There are very good reasons to be wary of Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential candidate. She has had little or no involvement in the various international crises that Joe Biden has had to deal with during his term.
There is little impact from the work done on the immigration file that her boss assigned her in 2021. She has chosen to limit her exchanges with journalists to almost nothing, which has not prepared her for the barrage of questions and the scrutiny that accompany a presidential campaign.
She is quick to snap when challenged for a evasive comment she makes, and she does so often. Finally, her 2019 Democratic presidential campaign was a disaster, and her run for vice president was marked, at least for the first two years, by constant tensions within her inner circle.
THE ADVANTAGE OF EMBODIING RELIEF
Kamala Harris remains, despite everything, a huge ray of sunshine in this presidential race. Rather than marching to the slaughterhouse, servile and demoralized, Democratic voters were able to breathe a collective sigh of relief when Joe Biden finally gave up his seat, and polls show that Democratic enthusiasm has not waned since.
As analysts agree that victory will not come from voters who have changed sides, but from those who, in one camp or the other, have been convinced to show up at the polls, Kamala Harris, without even impressing the Democratic electorate, has given it a reason to shake itself up. Now it is the Republicans’ ardor that is losing intensity.
TRUMP GETS ANGRY AND IS NOT HELPING AT ALL
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Donald Trump’s team has yet to find a way to break the momentum that has carried Kamala Harris since she garnered enough Democratic delegates to represent the party in the battle for the White House.
The Republican candidate, clearly annoyed to see the vice-president stealing the limelight from him in the media cycle, decided to increase his public interventions, also as a way of reminding people that she has still not given a press conference since her coronation.
In the past week, he has spoken for more than an hour at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, answering a few questions; he had a live chat with Elon Musk, the head of social media company X, for more than two hours; he gave an hour-and-a-quarter speech in Asheville, North Carolina, on Wednesday; and he held what was billed as a second press conference on Thursday, this time at his golf club in East Bedminster, New Jersey.
BASICALLY, RUBBISH
Bottom line: Donald Trump has nothing new to say. He remains incapable of sticking to a clear, coherent message. His remarks in New Jersey on Thursday were supposed to focus on the pitiful state, in his eyes, of the American economy. Instead, he got lost in his aversion to wind turbines (“bird killers”), the weight of electric vehicles and the magazine’s cover artist. Time.
His endless, meandering rants are marked by his obsession with crowd size, his lamentations about losing to Joe Biden as his opponent, and his claims that he was robbed of victory in the 2020 presidential election. Add to that his insults to his rival—“I don’t have much respect for her intelligence”—and you’ll find little excitement and plenty of rancor in what he says.
No attention-grabbing somersaults, no grand speeches, no exciting ideas: Kamala Harris doesn’t have to stand out. She just has to let Trump be Trump.
