REPUBLICAN presidential candidate Donald Trump will try to show swing voters that his likely new rival, Vice-President (VP) Kamala Harris, has her fingerprints all over two issues he is counting on for victory in November: immigration and the cost of living.
Sources within the Trump campaign said it will cast Ms. Harris, the likely Democratic candidate after President Joseph R. Biden quit the race on Sunday, as the “co-pilot” of administration polices it says are behind both sources of voter discontent.
Mr. Biden’s sudden exit and endorsement of Ms. Harris has upended the race, just eight days after Mr. Trump survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally.
Sources told Reuters that Mr. Trump’s campaign had for weeks been preparing for Ms. Harris should Mr. Biden drop out and she win her party’s nomination. “Harris will be easier to beat than Biden would have been,” Mr. Trump told CNN shortly after Mr. Biden’s announcement on Sunday.
Mr. Trump’s campaign has signaled it will tie her as tightly as possible to Mr. Biden’s immigration policy, which Republicans say is to blame for a sharp increase in the numbers of people crossing the southern border with Mexico illegally.
The second line of attack will revolve around the economy. Public opinion polls consistently show Americans are unhappy with high food and fuel costs as well as interest rates that have made buying a home less affordable.
“She’s the co-pilot of the Biden vision,” said one Trump adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity during last week’s Republican National Convention, where a unified party anointed Mr. Trump as its nominee in the White House race.
“If they want to switch to Biden 2.0 and have ‘Cackling’ Kamala at the top of the ticket, we’re good either way,” the adviser said, repeating an insult the campaign has been trying out for weeks focused on how the vice-president laughs.
Make America Great Again, Inc., a super PAC backing Mr. Trump, said on Sunday it was pulling anti-Biden television ads that had been set to run in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania and replacing them with an ad attacking Ms. Harris.
The 30-second ad accuses Ms. Harris of hiding Mr. Biden’s infirmity from the public, and it seeks to pin the administration’s record solely on her. “Kamala knew Joe couldn’t do the job, so she did it. Look what she got done: a border invasion, runaway inflation, the American Dream dead,” the narrator says.
Mr. Trump, known for using insulting and sometimes offensive language to attack his opponents, gave supporters at a rally in Michigan on Saturday a taste of the insults he is likely to fling at Ms. Harris in the coming days. “I call her laughing Kamala. You ever watch a laugh? She’s crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh. She’s crazy. She’s nuts,” he said.
ALTERED RACE
The Democratic Party has yet to determine how to move forward, and there is as yet no guarantee that Ms. Harris will emerge as the party’s nominee despite Mr. Biden’s endorsement.
Ms. Harris as the Democratic nominee would alter the race in perhaps unforeseen ways, political strategists said.
A 59-year-old woman who is Black and Asian-American would fashion an entirely new dynamic with Mr. Trump, 78, offering a vivid generational and cultural split-screen. The United States has yet to elect a woman president in its 248-year history.
Rodell Mollineau, a Democratic strategist and longtime congressional aide, said Ms. Harris would be able to mount “a more energetic campaign with excitement from younger voters and people of color” after Mr. Biden struggled to energize these important Democratic Party voting blocs.
A former prosecutor and California attorney general as well as a former US senator, Ms. Harris would be able to use “her years of litigation experience to effectively prosecute Trump in the court of public opinion,” Mr. Mollineau said.
Chip Felkel, a Republican strategist, cautioned that it would be a mistake for the Trump campaign to assume Ms. Harris could serve as a simple stand-in for Mr. Biden, because of her potential appeal to different parts of the electorate.
Recent polls have shown Ms. Harris to be competitive with Mr. Trump. In a hypothetical head-to-head matchup, Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump were tied with 44% support each in a July 15-16 Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Before Sunday, the Trump campaign had already begun discussions about how they would redeploy campaign resources should Mr. Biden drop out of the race, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.
Jeanette Hoffman, a Republican political consultant, said despite the contrasts Ms. Harris would bring to the ticket, her close ties to Mr. Biden would be a drag on her candidacy.
Ms. Harris “doesn’t represent the change America is looking for,” Ms. Hoffman said.
MAGA, Inc. chief executive officer Taylor Budowich said his group has commissioned opposition research on several possible Democratic candidates. “MAGA, Inc. is prepared for all outcomes of a Democrat Party who has only brought chaos and failure,” he said. — Reuters
