One need only look at the venue for their closing arguments to see who’s on offense and who’s on defense.

On Sunday night, Donald Trump was in the belly of the beast, New York City, a city in which Democrats outnumber Republicans nine to one, and a city in which he’s been victimized by the Left’s sustained lawfare campaign against him. There, during a jam-packed, star-studded six-hour Nazi rally at historic Madison Square Garden, he began by making Ronald Reagan’s closing argument: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”

Trump then made the case for his return to the White House: sovereignty in the form of a secure southern border, security in the form of an America-first foreign policy, and prosperity in the form of lower inflation and a stronger economy. Oh, and the unfitness of his opponent.

Which brings us to Kamala Harris, whose choice of venue — the Ellipse, the large park just south of the White House and north of the National Mall, where Donald Trump gave his “Stop the Steal” address on January 6, 2021 — was no accident. Nor was her obsession with Trump an accident. Indeed, it was the foundation of her 29-minute speech, which was, to borrow a mainstream media word usually reserved for Trump, dark.

But it was more than just dark. It was also deceitful. You be the judge.

“Look, we know who Donald Trump is,” she began. “He is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob [sic] to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people [sic] in a free [sic] and fair [sic] election.”

Harris’s speech was full of lies. She said Trump would enact a national abortion ban. She said he’d cut Medicare. She said he has “an enemies list of people he intends to prosecute.” She said he “intends to use the United States military against American citizens who simply disagree with him.” She called Trump “a petty tyrant.” And she trotted out John Kelly’s disgraceful “suckers and losers” lie.

But then: “We have to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms,” she continued, amid repeated swipes at Trump. “It is time to turn the page on the drama and the conflict. The fear and division. It is time for a new generation of leadership in America. And I am ready to offer that leadership as the next president of the United States of America.”

Talk about cognitive dissonance. She viciously smears her opponent and, in the next breath, says it’s time to “turn the page on the drama and the conflict.”

Still, sadly, it was an effective speech — at least in terms of its delivery and content. But that’s the problem. The delivery was utterly fake, utterly scripted, never deviating from the teleprompters. And the content was meant for Barack Obama, circa 2008. Seriously. You can practically hear Obama’s speech writer, Jon Favreau, whispering those platitudes in Harris’s ear. Platitudes like, “Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at my table.” (This from “the prosecutor” whose party has spent the past couple of years trying desperately to put Trump in jail.)

“We know what Donald Trump has in mind,” Harris warned. “More chaos, more division.” Kamala and her fellow Democrats are fond of talking about “the chaos” of the Trump years, but think about it: What was the source of that chaos? Was it not the Democrats’ obsessive efforts to vilify Trump and to wreck his presidency?

“For as long as I can remember,” she said, “I have always had an instinct to protect. There’s something about people being treated unfairly or overlooked that just gets to me. It is what my mother instilled in me. A drive to hold accountable those who use their wealth or power to take advantage of other people.”

If she does say so herself.

Harris mostly avoided mentioning Joe Biden, whom her campaign has been stiff-arming in these last few days before the election. But she did throw him a quick bone: “I have been honored to serve as Joe Biden’s vice president,” she said, “but I will bring my own experiences and ideas to the Oval Office. My presidency will be different because the challenges we face are different.”

On the one hand, it’s hard to blame Harris for treating Biden like a leper. We got yet another example of his unhelpfulness last night when he called Donald Trump’s supporters “garbage.”

Here’s the actual video.

The fact that these “journalists” are covering for a catastrophic error from Kamala’s campaign is a scandal. pic.twitter.com/slPwGBr5qO

— JD Vance (@JDVance) October 30, 2024

Don’t these people ever learn? Just like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton before him, Joe Biden has coined this cycle’s “bitter clingers” remark, its “deplorables” gaffe.

Unfortunately for Kamala Harris, though, she can’t, on the one hand, run away from her boss and, on the other hand, say the election is a referendum on the four years before the past four years. It doesn’t work that way. The American people, by and large, aren’t that stupid.

And the flailing around, the searching for an attack angle that’ll stick — Trump is a fascist, Trump is a Nazi, Trump is unhinged, Trump is exhausted — is telling.

Winning campaigns know what their message is. Losing campaigns keep searching. “I’m here today with a message of hope for all Americans,” Trump said on Sunday. Whereas Harris last night said of her opponent, “This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance, and out for unchecked power.”

One of these closing messages is not like the other. One of these candidates is on offense, and the other is on defense.