American presidential elections are rarely conducted with the high-minded seriousness of, say, an MIT seminar, or the quiet dignity of a small-town prayer meeting. But it’s fair to say that “negative campaigning” doesn’t quite cover the latter stages of the Trump-Harris contest, which feels even more bitterly personal and acrimonious even than Trump-Hillary and Trump-Biden (and, yes, you can easily spot the common factor here).
I don’t think, for example, that I heard anyone at a 2016 Trump rally refer to Hillary Clinton as having “pimp handlers”. Nor did she or Joe Biden publicly call Trump an American “Hitler” (that particular accolade falling to an earlier incarnation of the political chameleon that is JD Vance). Fair to say, it’s been a dirty, unedifying few weeks.
Time, perhaps, for Vice-President Harris to use her final set-piece speech tonight, in Washington DC – with the Ellipse, the grand park south of the White House, as her backdrop – to heed the famous words of her friend, and formidable campaigner in her own right, Michelle Obama: “When they go low, we go high.”
There is no need, for example, for Harris, who is prone to “word-salad” ramblings, to answer Trump’s claim that she’s a “low IQ” individual by pointing out his own intellectual shortcomings. That’s not just because it’s demeaning and beneath her dignity, but also because the whole nation is well aware of what’s politely called his “cognitive decline”, just as they were with Joe Biden.
They know Trump well enough to know that “the weave” is an excuse for his mind’s tendency to wander.
Nor does Harris need to spend all that much time, as it is reported she plans, in his “unfitness to govern”. The American people lived through his last term in office, which culminated in an attempt at insurrection on 6 January 2021, a date that will live in infamy.
If, by now, an American doesn’t know why Trump isn’t remotely qualified to lead the United States, then they are probably wearing a red Maga cap and they never will.
What Harris really needs to do is to define herself more, prove why she is qualified for office, and how she will make America great again.
Trump’s policies are a fraud, deranged and deeply damaging to America and the world, but they are well known. Harris’s personality and her policies are less familiar. Trump is far better defined. Sadly, many people, not for the first time in US history, are beguiled by the idea that protectionism and tariffs will protect their jobs, rather than the need to make the economy more dynamic and internationally competitive.
They like the idea of “drill, baby, drill” to get energy bills and gas prices down. They believe that migrants are pet-eating, bloodthirsty murderers and rapists who deserve the death penalty. They know, and are distressingly receptive to the idea of, Trump as a strongman authoritarian with an inhumane plan for mass deportations.
In other words, Americans know full well what Trump is and what he stands for. They actually know he’s a bit of a fascist – and they’re going to vote for him not despite him being a bit of fascist, but because he’s a bit of a fascist.
They like the idea of Elon Musk tearing chunks out of the federal government, and many, shameful as it may be, aren’t that bothered about Roe v Wade.
What will Harris do that will leave Americans in the next four years better off than they are now? How, precisely, will she keep bills down? How will she bring the jobs and the factories back? Stop the flow of migrants? Keep America out of foreign wars, and preferably end them rapidly? How will she stand up to China and Iran? Get the national debt down? What did she do as VP she can be proud of?
Ironically, it is Harris, the sensible, practical sane candidate, who has to spend time on policy, to describe what she’d do in her first 100 days, to outline her aims for American families and how she’d make the country safe and secure. Even with her vast experience in cabinet, her own ideas and her own instincts and intelligence, she cannot just assume that she is the obvious better bet and that “weird” Trump people will rush out to vote for her.
She needs to prove herself, too. And it’s getting a little late.