Her extremely light campaign schedule—in which she holds fewer events than Donald Trump and nearly exclusively avoids unscripted interactions with voters and the press—is causing Democratic insiders, including some of Kamala Harris’ own workers, to grow more and more concerned.
In conversations with HEADLINESFOREVER, almost twenty Democrats voiced their concern that Harris’s cautious and cautious approach to the race could hurt her in the last 30 days of the campaign.
Harris spent just three days of the last week of September in states that were considered to be in the race, even though early voting had already begun in over half of the nation. Harris was in San Francisco at a fundraiser on September 28th, while Trump was speaking in Wisconsin before taking a plane to Alabama for the Georgia-Alabama football game. Democrats also say that town hall meetings, additional sit-down interviews, and unscripted conversations with citizens would let Harris introduce herself to voters more authentically, beyond just worries about her schedule.
“There’s a period at which you really have to barnstorm these battlegrounds,” said David Axelrod, a longtime Democratic operative who helped run Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns and was an early critic of President Joe Biden’s campaign approach. “These races are called decathlons, and they feature a multitude of events. You’re expected to complete each one, as they are all designed to test your abilities.”
Town hall meetings, several types of interviews (not just casual chats), and the most challenging oral exam in the world are all components of this extraordinarily challenging position. Everything that involves meaningful interpersonal interactions, such as OTRs, is valuable, he went on to say. I would be the one to do them if I were in her shoes.
With Harris and Trump tied in every one of the seven states that are considered to be battlegrounds, and Democrats still smarting from Hillary Clinton’s cautious 2016 campaign, party internal conversations reflect the rising worry about the race’s status.
The ex-Biden aide made the comment, “We know this isn’t actually 2016 again, and it’s not like she’s not going to Wisconsin,” alluding to Clinton’s now-infamous choice not to visit the state where she ultimately lost the election. We may still draw lessons from that, though. Just like he was back then, Trump is now everywhere. We must also be on the same side.
The Democratic Party has recognized that Harris is outperforming Biden and that their financial advantage has grown due to the enthusiasm around her candidacy. She has also restored some clout to the swing states in the Sun Belt. However, they are becoming increasingly concerned that Harris is behaving as if she were trying to defend a lead, given that her campaign has been claiming that she is the “underdog.”
Despite plans to increase her travel in October, a review of Harris’s travel by HEADLINESFOREVER shows that the vice president has spent over a third of the days since the Democratic National Convention either attending staff briefings or holding internal meetings, with no scheduled public events. This does not include days when she was known to be attending official events, such as her meeting with the president of the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, at the White House in late September, her meeting with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, last week, or the briefings she received earlier this week at FEMA’s headquarters in Washington.
The vice president spent slightly over half of the remaining days making in-person public appearances, such as rallies, speeches focused on policy, events with labor unions, and visits to small companies, in swing states. Also, since the DNC, she has spent almost half of her time in the nation’s capital.
The limitations imposed by the COVID-19 agreement on Biden’s 2020 campaign make it difficult to compare Harris’s campaign to that of other recent Democratic presidential hopefuls. Harris’ schedule is more in line with Clinton’s 2016 campaign than Obama’s 2008 campaign, according to an examination of data from Eric Appleman’s Democracy in Action sites.
When comparing the two elections that took place around the same time, Obama’s schedule was jam-packed with campaign activities, fundraisers, quick appearances at local restaurants, and just two days off. In comparison, Clinton missed about the same amount of days due to illness as Harris has, including a short period when she was hospitalized with pneumonia.
Democratic strategist Morgan Jackson of North Carolina remarked, “More is always helpful, always better because they just dominate the news cycle for a few days.” “Listen, due to these late-breakers, who are really important in a close race— a trip in October is worth a million times more than one in September because of those late-deciders.”
The anxiety felt by Harris’s supporters is a reflection of the difficulties encountered by her staff in determining how best to allocate the vice president’s time. She debated Trump in early September, devoting several days to preparation. Her performance was so strong that it boosted her candidacy. However, she may be taken off the road for some official-side activities, even though they can help her presidential credentials.
After Joe Biden resigned, Kamala Harris came in to fill his shoes, and now we’re back in the game and competing. A Democratic campaign official who wished to remain anonymous spoke frankly about the candidate and the situation. “The Biden campaign infrastructure remains here. “It was anemic,” they went on to say. “It takes an eternity to make a decision.”
Whenever she isn’t physically present, her campaign aims to have an impact. Ads airing during the national television broadcast that night poked fun at Trump’s attendance at the Georgia-Alabama game, with the focus being on the Republican nominee’s reluctance to go to a second debate. The top advisers to the vice president think that a second debate would give her another chance to address what many voters still don’t know about her, which could be her biggest political liability.
The vice president’s recent itinerary is even more puzzling given that the campaign is aware that voters still require more exposure to Harris.
Even with a new candidate, the election is “frighteningly close,” according to Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton, who was among the first Democrats to demand that Biden resign. In order for Harris to win over important voting blocs, Moulton, who was campaigning for the vice president in North Carolina this week, said that she needs to be more transparent with people about her economic and immigration policies and how they differ from the president’s.
Concerned about Harris’ schedule, Moulton stated, “This was a complaint about the Biden campaign.” Meeting more Americans in person is something we Democrats need to do, and that’s not new.