The Patriot Post® · What Happened to Kamala Harris?

By Douglas Andrews ·
https://patriotpost.us/articles/111215-what-happened-to-kamala-harris-2024-10-21

Don’t look now, but four of the five most recent polls in the RealClearPolitics average have Donald Trump leading Kamala Harris straight up — not just in the swing states, but nationally.

This means Trump is trending to win not only the Electoral College but also the popular vote. If he does, it’ll be the ultimate repudiation of the Democrats, who would then have to come to grips with the fact that not even two impeachments, 91 criminal charges, 34 felony convictions, and a $1 billion onslaught of deeply dishonest advertising could convince the American people not to vote for him.

And if, as was the case in the two previous presidential cycles, there are “shy” Trump voters out there, his polling lead could be even larger. Consider: Trump is doing 5.1 points better in the battleground states and eight points better nationally than he did against Joe Biden on this same day four years ago.

Trump’s steady climb in the polls tracks neatly with JD Vance’s annihilation of Tim Walz in the vice-presidential debate on October 1. It might seem both odd and ahistorical for this to be the case, but think about it: Vance’s stellar performance redounds to Trump’s good judgment, while Walz’s poor performance redounds to Harris’s bad judgment.

Even more telling, though, is a comparison of the candidates’ net favorability ratings. A month ago, Trump had a rating of -8; today, it’s -4. As for Harris, her favorability rating has gone from -2 to -5 during that same period. So Trump is becoming more popular, while Harris is becoming less so. The same is true for their running mates. Vance has gone from -12 to -3, while Walz has gone from +3 to -3.

The past week didn’t do Harris any favors, either — especially her defensive and Trump-obsessed interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier.

As former Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy quipped, “While the country might benefit from another debate between Trump and Harris, the more interesting debate would be the old liberal Kamala Harris debating the new one, who’s trying to convince you she’s actually moderate.”

Talk about two politicians with wildly divergent views — on fracking, on abolishing ICE, on single-payer healthcare, on criminalizing illegal immigration, on building a border wall, on reparations. It’s no wonder folks have grown less enamored of her candidacy; they have no idea what she stands for.

So, while Trump is broadening the Republican tent, Harris is shrinking the Democrat tent, chasing away both black men and Christians.

Black men tend to be repulsed by Harris’s Bay Area progressivism, which includes support for things like taxpayer-funded sex-change operations for imprisoned illegals. And they identify with Trump because of his celebrity, his straight-forwardness, his anti-establishment streak, and especially his focus on economic matters.

Take 72-year-old Joseph Parker, for example. Parker attended Mount Zion Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia, recently to hear Bill Clinton speak. Nonetheless, he says he’s voting for Trump — the first time he’s ever voted for a Republican presidential candidate.

Why? “Trump’s a man of his word,” says Parker. “What he says he’s gonna do, he does. And everything is so high now — groceries high, clothes, everything, gas. And four years ago, it wasn’t that high. And so people see the difference in Kamala Harris and Trump, and they want some of what they had four years ago. And I do, too.”

But while Trump is impressing blacks with his economic message, the tone-deaf Harris is pandering shamelessly, promising debt forgiveness and the legalization of recreational marijuana. Nice.

In 2020, Trump lost the black vote to Joe Biden 91% to 8%. Today, he’s losing the black vote to Harris 67% to 29%. That’s a stunning 24% underperformance for Harris and a near-quadrupling of Trump’s support — assuming anything like that spread holds in actual votes. And, much to Barack Obama’s chagrin, the more he tries to help Harris by stanching the bleeding of the black vote, the worse it becomes. That’s because Obama is drawing attention to the issue, and because he’s seen by many black men — sorry, by many bruthas, as he called them — as a condescending scold.

Meanwhile, at a rally on Thursday at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse, Harris was chasing away Christians. Things went south when she began pounding the only issue she has — abortion. That’s when a couple of Christian students stood up in the audience and loudly proclaimed, “Jesus is Lord!” To which the fundamentally mean-spirited Harris smirked and replied, “Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally.” Emboldened by the cheering crowd, she added, “No, I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street.”

We Christians should be inclined to forgive her, for she knows not what she does. But that doesn’t mean we should vote for her.

On Saturday, the two students who were jeered by Harris appeared on Fox News to warn their fellow Americans that if they don’t choose wisely on November 5, they’re going to get “the Kamala Harris that alienates the over 50% of the American population that is Christian.”

Alas, it seems like only yesterday that she and her fellow Democrats were “joyful.” Now, she’s resorting to shrieking and laughably lying about Trump’s stability and his energy level.

As for Trump, he was at the Al Smith Dinner for Catholic charities last week, cutting it up at the expense of Harris and Walz. And he was donning an apron and flipping fries at a McDonald’s near Philadelphia yesterday, all the better to troll Harris for repeatedly claiming to have once worked there, even though no one anywhere has yet to produce a scintilla of evidence to support her likely Bidenesque fable. And he was taking in the Steelers-Jets game last night in Pittsburgh, where fans who noticed him in one of the stadium’s luxury boxes turned to face him, pump their fists, and shout “USA! USA! USA!”

“Perhaps,” writes columnist Josh Hammer, “if the Harris-Walz ticket does go down in flames, Democrats will pause and take a long, hard look in the mirror. Perhaps they will recognize that promising late-term abortion is a peculiar way to pander to women, that pledging mass amnesty for illegal aliens is a counterproductive way to pander to Hispanics, and that dangling marijuana legalization is an outright offensive way to pander to Blacks.”

Nah. Who are we kidding? They’ll blame it on Trump.

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