Vice President Kamala Harris is hoping famous fellow Democrats and appearances on friendly media outlets will be enough to pull her presidential campaign over the finish line — as a series of polls suggest Republican Donald Trump has the advantage in their race to the White House.
On Thursday, the same day that former President Barack Obama, 63, held his first rally for Harris in Pittsburgh, Pa., the campaign announced that another former chief executive, Bill Clinton, 78, will make the case for Harris in Georgia and North Carolina.
“The Harris campaign unleashes the Big Dog,” spokesman Ian Sams said in a jubilant tweet that quoted a CNN report about Clinton’s assistance. “Bill Clinton to hit the rural South for Harris this week, stumping in Georgia and eastern North Carolina, ‘going back to a kind of campaigning that he hasn’t done since before he became the “Comeback Kid.”‘”
On the other side of Pennsylvania, seen by many as the state that will determine whether Trump, 78, or Harris, 59, becomes the 47th president, the Democratic campaign is making a “significant” ad buy on Philadelphia hip-hop and R&B-focused stations in an apparent bid to shore up slipping black support, according to local radio host Dan O’Donnell.
Not inclined to give Pennsylvanians a break, the Harris team also announced she would participate in an Oct. 23 town hall hosted by CNN.
After being anointed the Democratic nominee in early August, Harris rode a polling surge to catch and pass Trump both nationally and in battleground states. But with fewer than four weeks to go until the polls close, the picture has darkened for the veep.
The RealClearPolitics polling average has Trump narrowly leading Harris in five of the seven vital states that will decide the election: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Of those five, only North Carolina went for Trump in 2020.
While Harris is clinging on to her polling average lead in Wisconsin, no survey used by RCP has shown her leading Trump in the Badger State since late September.
More concerning for the VP, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that an internal poll conducted by Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s campaign showed Trump in front of Harris by three percentage points, more than triple the Republican’s winning margin in the state (0.77%) over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The Trump campaign piled on Thursday by blasting out internal polls of the seven swing states, showing the Republican up five percentage points in Georgia, three points in Arizona and Nevada, and a single point in Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
“There are lots of Republicans — I say lots — a not insignificant number of Republicans, who say the race is effectively over,” longtime political journalist Mark Halperin said Tuesday on 2WAY’s “Morning Meeting” program.
“[They think] that … Trump is going to lock up the Sun Belt states [Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina], probably all four, but at least three, and then he’s going to win Pennsylvania, and that checkmates [Harris]. They may be wrong, but there’s not an insignificant number of them who are quite confident of that.”
Halperin gave a similar diagnosis Thursday, emphasizing that while Harris could still win, “the snapshot of where we are now is, there are a lot of really worried Democrats and there are really no worried Republicans, including at Mar-a-Lago.”
While most surveys show Harris winning clear majorities of women and college-educated white voters, her margins among black and Latino voters lag below what President Biden received in 2020, while Trump swamps her among male voters.
A recent poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research also shows that although black registered voters have an overwhelmingly positive view of Harris compared to Trump, they are less sure that she would make a positive change in the country.
Harris allies appear to be feeling the strain, anonymously griping to Axios in a report published Thursday that the Democratic nominee “seems stuck, even sliding a bit” in surveys of voters in the “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — despite out-fundraising Trump and blanketing the airwaves with ads.
Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), running for Senate in the Wolverine State, also recently expressed worry about Harris’ standing there.
“I’m not feeling my best right now about where we are on Kamala Harris in a place like Michigan,” Slotkin said in leaked audio of a virtual campaign event with Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ).
“We have her underwater in our polling,” Slotkin reportedly added.
One senior Democratic source told The Post that they were “not in a blue wall panic,” but acknowledged they were concerned by the narrow margins between Harris and Trump and suggested the Democrat’s push for a second debate was rooted in the polling slump.
“The debates help her,” stressed the source, who added the campaign wasn’t doing Harris any favors by booking her on friendly, frothy platforms like the “Call Her Daddy” podcast.
Democratic pollster Brad Bannon told The Post that Harris’ new campaign strategy was designed to ensure “maximum turnout” of core Democratic constituencies, rather than persuading the vanishingly small number of undecided voters.
“Of course they should be worried about voter turnout,” Bannon said. “And they should be doing everything to generate Democratic-based turnout.”
“She’s clearly worried about her campaign,” a Trump adviser said, pointing to the radio ad spending aimed at black male voters and the launch of a new initiative aimed at Hispanic men called “Hombres con Harris.”
“I think she’s playing defense, not offense,” the person added. “That’s pretty clear.”
