Donald Trump has been a little off his game (understandably so) since a lunatic attempted to take his life a month ago. His messaging hasn’t been consistent, with some talk about the issues but a lot of talk about people he has grudges with – including Republican Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia and podcast host Joe Rogan.
In that same stretch of time, Kamala Harris has enjoyed a popularity surge as her polling has bumped up to the point where the RealClearPolitics polling average has her just ahead of the former president, 47.8 to 46.7.
Harris is seeing a honeymoon phase in the media, coupled with a return of a lot of polled Democrats to the Democratic ticket – they were previously saying “other” or “Robert Kennedy” instead of Biden in protest to the current president remaining on the ticket, as well as his support of Israel. But now, we’re just a few months away from election day, and both campaigns are fine-tuning their message.
Or, at least they should be.
In 2020, Donald Trump lacked a clear message. His administration was, I believe, thrown off by COVID-19 and Trump was putting a lot of trust in people who should not have been given power (like Anthony Fauci). Trump himself was tweeting almost nonstop about everyone he had a grudge with, as well as the occasional tweet about how great we were recovering from the pandemic. He wasn’t much better on the trail.
The Democrats, meanwhile, had a message – they wanted to return America to “normal.” Biden was hidden in his basement, but his campaign did a good job of convincing Americans he would be the adult in the room and they took advantage of all the uncertainty that was happening under Trump’s watch.
Was it fair? No. Was it effective? Absolutely.
But this election cycle is not a rematch of 2020. Even if Biden were still in the race, it wouldn’t be. Trump is the challenger to the incumbent party, much like he was in 2016. He is more popular today than he was in 2016, and he does have, in retrospect, a solid economic record and voters no longer hold him responsible for COVID-19 and the economic collapse that happened at the end of his term.
Kamala Harris is one half of the “Biden-Harris” administration, and their record is very upsetting to a lot of Americans. The economy is leaving people feeling very, very nervous. The average American credit card debt right now is over $6,000 and delinquencies are more frequent. People are using short-term loans (via apps and other sources) to buy groceries. The border crisis isn’t getting any better, either. Harris helped Biden oversee all of this, and I would wager there’s a growing sense among American voters that she had a direct hand in all this given what the public now knows about Biden’s mental state.
That’s what makes today extremely important for Donald Trump.
Amidst all that is going on right now, the Republican nominee is headed to North Carolina to talk economic policy. He’ll be in Asheville, which the Associated Press describes as being “Set in a Democratic city surrounded by staunchly Republican mountain counties,” and noting that “the event carries both national and local implications for the former president.”
Republicans are looking for Trump to focus the scattershot arguments and attacks he has made on Vice President Kamala Harris since Democrats elevated her as their presidential nominee. Twice in the last week, Trump has fumbled such an opportunity, first in an hourlong news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, then in a 2 1/2-hour conversation on the social media platform X with CEO Elon Musk.
The latest attempt comes in the state that delivered Trump his closest statewide margin of victory four years ago and that is once again expected to be a battleground in 2024. Trump won North Carolina over Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 by less than 1.4 percentage points — about 74,500 votes — and he can’t afford to have the state’s 16 electoral votes shift to Democrats for the first time since Barack Obama prevailed here in 2008.
This is a key moment for the Trump campaign. His running mate, Sen. JD Vance, has been doing a great job on the campaign trail, but people aren’t voting for Vance. They are voting for Trump, and they need to feel confident that Trump is taking this seriously and will be focused on the issues they want to see resolved.
Trump supporters know he will be, but Trump needs more than his base if he wants to win. He needs those swing voters, and they remain unconvinced. So he’ll need to be on point the entire time he’s speaking and not get too distracted. That is where the Trump team needs to come in.
They need to keep him focused. His prep team should be the only ones with him. Anyone else who is trying to text or call or speak to him before he goes on stage needs to be ignored. He cannot be going onto any stage with the words of the most recent grifter in his ear. His campaign team is actually fairly solid, and they are capable of winning. But they have to control who has access to their boss and make sure he goes to speak to the crowds armed only with the talking points he needs to win voters over.
And, as I mentioned yesterday, please get him to do some local media hits. Bypass the national press as much as possible and get his message out directly to voters.
