The Closing Cases

Harris and Trump head to the finish line with messages and tones that are worlds apart.

It was the final weekend of campaigning, and hoo boy.

Vice President Harris and ex-president Trump each made their final weekend jaunts through the battlegrounds. If we wanted a study in contrasts, both in style and substance, the two campaigns provided it in stark terms.

After hitting events in Georgia and North Carolina, Harris capped the weekend off before a roaring crowd of young voters at Michigan State University. She sounded energetic and optimistic, speaking about kitchen table economic issues, the right to abortion and, without mentioning Trump’s name, the threat to our democracy.

By contrast, Trump’s message, delivered in Pennsylvania and North Carolina on Sunday, was low energy darkness, grievance and fear. He threatened dictatorial actions at the beginning of his new term, railed against polls showing him in trouble, spread false vote fraud conspiracies, and shocked even a cynical press with new threats, antics and unfiltered admissions.

And there is now evidence that Trump’s behavior and language are finally causing electoral damage. 

Today, I’ll review the final campaign events and messaging of the two candidates. Harris has proven herself to be on message and disciplined, while Trump somehow managed to dig his hole even deeper with undecided voters. To flesh out this point, I’ll review some of what we’re seeing in these final days with that critical group of persuadable voters.

The Harris campaign sticks the landing

Vice President Harris has run an incredible and nearly flawless campaign. It’s hard to believe how far she has moved the needle in just over 100 days after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race in July. She’s raised a record haul of over one billion dollars, refined her message and offered in depth policies to help average working families, taken big risks by walking into the lion’s den for interviews (and proving how tough and fearless she is), drawn tens of thousands of volunteers to her campaign, and stayed focused and unshakable through to the end.

No scandal has rocked her. There was no October surprise dropped against Harris. And she has reached out, both to gettable Republican cross-over voters and to the far left, including Arab Americans who are understandably livid about the White House support for Israel while Netanyahu continues to commit war crime atrocities in Gaza.

Over the weekend, Harris drew capacity crowds, as she has since the start of her campaign. Meanwhile, her army of volunteers fanned out across the battlegrounds. In the Blue Wall states alone, the campaign boasted some eye popping numbers. On Saturday alone, the Harris/Walz campaign noted that it

* Knocked 807,000 doors in Pennsylvania 

* Made 940,000 calls and knocked 215,000 doors in Wisconsin 

* Made 721,000 phone calls and knocked 256,000 doors in Michigan

In total, according to White House political director Emmy Ruiz, some 90,000 volunteers knocked on 3,000,000 doors across the swing states over the weekend. (Notably and consistently, they saw no similar door-knocking GOTV effort by the GOP, which has outsourced its ground game to unserious and inexperienced outside groups, including Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA and Elon Musk’s America PAC.)

The Harris campaign made a sudden change Saturday night and diverted her plane to New York City, where she did the cold open for Saturday Night Live opposite Maya Rudolph. Harris played herself in the mirror, in conversation with Rudolph, in a sketch that SNL has done many times in the past. Harris was funny and relatable, as ever.

Trump’s supporters quickly condemned NBC for giving Harris the SNL platform just days before the election, incorrectly citing the FCC’s “equal time” doctrine. These claims were quickly shut down, however, after it was clear NBC had offered Trump an equal amount of broadcast time to address NASCAR fans.

During her speech at Michigan State on Sunday, Harris struck an upbeat, positive tone, to the cheers of thousands of exuberant supporters. “So, Michigan, two days to go!” she reminded them, to rock concert level cheering. “Are you ready?” she asked, noting we face “one of the most consequential elections in our lifetime.” She assured her supporters with unwavering optimism. “And we have momentum. It is On. Our. Side. Can you feel it?” she asked the crowd.

The Trump campaign limps to the finish line

Even the sane-washing New York Times and conservative leaning Politico couldn’t help but note: Trump seemed tired, dejected and confused this weekend. Covering Trump’s Sunday appearances, the Times wrote,

Mr. Trump began his at an outdoor rally at an airport in Pennsylvania where, his shoulders slumped and his voice subdued, he threw out his prepared remarks to tell supporters that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after his loss to President Biden in 2020.

The same report later noted that Trump “proceeded to deliver dark, rambling and at times angry remarks in which he attacked polls, assailed Democrats as ‘demonic,’ and suggested he would not mind if reporters were shot.”

Politico was even more scathing. “Donald Trump barreled through Sunday in a state of seeming rage from which nothing and no one appeared safe,” it reported, noting his statements about regretting leaving the White House and threatening death upon reporters. Politico also noted that Trump lost his stride by the second stop of the day.

