Is a pretape just as good as being there live?
That’s the dubious bet Kamala Harris is making on Thursday night’s Al Smith Dinner, where she will appear — sort of — after being the first presidential candidate to decline the invitation since Walter Mondale.
She’ll address attendees via prerecorded video, in her latest disrespect to Catholics.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan earlier described the veep’s 11th-hour Hail Mary as “sending one of those Zooms or something.”
Dolan’s spokesman told The Post they’ve “known something was coming” for the last few days — in other words, she made the play weeks after announcing Sept. 21 she’d skip the big event.
Will it be enough?
The Donald Trump campaign is betting not, arguing her video submission won’t suffice as an Act of Contrition with Catholics who’ve already been less than enthusiastic about the Democrat’s disengagement.
“For the first time since 1984, a presidential candidate has declined the annual Al Smith Charity Dinner. Why? Her radical policies are fundamentally at odds with Catholic teachings, and her history of anti-Catholic rhetoric has further alienated this crucial voting bloc,” says the Make America Great Again PAC, not drawing a difference between a virtual presence and a total no-show.
How alienated are Catholics?
Opinion surveys say she’s beyond atonement.
The former president is up by 5 points overall in crucial battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, per recent National Catholic Register polling.
He’s up by double digits in Michigan and Wisconsin, two blue-wall states Harris must win to have a path to 270 electoral votes, according to many analysts. And he’s up 16 points with white Catholics.
Yet another poll from the Pew Research Center shows a 5-point gap overall with Catholics for Harris nationwide, with 61% of believers backing Trump.
MAGA’s analysis attributes that attrition to the “Catholic hate” that “permeates SO much of her campaign,” saying her decision to ditch the dinner is “sending a powerful message to Catholics: That they aren’t welcome in her coalition.”
Harris’ alleged offenses are compound, per the Trump camp, including but not limited to attacks on the Knights of Columbus as she grilled the former president’s judicial nominees about their membership in the cornerstone Catholic group while she was a California senator. She also moved to shut down the Little Sisters of the Poor for, in the Trump team’s terms, “refusing to conform to radical leftist beliefs on gender identity.”
And as attorney general, she used her enforcement power to drive six California Catholic hospitals “out of business.”
It’s not just the Trump campaign that’s sounding warnings about Kam’s Catholic crash.
“Kamala’s definitely been impacted negatively by a lack of support from Catholic voters,” Ryan Girdusky, a GOP strategist and Catholic, told The Post recently. “She’s polling worse than Joe Biden among a very important demographic. They are the largest single church in America, the Catholic vote will help decide the presidency.”
The Trump camp expects to capitalize on the Democrat’s doldrums with the demo, saying, “Harris’ absence from the Al Smith Dinner and abandonment of Catholic families will result in Catholics abandoning her on November 5.”
Ironically, Catholics aren’t the only religious group Harris is struggling with.
The veep is also mired in a Muslim malaise, with Green Party candidate Jill Stein leading Harris among the group in six battleground states overall, 30% to 28%, per Council on American-Islamic Relations polling.
Trump led Harris 46% to 42% in a poll of Arab Americans from the Arab-American Institute this fall.
