close
close

Keep Trump and Harris off the campaign trail

Perhaps the basement strategy is the best option for Donald Trump and Kamala Harris as they plan how they will spend the final 16 days until the election.

It worked for Joe Biden in 2020. He used the COVID pandemic to maintain a large physical distance from voters, who received a carefully crafted image of the presidential candidate, completely divorced from gaffe-prone reality. Biden's handlers didn't release him to screw things up.

Trump would be lucky to have someone on his payroll who could strangle him in the same way. His chances of victory may depend on him being kept away from the rally stage, where his self-described “weaving” is sounding more and more like incoherence. He starts at a certain point, does a few laps around the world with stops at The Enemy Within, Migrants Eating Pets and 2,000% Tariffs, and then ends up back where he started:

Trump was always a better concept than reality. His advantage is that his policies worked when he was president. Instead of specifically reminding voters of this, he spends hours ranting and talking on stage until his political messages are buried under mountains of nonsense.

He offered some substance during his visit to the Detroit Economic Club – research and development tax credits, a lower tax rate on American-made goods – but his audience will remember only his gratuitous swipe at the city of Detroit. Did he forget where he was?

He may have known where he was at the rally in Pennsylvania last week, but not why he was there. Trump took a 40-minute break to enjoy a musical number that included him swaying and dancing on stage.

A few more episodes like this and Trump will team up with Biden.

Vice President Harris is all that saves him. She sat down with Fox News' Bret Baier for half an hour on Wednesday, hoping to win over Republicans who can't stand Trump but are unsure about him.

Baier asked more difficult questions than before and did not allow her to answer with her usual, rehearsed platitudes. He continued to push, perhaps a little too aggressively, but the interview confirmed Harris' lack of substance.

She tried to cover up the Biden-Harris border failure by blaming Trump for derailing a flawed law nine months ago. This bill came three years after the administration began its experiment with open borders, and after most of the six million migrants it let into the country were already here.

Harris searched for answers to questions like her previous support for taxpayer-funded sex reassignment surgery for federal prisoners and the soaring inflation that was devastating household budgets. She did not act as a leader, let alone as president.

Their determination is to keep the focus on Trump's negatives rather than selling their vision for the future.

Maybe that's smart. Many voters support her simply because she is not Trump. They are not looking for anything else.

Sen. JD Vance, Trump's vice presidential running mate, said that every time Harris gives a news conference, the GOP ticket gets 100,000 votes. That may be true. And the same goes for every time Trump holds a rally.

This race may go to whichever candidate disappears from the campaign trail in these final days.

Sign up for the Nolan Out Loud report.

You may also like...