By the time he hit North Carolina, Trump seemed at times to lose track of both which state he was in and what he was talking about. Speaking to supporters on an air strip in Kinston — taking the stage two hours late — Trump mistakenly suggested that Pennsylvania Senate candidate David McCormick was in the crowd.

“We have great Republicans running, and you have one of the best of all right here, David McCormick,” Trump said. “David is here around some place, you know, we just left him. He’s a great guy.”

He also told a fictional story about the deceased Al Capone and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell having dinner together, and Lindell offering Capone pillows.

Trump’s campaign is still reeling from the disastrous rally for hate at Madison Square Garden last week, for which he has yet to issue any apology to the Puerto Rican community. And he did little to tone down the fearmongering, promising if elected that the beginning will be “nasty,” and saying “You’re gonna see such things you’re not gonna believe.” 

Trump also threatened world order by claiming our allies are “worse than our so-called enemies.” As both the NYT and Politico reported, he railed against polls showing him losing, and he spread fake voter fraud conspiracies.

One of the indications of advancing dementia is disinhibition, meaning the filters all start to fall away. In Milwaukee on Friday night, when his mic went out once again (perhaps the tech folks really do hate him!), Trump decided to (checks notes) simulate fellatio upon it, which somehow was even weirder than riding in a garbage truck dressed as a collector in an orange vest.

Yeah. So is any of this craziness breaking through to voters?

Undecideds and Latinos moving to Harris

The final week of an election usually sees some movement as undecided voters break mostly for one candidate or the other. And there are some promising indications for the Harris campaign.

After Trump failed to disavow the hate and racism spewed at the MSG rally, Latino voters who were on the fence began migrating toward Harris. A Univision poll indicated that the racist remarks broke through the noise of a chaotic media cycle.

“Over half of the Latinos surveyed indicated that the rally remarks influenced their likelihood of supporting Trump, making them more likely to vote for Harris,” the survey concluded. A full 64 percent of Latinos polled now support Harris, with just 30 percent for Trump. Among those polled, 69 percent felt the remarks were more racist than humorous, with just 17 percent saying they were just jokes and not serious. And 71 percent of Puerto Ricans surveyed believed that the remarks indicate racism within the Trump camp, even if the words were meant as jokes. 

Undecided voters are breaking by double digit margins for Harris, according to internal data from her campaign. One reason for this is the negativity, hate and racism on full display as MAGA goes full tilt and seeks to motivate its own base of non-college white supporters to the polls.

As a consequence, the Harris campaign is sounding optimistic about Tuesday’s outcome. White House reporter for the Washington Post Matt Viser tweeted,

Harris camp still believes it’s poised to win close race: 

• Late-deciders breaking for them

• Turnout among young and Black voters

• People voting Dem for first time 

• Groundgame: “There’s no place in any battleground state where our organization isn’t as fulsome as it needs to be”

There are also strong signals, out of surveys from the Great Plains states of Iowa and Kansas, that older women voters are breaking by two to one margins for Harris. This destroys the notion, espoused by candidates such as Bernie Moreno of Ohio, that women over the age of 50 don’t care about the loss of nationwide abortion rights.

If this plays out everywhere, it’s a huge hurdle to Trump’s reelection. Older women voters are the most reliable, likely voters out there. A substantial shift in their vote would create a blue wave that could swamp the expected Election Day surge of more conservative, male voters.

The polls say this race will be close, with the notable exception of the gold standard Selzer poll, dropped like a bomb on Saturday night, which doesn’t try to model this election like 2020 or presume electoral composition by party. Whether it is or not is up to the voters, especially the millions of young people who have yet to cast their ballots. 

Tomorrow, I’ll provide my final assessments of where things stand and why I wouldn’t bet against Democrats at this point. Could things go horribly wrong? Sure. And we must make sure they do not. For the reasons I’ll lay out tomorrow, I remain cautiously optimistic about our chances, and I believe that if there is going to be a surprise, it is to the upside for Harris.

Until tomorrow, remember to urge everyone who loves and defend democracy to vote. Remember also to reach out gently to anyone in your network or family who might still be persuadable and tell them why you’re voting for Harris and the Democrats. 

And importantly, take a moment to give thanks to Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for their tireless energy, their great service and patriotism, and their stellar, blazing campaign. They have given us hope in a time where we were sorely in need of it, and they have shown us all what America truly is and can still be: a beacon for democracy and a promise of freedom and equality rendered more real and tangible with each generation.

And that is a unique and priceless thing.