Harris campaign features less talk of joy and more head-on digs at Trump
as Election Day nears
Send a link to a friend
[October 18, 2024]
By ZEKE MILLER and STEVE KARNOWSKI
LA CROSSE, Wis. (AP) — Joy Olson proudly wore a “Make America Joyful
Again” button Thursday as she waited in line to attend a Kamala Harris
rally. But that doesn’t mean the 70-year-old retiree with the happiest
of names wants the Democratic nominee to shy away from taking the heat
to Republican Donald Trump.
“I’m tired of her being so nice sometimes,” said Olson, who called Trump
“evil and scary.” She added: “I hope she calls him out.”
That’s exactly what the vice president is doing as the campaign enters
its final days.
Less than three weeks from Election Day, Harris is closing out her
campaign painting a dark vision of the country if Trump is sent back to
the White House, including airing video clips at her own rallies of the
Republican nominee’s more alarming rhetoric.
“Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged and will stop at
nothing to claim unchecked power for himself,” Harris said Thursday in
La Crosse, Wisconsin.
It’s a far cry from the “joy” that swirled around her elevation to the
top of the Democratic ticket this summer. As that surge of enthusiasm
has eased, Harris is staking her campaign on increasingly sharp attacks
on Trump meant to get her supporters to turn out and to win over the
tiny universe of persuadable voters left in exceedingly tight
battleground states.
At her La Crosse rally, she noted that Trump falsely claimed this week
that the violent Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, was “a day of love.”
“There were attacks on law enforcement,” she said, recalling the
insurrection where Trump supporters tried to block the counting of
electoral votes that formalized President Joe Biden’s victory. “The
American people are exhausted with his gaslighting. Enough! We are ready
to turn the page!”
“Roll the clip,” she said a week earlier, directing a rally audience to
watch a video of the former president calling for rooting out an “enemy
within” the country.
And she told radio host Charlamagne Tha God during a radio town hall
this week that “Yes, we can say” that Trump was threatening to bring
fascism to the country.
Since taking over the top of the Democratic ticket in late July, Harris
and her team have been torn between the competing priorities of
introducing the vice president to voters and turning the race into a
referendum on the former president after Biden’s debate flop put
Democrats in the spotlight.
In the opening weeks of her campaign, she tried to thread the needle by
sharing with voters her background as a prosecutor, telling stories
about her upbringing and laying out her vision of how she would govern
if elected.
Harris has been no stranger to criticizing Trump, but the urgency and
vividness of her warnings about him have noticeably ramped up in recent
days.
“He wants to send the military after American citizens. He wants to
prevent women from making decisions about their own bodies,” Harris said
in La Crosse. “He wants to threaten fundamental freedoms and rights like
the freedom to vote, the freedom to be safe from gun violence, to
breathe clean air and drink clean water, and the freedom to love who you
love openly and with pride.”
[to top of second column]
|
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris boards
Air Force Two upon departing La Crosse Regional Airport in La
Crosse, Wis., Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024, en route to Green Bay, Wis.
(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
It marks a return to the guiding strategy that was first outlined by
Biden aides a year ago, when he was planning his reelection bid, and
that is now being deployed by his hand-picked successor.
“People go negative because it works,” said Republican strategist
Brendan Buck, a former top aide to GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan.
“Harris needed to make herself an acceptable alternative but
ultimately the coalition was always going to be more of an
anti-Trump one than anything affirmatively pro-Harris.”
Trump's team has noticed too. “Kamala’s entire campaign is based on
lies about President Trump,” his campaign spokesperson Karoline
Leavitt said in a statement.
Some of the attacks on Trump are part of Harris’ explicit outreach
urging Republican voters to cross party lines, like her rally
Wednesday in Pennsylvania with dozens of anti-Trump Republican
political figures. Her team views it as a unique opportunity for
Harris to increase her base of support and tap into a collection of
voters who’ve already rejected Trump in the past.
Former Biden communications director Kate Bedingfield said attacking
Trump gives Harris an opening with independent and even moderate
Republican voters, and shifts the political conversation to ground
where she is stronger — protecting American democracy — and away
from issues where Republicans are often seen as stronger, such as
immigration and the economy.
“Putting the stakes of this election front and center in the final
few weeks may help motivate a slice of voters who are otherwise
tired of the process,” she said.
At a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Thursday evening, Harris was set
to highlight Trump calling himself the “father of IVF,” as her
campaign casts the Republican as a threat to women's reproductive
health.
Greg Swagel, a 76-year-old retired yacht builder from Sturgeon Bay,
Wisconsin, showed up to Harris' rally in Green Bay wearing a Green
Bay Packers sweatshirt and said he “most definitely” agrees with
Harris becoming more aggressive in her rhetoric.
“She has to put (Trump) in his place," Swagel said. "He tells lies.
He calls people names. Just as long as she doesn’t become him in the
sense of lowering herself.”
___
Miller reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Chris
Megerian in La Crosse, Wisconsin, Todd Richmond in Green Bay,
Wisconsin, and Colleen Long in Washington contributed to this
report.
All contents © copyright 2024 Associated Press. All rights reserved
|