She should say she’s going to end the Trump tax cuts for the rich and ask voters if they would rather use those trillion-plus dollars to help young people afford their first home.
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In other words, he said: “She should scare the crap out of voters. You know, Trump is just taunting us, having a rally at Madison Square Garden just like the Nazis did in 1939.
“Black men and young Black men have to think about what they have at stake in the election. Donald Trump tells you that you have nothing to lose. Well, you have health insurance you could lose, you have a job you could lose.”
Other Democratic strategists I talked to agreed that Harris needs to let her guard down, cut loose and turn on the afterburners. Mainly, her pitch is that she’s not Trump. And that’s an excellent pitch. But she needs to make the case for herself more assertively.
It’s hard to understand why she didn’t sit down with a yellow pad or laptop long ago and decide why she wanted to be president, what her top priorities would be and how she would get that stuff done. The Vision Thing. Even when getting softballs from supportive TV hosts, Harris at times seemed unsure of how to answer.
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She didn’t learn to tack to the centre in bright blue California. When asked on The View whether she would have done anything different than President Joe Biden, she said, “There is not a thing that comes to mind” — a flub if you want to convey change.
Harris should distance herself from Biden when she needs to; she should just admit what we all know, that the border policy was bollixed up and that Biden was not tough enough with the execrable Bibi Netanyahu.
Harris’ guarded nature leaves people feeling that she’s not fully revealing herself. Her reluctance to do serious interviews made her look fearful. She should have been interacting more with the media as a way of getting off the teleprompter and giving a sense of who she is as a person.
She does her homework, but her delivery seems more scripted. Even though it can get weird and duplicitous, Trump is better at riffing.
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As Harris grinds it out, trying to woo white women who are ambivalent about Trump, she does have one big advantage: abortion rights are on the ballot and, as a woman, she can conjure the medieval nightmare that Trump and Vance threaten.
When Harris linked her story about caring for her mother, dying of colon cancer, to her plan to get Medicare to cover some in-home care, she effectively offered a specific policy idea while revealing her vision for a kinder America than Trump has in mind.
His lies about the federal response to hurricanes Helene and Milton have consequences. When Trump says the government is not helping people in red locales, those affected might not apply for aid. Perhaps Trump’s most ludicrous whopper is that he would be the Protector of Women.
It’s disturbing that Harris can’t get over the hump and outpace Trump. As Carville says, we need less mulling and more action in a do-or-die moment. She needs to do so we don’t die.
Maureen Dowd is a columnist for The New York Times, where this article first appeared.