Kamala Harris Is Melting

Vice President Kamala Harris entered the presidential race in July with a variety of advantages, including an enthusiastic base, obsequious coverage by the corporate media and and enormous amounts of campaign cash. Yet, somehow, she is slowly but surely losing ground to former President Donald Trump. Sophisticated analysts across the political spectrum are already opining that, absent a dramatic change, she will likely lose the election. As veteran reporter Mark Halperin put it on Friday during his 2Way podcast, “Democrats are worried about where things stand.”

This concern is based on private polling shared with him by contacts within the Harris camp. Such polls are more accurate than public surveys, which are also going south. According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, her already anemic national lead has dipped below two percent — a fraction of the leads enjoyed at this point in the cycle by Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020. More importantly, RCP shows her trailing Trump, albeit by small margins, in every battleground state except Wisconsin. This state of affairs motivated former White House and Pentagon official Douglas MacKinnon to write the following in The Hill:

I have spoken with three Democratic operatives behind the scenes who all believe the race is slipping away from Vice President Harris … the issue that the Democratic operatives I spoke with believe is the most devastating for Harris: the old “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” question. The problem for Harris is that potentially millions of Americans within the Democrats’ core constituencies not only believe they were better off four years ago, but think that they and their families are being crushed now by the Biden-Harris policies and failures.

The latest New York Times/Siena College poll confirms that this is indeed a serious problem for Harris, particularly among Latinos: “The survey of the likely Latino electorate across the country found Ms. Harris underperforming the last three Democratic candidates for the White House, and vulnerable on a slate of top issues, including the economy, immigration and crime.” According to the Times, Hillary Clinton garnered about 68 percent of this crucial voter bloc in 2016 and Biden received 62 percent of their votes in 2020. The Times survey shows Harris struggling with these voters, only 56 percent of whom support her at present.

This lack of enthusiasm for Harris among Latinos and support for Trump remains a consistent source of confusion for the Gray Lady’s scribblers: “The poll found that [his] escalating attacks on immigrants had not driven Latino voters to Ms. Harris.” This shouldn’t be a mystery. Trump’s “attacks” are aimed at illegal aliens and the border policies advocated by Harris. Moreover, recent polls have shown that a majority of Latinos support Trump’s deportation plan. Meanwhile, the Times’ Nate Cohn finally stumbled across the reason why both Latino—and Black voters—are warming to Trump:

Many people assume that Democrats win Black and Hispanic voters simply because of the party’s commitment to advancing racial equality, but the role of economic self-interest should not be underestimated. Democrats started winning Black and Hispanic voters in the 1930s, not in the 1960s, because Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal helped redefine the Democrats as the party of the working class, not just the party of the former Confederacy … Just 20 percent of Hispanic voters and 26 percent of Black voters say the current economic conditions are good.

A Big Harris Mistake

In other words, as James Carville famously phrased it, “It’s the economy, stupid.” And every time Harris repeats, “We believe in a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by but to get ahead,” we remember that she has been Vice President nearly four years and everyone is poorer. It was at least possible that Harris could have found a way to shift the blame for the economy and inflation to Biden. But not after she said, “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” when asked if she would have done anything differently than President Biden during the past four years. That single answer may have killed her campaign.

According to RCP, more than 67 percent of the electorate believes the country is headed in the wrong direction. By tying herself securely to the Biden record on virtually every issue, foreign and domestic, Harris has managed to land right where he was just before the presidential debate that ended his reelection campaign. Indeed, she is arguably in worse shape than Biden was because she doesn’t have age or infirmity to blame for her incompetence . Harris entered the race with all manner of advantages, yet she squandered them. Assuming we have a free and fair election, Harris will soon melt into obscurity like every other useless VP.

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