Policy positions are one thing, and Kamala Harris trotted out many in her “closing argument” campaign speech Tuesday night.
But in politics, the most important thing is symbolism, says Cornell Belcher, a Democratic strategist and pollster.
And for Harris to hold her rally at the grassy Ellipse near the White House — the same site where on Jan. 6, 2021, Donald Trump addressed thousands of his loyalists, sparking them to storm the U.S. Capitol — was “perfect symbolism.”
“You can’t ask for a better symbol for how she wants to close this argument,” he said. “I think it’s really smart strategy.”
It was the perfect backdrop, Belcher says, for the Democrat to make her case that Trump poses a threat to democracy — accusations that have also been hurled by former Trump White House officials, including former chief of staff John Kelly who recently said his old boss fits the “general definition of fascist.”
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It was also a much more ominous note than the joy and positivity that marked the campaign’s opening weeks back in the summer, and was part of a pivot toward more negative language that appeared to start in the days leading up to Tuesday’s speech.
Michelle Obama, at a Harris rally on Saturday, said some voters were ignoring Trump’s “gross incompetence” and “obvious mental decline,” for example. Running mate Tim Walz called Trump “un-American” and Harris herself echoed Kelly’s assessment during a CNN town hall last week, calling her opponent a “fascist” and a “danger to the well-being and security of the United States of America.”
One week before election day in the U.S., Vice-President Kamala Harris used what she called her ‘closing argument’ speech to warn against a second Donald Trump presidency at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., the same place where Trump helped incite the Jan. 6 attacks. Meanwhile, Trump described his controversial weekend rally as a ‘love fest.’
But some observers, including some Democrats, have questioned both whether alleging Trump is some kind of fascist should be the focus of the campaign’s closing days and just how much of an impact that will have on undecided voters.
“I kind of feel like everyone who has an opinion about Trump has made up their opinion about Trump,” said Sean Trende, senior elections analyst for the political website RealClearPolitics.
“Who has yet to make up their mind about whether Trump is a real threat to democracy or not? I don’t think very many people. So I’m not sold on how effective it is. I think kitchen table issues are a better bet for her at this point.”
Ahead of the speech, Trump outright dismissed Harris’s closing argument, saying it’s a message that doesn’t address everyday Americans’ day-to-day struggles and kitchen-table concerns.
Her speech wasn’t just about the potential dangers of a second Trump presidency. Much of it focused on her policy goals, including expanding Medicare coverage of home health care, boosting the supply of housing and working to restore nationwide access to abortion.
‘Wannabe dictator’
But arguably the most dramatic sections were those that cast Trump as a potential threat — a “petty tyrant” and “wannabe dictator” who is “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance, and out for unchecked power.”
It was those comments, and the setting of the speech, that grabbed the headlines:
“Harris holds rally at Ellipse warning of Trump’s threat to democracy,” was the Washington Post’s headline.
“In Closing, Harris Casts Herself as the Unifier and Trump as a ‘Petty Tyrant,” said the New York Times.
Ashley Etienne, a former communications director for Harris, says it was good strategy for the Harris team to zero in on Jan. 6. Her assessment is that the Republican campaign is underestimating the impact of the riot and how those undecided voters and disaffected Republicans are assessing it.
“They worry about the president’s actions and inactions on that day,” she said.
Polls suggest that the economy is the overall top issue of the campaign, but for Democrats and Harris supporters, protecting democracy is a priority.
To that end, Larry Sabato, founder and director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, says he thought her speech was a “home run” — that it outlined a very middle-class-specific agenda, while contrasting her presence on the National Mall on Tuesday to Trump’s on Jan. 6.
“When Donald Trump was on the Mall, we remember him particularly on Jan. 6, 2021, when he led essentially an insurrection, the first attempt to stymie the peaceful transfer of power in U.S. history,” Sabato told CBC’s Canada Tonight.
‘Political malpractice’
Yet some Democrats have expressed concerns about this message. Future Forward, the leading super PAC supporting Harris, warned that internal testing found that focusing on Trump’s character and the fascist label were less persuasive than other messages, the New York Times recently reported. Other Democrats have agreed, urging a bread-and-butter appeal to voters’ pocketbooks.
Unlike Belcher, the Democratic strategist and pollster who raved about the symbolism of the setting of the speech, Republican strategist Brad Todd criticizes its optics.
“I plan political events for a living, and I think this was political malpractice to put her in front of this White House,” Todd said on CNN shortly after Harris’s speech.
Todd said most Americans think the country is on the wrong track and they blame Biden and increasingly blame Harris. By standing in front of the White House, she will reinforce that disapproval, he said.
Ron Bonjean, another Republican strategist, said her closing argument was “a weak message that is not going to work for her, because it has already been tried out by Biden over the past couple of years.
“What she should be doing is continuing to sell herself to the American people who don’t know her quite yet, and she’s only had 100 days to define herself,” he told Business Insider.
Trende, the analyst for RealClearPolitics, said part of the problem for Harris is that she has had this “kind of whirlwind campaign” and didn’t have the opportunity that presidential candidates usually get to develop a package of ideas and to define herself in people’s minds.
“[It] has really reduced her opportunities to kind of make the kinds of arguments or to make the connections politicians usually make,” he said. “I follow this as closely as anyone. I couldn’t really tell you — [beyond] social issues where you know, where the parties fall — I couldn’t tell you where she stands on anything.”
Kamala Harris made her closing pitch to voters at the site of the Jan. 6 protest, while Donald Trump held a rally in Pennsylvania. Larry Sabato, founder and director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, reacts to the two events.