Democrats fear smug overconfidence within the party during Vice President Kamala Harris’s honeymoon stage will ruin her chances of withstanding bruising attacks as the November election nears.
Democrat strategists understand that Harris, who is a far-left radical West Coast Democrat, will eventually have to answer questions about her record and survive any October surprise or opposition research deployed to derail her campaign.
“Every presidential campaign in modern history has had to go through an unanticipated scandal, crisis or world event, and at some point, that political law is going to happen to Kamala Harris’s campaign,” Fernand Amandi, a former President Obama strategist, told the Hill.
“Anyone who is measuring the drapes at the White House needs a serious reality check,” he added.
Most swing state polls show that Harris is statistically tied with former President Donald Trump. That polling enthused Democrats after Trump led President Joe Biden by nearly double digits in the same surveys before he stepped aside.
“Democrats are rightfully elated with the trajectory of the Harris-Walz campaign,” Democrat strategist Tim Hogan said. “But anyone politically conscious over the last decade — especially Democrats — knows that terrain can shift and events beyond our control can quickly change the nature of elections.”
“So we come into this with a ton of well-earned anxiety that all the polls in the world can’t entirely dissipate,” Democrat strategist Christy Setzer said. “It all looks good, but trust us when say we take nothing for granted.”
Other Democrats warned that not all polling data looks good for the Harris campaign. Former Obama strategist Jim Messina, citing undecided voter data, said there is no room for overconfidence in this “incredibly close” election.
“When you look at who the undecided voters are in this election, we’re down to like 5 percent,” he told Dana Perino on Fox News. “And the question is, are some of those voters going to get out and actually vote.”
Harris also comes with a different set of problems as a newly coronated Democrat candidate. Seventy percent of registered Democrats and independents who voted for Biden in 2020 are mostly in the dark about many of Harris’s controversial and radical positions, a recent poll showed.
Undecided independent working class voters are likely to decide the 2024 election. Harris’s lack of appeal to midwestern states, as a West Coast politician, does not work in favor of Harris. Trump, conversely, is more popular than he was in 2020 and 2016, according to CNN analyst Harry Enten.
Enthusiasm among Democrats to vote for Harris dropped by one point (61 percent) compared to enthusiasm among Democrat voters in May for Biden (62 percent), Enten pointed out, while enthusiasm among Republicans to vote for Trump increased two points from May (58 percent) to August (60 percent).
Trump’s favorability rating in the RealClearPolitics average is less than one point below his highest approval rating, marked in April, Breitbart reported last week. Trump’s approval rating in the FiveThirtyEight average, meanwhile, is also less than one point below his greatest approval rating, notched in February.
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