I am in awe of the Harris campaign. Truly.
The campaign has absolutely nothing going for it in reality, but the media has propped it up so much that it has the American people convinced that it's something special. Thanks to the relative newness of the campaign and the relief many Democrats must feel now that they're rid of the mentally and physically frail octogenarian who was leading them, the sugar high is helping give off the perception that Kamala Harris really has momentum. It's an orchestra of illusions.
Behind the scenes, I'm not entirely sure the Harris campaign knows what it's doing. This often feels like a High School project where the strategists are in the weeds on what to do in the grand scheme of things, but do have fun little ideas for posts on social media, including Lisa Frank images.
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 26, 2024
In the absence of knowing what it is exactly they should be doing, the Harris team just copies what a team that does know what it's doing is up to. Like a kid cheating an exam by glancing at what the kid next to them is doing, the Harris campaign just looks at Trump's policy positions and, if they seem popular, does that.
You saw that blatantly happen with Trump's "no tax on tips" idea, which was lambasted by the press for robbing the government of valuable taxpayer dollars but treated it like a genius revelation the moment Harris adopted it for her own campaign.
As Nick Arama reported on Tuesday, now the Harris campaign has adopted the Trump campaign promise of building a wall across the border, which the Biden/Harris administration had famously shut down, denounced repeatedly as racist and cruel, and even sued the governors of border states if they attempted to implement their own border protection measures.
As Nick noted in her article, Harris has been adamant about denouncing the border wall, referring to it as a "vanity project" for Trump, and vowing not to vote for a border wall "under any circumstances."
This isn't just a flip-flop. This is a flip-flop on such a massive scale that it almost defies logic.
The only logic to it is that immigration and border protection are high on the concern scale for Americans, and Harris has been historically abysmal on it. Her team sees that this is clearly a topic that's losing them a solid chunk of votes, especially in border states like Arizona, and as such, Harris is suddenly more Trump than Trump on the border wall.
Bizarre swing. You'd figure the Harris campaign would try to find some sort of compromise or middle ground here, but no. They went straight to a promise to build it.
Of course, if you want to watch this claim fall apart, a reporter could simply ask why she's not doing it right now... if she would take questions from reporters.
The massive swing is indicative of panic, not controlled decision-making. It shows that the Harris campaign is flailing around for stable ground, and the only thing they can land on is whatever the Trump campaign is having success with.
I can't actually see this kind of strategy going well for the Harris campaign. While she could get away with the "no tax on tips" policy, the border wall is an issue that the Democrats are famously diametrically opposed to. It conflicts with their ideology of there being no such thing as illegal immigrants and that all who "seek refuge" should be welcomed into the country, no questions asked.
I can't see many people on the left taking this lightly.
I don't think this will be the last policy position Harris steals from Trump either, and I think with every one she does rip, her base will grow more and more alienated. Moreover, what's the point of voting for Harris if she's just going to be a far worse version of Trump?
Time will tell, but I have a feeling this is going off the rails, and we'll start seeing the crash soon.
