By Steve BermanThe most enthusiastic voters for Kamala Harris are the reporters reporting on all the enthusiasm surrounding her campaign. It’s true that once the old man got out of the way, the floodgates, and Democrat pocketbooks from small donors, broke open, and Harris got a dump truck ($200 million) in cash right up front. It’s a big bet on enthusiasm from the astroturf crowd. But she’s still got her biggest problem: why should anyone vote for Harris, other than they already won’t vote for Trump?
Instead of bothering to answer (because there isn’t one), the Harris campaign and Democrats have come up with a head-scratching attack on the Trump-Vance ticket: they’re “weird.”
No, I’m serious. The AP has it in a headline.
The “weird” message appears to have given Democrats a narrative advantage that it rarely had when President Joe Biden was still running for reelection. Trump’s campaign, which so often shapes political discussions with the former president’s pronouncements, has spent days trying to flip the script by highlighting things about Democrats it says are weird.
Let’s see what’s weird. Donald Trump still leads Kamala Harris in the RCP average 47.9% to 46.2%. Since July 22, Trump leads every poll except Morning Consult and Reuters/Ipsos. Harris has an unfavorable rating of -9.2, with 50.8% of people polled finding her unfavorable (which includes a big bump in the last week). Meanwhile, Trump’s favorability gap is -9%, smaller than Harris, and narrowing.
Trump continues to lead in Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Yet Democrats have done everything they can to capture the headlines, which, largely, they currently own. The “weird” attack, to me, seems–well–weird.
Everything that seems to be knowable about Donald Trump is known. He’s the topic of countless books (authors have made tens of millions off him). Trump’s history, family, medical records, taxes, business, habits, favorite foods, and the tiniest details of his life have all been published and rehashed again and again. J.D. Vance wrote a best-selling autobiography that was made into a movie. Vance, to me, is a troublesome pick for Trump, but he’s by far the favorite of the Trump family. In any case, what’s weird about a former rust-belt poor boy joining the U.S. Marines, then going on to earn a law degree at Yale, working for billionaire Peter Thiel, then running for the Senate?
You know what’s weird? Kamala Harris, at 29 years old, as the mistress of (then) 60-year-old Willie Brown. Brown, who is now 90, was mayor of San Francisco from 1996-2004, when Gavin Newsom took over. In the mid-70s, Brown was one of Jim Jones’–you know, “drink the Kool-Aid”–biggest defenders. He publicly lauded the cult leader, calling him “a combination of Martin King, Angela Davis, Albert Einstein … Chairman Mao.”
Brown played fast and loose with his own wife, with one reporter noting “he’ll go to a party with his wife on one arm and his girlfriend on the other.” One of those girlfriends, who found Brown’s political power intoxicating, was Kamala Harris. Dating Brown paid off: in 2004, with Brown’s influence, Harris won the San Francisco D.A. race. Then Moonbat Jerry Brown appointed her as Attorney General of California in 2011, where she succeeded the Marxist, Xavier Becerra.
Maybe that crowd isn’t weird if you’re one of the filthy hippies occupying Wall Street and Portland, Oregon. But it is weird when you’re telling the public how you are for “law and order” like Harris did.
But hey, when your primary argument to “vote for me” is that you’re not demented by age, and you’re not Donald Trump, then you gotta throw some spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
“Weird” is one of those things that will likely bounce off Trump and stick to Harris. The only thing not weird about her is that she is exactly what she appears to be: a “lousy student” who failed the bar exam on her first try. This attack will last about a week, until they figure out it’s not working, then the media will load up the next plate of spaghetti to toss on the wall.
Follow Steve on Twitter @stevengberman.
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