By definition, an underdog is a contender with poor prospects of winning.
In the final stretch of the presidential race, it’s the mantle that Vice President Kamala Harris wants to claim.
Harris has his campaign and allies many times used the term to describe his candidacy, with a marked shift in messaging from a few months ago when President Joe Biden ran the ticket. Then, Biden made a bold prediction: “Let me be as clear as I can be: I will stay in the race!” he said. “I will defeat Donald Trump”
Campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon has repeatedly placed her full confidence in Biden’s victory, despite lingering concerns about his age and signs of sluggish fundraising. This included a week before the fateful presidency he argued as he declared victory“We’re going to win,” Puck told the media outlet.
Then, two days after Biden’s debate performance threw the party into chaos, he stuck with this message: “I’m going to say with absolute certainty, we’re going to win.”
Now, leading the branding of the new Democratic candidate is O’Malley Dillon, who has better polling numbers, more money and more ground troops than Biden, and is trying to portray a candidate who is the last heartbeat of the presidency. Three and a half years as a handicap in the race.
Trump’s team calls the framework ridiculous.
“Kamala Harris is neither weak nor the candidate of the future. Kamala Harris is currently the vice president of the United States,” Trump’s spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said.
“He is responsible for the problems the American people are facing right now. … He deserves to be voted out of office.”
Trump took a completely different path, already declaring victory.
“We don’t need votes. We got more votes than anyone else,” Trump said at an event in Detroit two months ago. He projected the same confidence at an Aug. 30 rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
“We have to win a shot. We have to blow them up,” Trump said. “You know, we win the state, we win everything.”
But a Trump official inside the campaign said that while he is confident, no one is taking the race for granted. Therefore, Trump gives media interviews several times a week and holds rallies, he said.
“We’re confident that President Trump is gaining momentum in this race, but no one is sitting in Trump’s headquarters and taking it easy right now,” Leavitt said. “We are working around the clock to win this election.”
Part of Harris’ strategy is the typical drop in expectations after Labor Day. Another part of it is the reality of a compressed, rushed schedule on which Harris is presenting himself to voters, while also having to take major action like picking a vice president and holding a national convention within weeks of his ascension. ticket.
But some go deeper.
a live event At the Democratic National Convention with Politico, O’Malley Dillon revealed what keeps him up at night.
“Honestly, reassurance, isn’t it? I certainly feel that, you know, you can kind of look at this moment and be so energized and be like, ‘We got this,’ and we don’t. We don’t have it. This will be an unusually close race. I can’t express it enough,” he said.
“We’re a polarized nation and it’s a difficult time, and despite everything that’s going on in this country, Donald Trump still has more support than he has at any other point,” he said.
Democrats have suffered from overconfidence before — in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 race against Trump, the party thought the race was in the bag, only to watch the big blue wall of states fly away.
Harris reinvigorated the Democrats and quickly created a slippery slope under Biden.
But for all the packed rallies, mass fundraising, rising enthusiasm Despite the campaign’s volunteer jumps since Biden endorsed Harris on July 21, the fundamentals of the race have not changed.
Victory will come in several battleground states, and as the polls show today, it remains on a knife’s edge.
“Democrats are afraid. The race is equal. Everyone understands that,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder and executive vice president of the center-left group Third Way. “Democrats are very, very worried. Not because of anything Harris has done, he hasn’t done anything wrong yet. That is why the risk of losing is so catastrophic.”
To be sure, Harris’ candidacy defeated Trump’s plans to expand his map in states like New Jersey. Instead, it’s Harris, who is stretching out in places like typically red North Carolina, where Democrats are campaigning for Trump. now he had to pour money.
But still, most polls show two in each of the battlegrounds as a margin of error.
“Nobody has a clear advantage here, that’s for sure,” said Monmouth Poll director Patrick Murray. After the Trump-Biden debate, Murray said that Trump has shown signs of progress in the polls, both nationally and on the battlefield. Harris’s entry “brought the campaign almost back to parity,” he said.
Pennsylvania is of particular concern to the Democrats. Depending on the states and their electoral votes, they will have to pick two other states, or perhaps three, to compensate for this basic blue wall situation. Democrats across the board say the Keystone State is the biggest concern, largely because of Trump’s strong appeal to rural, white males.
Among the trends he’s watching, Murray said, is where the older white vote that stuck with Biden is finally gravitating.
“That was one of the most interesting findings when Biden was on the campaign trail — when we asked questions about candidates’ mental, physical stamina, ability to get the job done — that big voters stayed behind Biden on that question,” he said. he said.
Bradley Beychok, co-founder of the Democratic-aligned American Bridge, described Harris as “high” but remained cautious about the party’s prospects.
“It’s a jump ball,” he said.
“If he and his campaign say they’re weak, there’s no criticism from me because some models think he’s a bit weak,” Beychok said. “I’d argue he’s a bit weak. I could argue that it was a toss-up. I’d argue he’s a bit cute.’