Published: 02:07 EDT, 6 September 2024 | Updated: 08:46 EDT, 6 September 2024
With days until early voting begins, and two months before a victor is declared, this remains Donald Trump's race to lose.
Simply put, Americans prefer strength over weakness and commonsense fairness over wokeness.
It's also a hard fact that Trump can cite more accomplishments from a successful first term than Harris, who despite her regret and reset, represents four more years of the present chaos and crisis.
After besting President Biden in CNN's debate, surviving an assassination attempt and presiding – just days later – over a triumphant Republican National Convention, Trump's poll numbers skyrocketed, and the presidency seemed firmly within his reach.
But that's when a moribund Democratic Party then got clinical and cynical – undemocratically shivving a sitting President to make way for Harris.
Understandably, for Trump and his team, adjusting to that sudden switcheroo took a moment.
Frantic calls from Republican donors and screaming headlines from unfriendly media outlets urged him to change course, or even replace his running mate J.D. Vance and fire his campaign team.
Trump smartly resisted those entreaties, sticking to the plan, expressing faith in his team, and expanding – not expunging – personnel. His Truth Social post announcing the return of his one-time campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, was vintage Trump: 'Many people want to join the campaign for the final push… We want as many as we can get!'
He knows there is wisdom in a multitude of counselors.
Despite scurrilous and unserious suggestions that his campaign is suffering a 'breakdown', Trump is in control and command.
I know because in our weekly phone calls and during regular visits, I detect the same energy, alacrity and winning focus that I've witnessed by his side for years – first as his final 2016 campaign manager and later serving as a senior counselor in his White House.
That fighting spirit the entire world saw in those spontaneous, iconic moments after he was shot in Butler – his blood-stained face and fist assuring us that he will not back down – was real.
Meanwhile, nobody's talking about the Democrats' own internal breakdown.
The political castration of Biden in favor of his even more unpopular deputy may have generated half-a-billion dollars in donor cash, but it seems a stretch to believe that the dysfunctional Democrats and their allies in the media can do what an assassin's bullet could not – stop Donald Trump.
For all the hoopla and hot air (balloons included) at the Democrat National Convention in Chicago last month, the air was thick with hypocrisy, as attendees tripped over themselves to praise and promote Harris, who just weeks before had been viewed as unsteady on the job and unready for a promotion.
Sure, the Obama Couple remain popular – but the Obama Coalition is long gone. In 2016, Trump flipped 206 counites that had twice voted for Barack Obama.
The 2016 shift was not simply transitional; it was transformative.
Obama's personal appeal did not easily transfer to other Democrat candidates, including Hillary Clinton, who – as we mustn't forget – he backed over his own Vice President in the first fight against Trump.
In fact, over 1,000 elected Democrats nationwide lost their seats while Obama was President.
Indeed, as Harris is fast finding out, 'vibes' do not equal votes. 'Joy' cannot feed, clothe or shelter a family, stop the bloodshed in Ukraine or Israel, secure the Southern border, rescue children trapped in failing schools, or distract from the $5 trillion dollar tax hikes Biden and Harris have aimed squarely at the assets of middle-class Americans.
The same policy advantages Trump had over Biden persist over Harris. She is claiming to be the underdog, but will more swing voters embrace a San Francisco radical over a 'Scranton Joe' who presented himself as a centrist and a unifier?
The top issues for voters include the economy, inflation, crime, and the border.
A recent CBS poll found that roughly two-thirds of Americans say the country has veered off on the wrong track – and that they disapprove of the current administration's handling of the economy, of border security, and of the Israel-Hamas war.
The latest Fox News and Quinnipiac polls show Trump is preferred over Harris when it comes to handling those issues in all of the key swing states.
What more can we expect from Trump in the next 60 days?
For starters: the Democrats dumped Biden, so Trump should, too.
This is the Harris Administration. Feeling more pressure and less prosperous? She did that.
