Joe Biden in that regard. And that’s because they’ve seen what the rest of the nation is going to see in the next three months: that at her core, she is a lifelong woman of the left who has not proven herself capable of dealing with the difficult problems of the world.”
Castellanos, a Cuban-born political consultant who grew up in North Carolina, has seen it all.
He’s worked with GOP presidential candidates from Bob Dole to Mitt Romney, shaping modern campaign strategy along the way.
The “father of the attack ad,” as he’s called among politicos, is also well known for his contributions to the lexicon of American political vernacular.
In 1996, Castellanos popularized the term “soccer mom,” now a well known archetype of American life inspired by his own wife, who he says is the original.
“Yep, guilty. I happen to have married her. My wife was in the suburban assault vehicle, taking the kids to school, managing the household business, taking care of the parents on one end, kids on the other,” he told The Post.
“And I made the comment one day to E.J. Dionne [of The Washington Post] that she’s the voter that both campaigns are targeting. She’s the soccer mom. And next thing I know, it’s on bumper stickers.”
These days Castellanos works as a bipartisan political consultant in Virginia, and he says the “soccer moms” of this election cycle are blue collar workers in the Rust Belt, who Harris needs to win.
To capture the “blue wall” states – Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania – Harris may need to take a page out of her predecessor’s book, Castellano said.
“[She] has got to have some of that working-class appeal that Joe Biden has: the way he goes back home to Delaware on the train, that he’s one of us, that he understands our problems.”
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That does not mean, however, that she should solicit help from President Biden, Castellanos emphasized.
What should the current president do, you ask, for Kamala’s campaign?
“Never get on the campaign bus,” Castellanos warned. “Just stay in the basement.”
Still, transforming her image will be a tough task for Harris, who has failed to impress voters as VP, and has only a limited number of months to turn things around before November.
“That’s a bigger reach for her because she’s got a history of fairly radical liberalism on the internet,” said Castellanos.
“She has to appeal to the blue-collar Macomb County working class. She’s got to become something she has not been and believe everything she has rejected.”
Kamala’s best chance to win the election? Appear more right-wing, says this mustachioed political veteran.
“To have a shot at carrying Michigan and Pennsylvania and North Carolina and even Virginia, she has to offer a more centrist agenda. So I think a lot of Democrats will let Kamala move to the right, to the point where she could put a Trump bumper sticker on her campaign limo and get away with it.”
If she does shift, it wouldn’t defy Democrat campaign history.
“Bill Clinton ran as a Democrat who was for welfare reform and supported the death penalty. And when Carville was asked, ‘How did you do that?’ How did you rally the Democratic Party behind that?’ he said, ‘Well, we was sick of losing!’”
“She’s caught between a rock and a hard place,” Castellanos said of Harris, “because if she doesn’t offer a more centrist policy agenda, she’s an out-of-touch liberal responsible for illegal immigration, crime, inflation, and, and wars all over the world.”
“And if she does change her position on those things, she is a political chameleon and inauthentic,” he added. “So can she pivot on a dime? Can she become something she’s not?”
Castellanos says putting on her “crime-fighting cape” and running on her record as a prosecutor to win over undecided voters is one potentially viable strategy.
“I think her campaign believes that the ‘tough prosecutor’ is the only thing she has,” said Castellanos.
The best thing that Kamala can do in the immediate future, he says, is to pick a macho, centrist VP candidate who balances her out in the eyes of the public.
“I think she needs someone that makes her lefty radicalism and her lack of seriousness safer. In other words, I think she needs some toxic masculinity. I think she needs a centrist Democrat. I think she needs someone like Mark Kelly from Arizona.”
Looking to the weeks ahead, the politico predicts a short honeymoon period for Harris, who is riding high on her post-announcement momentum.
“She’ll get another bump at her convention with a good vice-presidential pick and two Obama speeches at the convention.”
Still, Castellanos says her documented history of hard-left talking points will break her stride.
Finally, the “father of the attack ad” concluded with one well-considered observation.
“Without anyone ever running a negative commercial against Kamala Harris the past four years, she has still become the most unpopular vice president in American history.”