In early October 2024, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris each could smell victory.[1]  A New York Times/Siena College poll had Harris leading Trump nationally 49 to 46 percent.  More importantly, an average of polls in the seven “battleground” states that will decide the election in the Electoral College showed the rivals within 1-2 points of each other.  Each was ahead in three states and they were tied in Pennsylvania.[2] 

Remarkably, nothing has seemed to shift the basic balance of forces for the last several months.  It appears that Americans have largely decided for which candidate they will vote if Election Day ever gets here.  Faced with the need to just grind it out for another month, the candidates distilled their campaign messages for the final kick. 

For Trump it boiled down to Courage and Anger.  He returned to Butler, Pennsylvania, where he had narrowly survived an assassination attempt in July.  Then, as the Secret Service agents had belatedly tried to drag him to safety,[3] he had instinctively yelled to the crowd “Fight!  Fight!  Fight!”  Many in his audience now sported T-shirts bearing the same words.[4]  In Butler, he warned of the “enemy from within.”  Two days later, in Wisconsin, he warned that a victory by Kamala Harris would mean that “The country won’t be the U.S. any longer.” 

For Harris, it boiled down to Fear and Promises.  She arranged a series of appearances with friendly interviewers that allowed her to speak directly to her target audiences.[5]  In one appearance, Harris said that she wanted to extend Medicare to pay for long-term home care for senior citizens, but stated that “there is not a thing” that she would have done differently from President Biden over the last four years.  She also agreed to an interview on “Sixty Minutes.”  In the “Sixty Minutes” interview Harris skipped past Russia and China to name Iran as the “greatest adversary” of the United States, and judged that Vladimir Putin “would be sitting in Kyiv right  now” if  Donald Trump had been president instead of Joe Biden. 

            Neither the media nor the campaign staffs felt much joy from these approaches.  They roundly denounced the former president’s refusal to stay on a conventional political message (inflation, illegal immigration) while avoiding incitements to violence and personal denigration of his opponents.  They roundly denounced the Vice President’s penchant for soft-ball media appearances and her relatively thin schedule of public appearances.  Too many voters say that they don’t really know her.  To be fair, too many voters say they know Trump all too well. 

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[1] “Harris, Trump neck and neck in race’s final month,” The Week, 18 October 2024, p. 4. 

[2] Which explains why I’m being bombarded with text messages and phone calls while I’m trying to watch the evening news.  Note to Self: This is NOT the place for a tirade about “The David Muir Cartoon Show.” 

[3] Department of Justice Inspector General investigated the FISA warrants issued to allow communication intercepts of one of Donald Trump’s campaign advisors in 2016.  He found no “documentary or testimonial evidence” of wrong-doing.  All he found were a series of inexplicable “errors” made by very experienced investigative personnel that all tended in one direction.  The same appears to be the case with the apses made by the Secret Service detail assigned to protect Trump.  OTOH, there’s a legitimate case that the existing Secret Service is inadequately funded and staffed to meet its responsibilities.  Many complain that they are over-worked and under-paid.  As a result, nearly 20 percent of Secret Service employees left in fiscal 2022 and 2023.  For a quick, well-informed take on systemic problems of the Secret Service, see: In ‘Zero Fail,’ Carol Leonnig Says Secret Service Is Underfunded And Overworked : NPR 

[4] Comically, many of the shirts are manufactured by the Chinese consumer goods giant Temu.  Pattern – Temu 

[5] Stephen Colbert, Howard Stern, “The View,” and “Call Her Daddy.”