Upset that 10 million migrants and enough fentanyl to kill every American many times over have poured into the country? Kamala.
The self-identified 'last person in the room' before the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the 'deciding vote' for the Inflation Reduction Act (which did no such thing) must eat and own all of her policy failings and flailings.
We cannot allow her to morph into some fantasized creation of an independent-thinking, work-across-the-aisle fresh face ready to unify a divided nation and a dangerous world. Her record and words say otherwise.
We cannot permit Harris to slither out of accountability, dodging questions from the press and refusing to sit for interviews.
Lately, Trump and Vance have sharpened focus, delivering policy-driven speeches, granting media interviews and reaching more diverse audiences.
Recent endorsements from prominent former Democrats like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, alongside recent polling showing Trump's surging popularity among Hispanic and Black voters are evidence that he is expanding his reach.
Second: Trump must hit Harris with policy – not just personal attacks.
Trump famously refers to himself as a counterpuncher.
And certainly, he has the right to respond to the relentless invective hurled his way by Democrats and their adjuncts in the media.
Still, his greatest advantage over Harris is policy performance, not personal peeves.
Millions of Americans prefer Trump for the job because he has done the job before.
Harris has benefitted by dodging and weaving, flip-flopping and being non-committal on what her presidency would look like. This is a short-term asset and a long-term risk.
Harris would prefer to keep this election about snark and soundbites. Trump can and should take the high road, leaving the gutter politics to her.
But he could also lean into his 'personality' as tough, resolute and decisive.
It is often said, 'I want Trump's policies without Trump's personality'. Good luck with that. Who's to say we get those policies without that personality?
Taking out al-Baghdadi and Soleimani, ending the ISIS caliphate, recalibrating trade deals, energy independence and no new wars, restoring the economy and making our southern border more secure, supporting parents' rights, respecting workers, backing the blue and Border Patrol – these are all verifiable successes that voters want on rewind.
Underestimating Trump has always been a fool's errand.
Pollsters famously declared Hillary Clinton the sure winner in 2016.
In 2020, national polling was the least accurate we'd seen in decades.
In the days leading up to that election, the Washington Post said Biden was up 17 percent in Wisconsin. The New York Times put the figure at 11 percent. The actual margin was a paltry 0.6 percent!
This time, Trump is witnessing his best-ever polling.
Harris has taken the lead nationally by a meagre 1.9 percent according to the latest RealClearPolitics average – far behind Biden and Hillary Clinton at this point in their respective races.
Why? Partly because the 'undercover, hidden Trump voters' – as I termed them in 2016 – are back again. This time they are more diverse by age, race, political affiliation and socioeconomic status.
These are the quiet majority who shy away from telling pollsters what they feel and how they'll vote, lest they be censored and assailed by their family and friends – or the woke police.
At the same time, do you suppose there is a single hidden Kamala Harris voter in this country?
If anything, you can easily spot them peacocking around, assured of certain victory – simply because she is not Biden and she is not Trump. But when has that ever been enough to win?
The 2024 presidential race has already been unpredictable and unprecedented.
For the past two months especially, every minute has felt like a week.
Yet for all the twists and turns, the fundamentals remain the same: thousands of voters across seven states (and really, 21 counties), will decide the next President of the United States.
The contest is close, as it has been the past two presidential cycles.
Both Harris and Trump want this election to be about him.
'Trump' was the most-often spoken word at both party conventions and may well be the most cited name in daily discourse. Yet the ballot will not say, 'Trump?! Check Yes or No.'
By continuing to position herself as 'not Trump', Harris is limiting herself among swing voters who are struggling economically, worried about world affairs, and feeling that life the past three-and-a-half years has not been fair.
The day Trump made me his campaign manager in August 2016, I said something to him about Hillary Clinton that applies again now, eight years later, to Kamala Harris: If the race is mostly about you, it is harder to win. If the race is about both of you, where folks have a clear, comparative binary choice and cannot unsee and unhear what they learn from her and about her, you're the next president.
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