A jittery Harris campaign makes big plans to clinch a narrow win

Kamala Harris’ senior advisers are staring down numbers showing a majority of Americans feel the country is on the wrong track with two weeks till Election Day.

They also expect Donald Trump to make more references to the “enemy within” or January 6 as a “day of love” and ramble as he did at a Pennsylvania rally last week. They anticipate to provoke him into making more ridiculous statements.

A dozen key officials and outside allies told CNN that getting Americans to focus on that over the next two weeks, see a second Trump term as a step backward, and see Harris as a change agent will likely decide the president. At a meeting in Philadelphia last week, Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told top fundraisers that the race may not be tied, but in the battleground states where the president will be won, it is.

“Historically, it would be unusual to have seven states come down to a point or less,” said Harris’ senior adviser David Plouffe, Obama’s 2008 campaign manager. But I believe at this point, you have to presume that’s possible.”

Plouffe and other Harris advisors don’t think Trump’s mostly outsourced door-knocking and other on-the-ground contact can match what the national Democrats and the Harris campaign, which inherited some of President Joe Biden’s team, spent a year on. However, they feel this advantage is limited.

According to Plouffe, “Democrats wish Donald Trump wouldn’t get more than 46% of the vote,” referring to his previous national popular vote percentage. But “that’s not reality” in battleground states. He’ll reach 48% in all these states. We just have to hit our win number, which could be 50 or 49.5 depending on the state.”

However, Plouffe and other Harris aides think the vice president can yet improve.

In order to get there, the campaign is putting together high-profile, eye-catching events that will feature Harris and have symbolic settings that will emphasise the message.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a co-chair of Harris’ campaign, stated, “The goal is to make sure that you’re motivating your operation, that you’re being felt in all these places.”

More targeted messaging

Harris aides are still desperately seeking disengaged voters, so most of their contact will use new presidential campaign approaches, including technology.

Campaign aides believe their surrogates, including celebrities posting targeted social media messages or community members texting Jewish voters at a Doug Emhoff event in Southfield, Michigan, to encourage “Kamala Shabbat” dinners, can make a difference.

CNN interviewed Harris aides who were nervous but kept using language like “jump ball” and “down to the wire” and the occasional emoji with queasy green cheeks.

Numerous Democratic operatives worried Harris may be losing the traditional TV ad warfare due to Republicans’ strong transgender attacks, but Harris aides disagreed. The advisers claimed that most up-for-grabs voters don’t watch TV or see those advertising.

The campaign feels it has the edge against Trump due to months of precinct-by-precinct organising and planning that is regularly altered depending on early vote and web data.

Throughout “brat summer” and the tent revival-like Democratic convention, strategists said they prepared for a stable contest that would be won on the margins, requiring just a few huge swings that some political insiders may view as desperate Hail Mary manoeuvres.

There will be new announcements: After months of polling celebrities and athletes, the campaign will release additional endorsements, interviews, and appearances to reach tuned-out voters. Prepare for more events like the vice president’s interview with Charlamagne tha God and Julia Roberts’ trip to Georgia, both inspired by campaign research.

“We’re not throwing spaghetti at the wall. We genuinely examined who voters listen to, claimed a campaign official.

Some outreach will revive Biden-style themes about Trump’s unfitness for office to argue for a steady commander in chief and persuade reluctant voters to elect the first Black female president. Harris and her advertisements will emphasise how much terrible a second Trump presidency would be rather than morality.

In a way Biden never could, this would include further pounding of Trump as unsuitable for the office, specifically with allegations of mental and physical decline.

Harris will focus on reproductive rights, but her biography and economic plans will be emphasised. Her aides believe she can win non-college-educated White women repelled by Trump if they believe she’s more middle class than radical left. The team also hopes to boost elder support, Black women’s passion for Harris, and Black men’s and Latinos’ support.

“At some level, you just want to be the one to make the last argument to them as loudly as you possibly can,” a top Democratic operative helping Harris be elected texted. “I am SURE this will be decided in the last week.”

Extensive plans for the final two weeks

At least one closing event is planned to bring Harris and running partner Tim Walz back together, with the Minnesota governor slated to target rural areas and men for Trump bashing that the campaign struggles to convey in advertisements.

Some remark, ‘Eh, we got through one Trump term.’ They alter its history. They don’t remember that all of our neighbours died of Covid because of his folly of abandoning science, and instructing us to inject bleach didn’t help,” Walz said Saturday at a rally in Papillion, Nebraska, previewing his statements for the next two weeks. “We may survive another four years, and I’m optimistic. If Donald Trump is in office for four more years, I doubt the institutions will survive.

Walz then cited Michael Flynn’s recent comment regarding whether he would preside over military trials if Trump returns to the White House.

‘Are you out of your goddamn mind?’ Mike Flynn responded, ‘We have to win first,’” Walz said. “We know where family values are, so I won’t give the flag or family issues to fascists like these guys. We won’t grant them freedom because we know what it is. And for good measure, I’m not handing the posers football.”

Ads during games, online appeals, and digital billboards along Nebraska highways will repeat the campaign’s claim that a man is a two-time Trump voter and hunter who is voting for Harris this time.

Advisors realise that part of this effort is to nervy Democratic insiders who never thought Trump could win at this stage in 2016, always thought he would lose in 2020, and now have been sitting for weeks with the possibility that the former president could win again.

Big Democratic contributors often express doubts. After briefings on campaign mechanics and legal preparations at last week’s Philadelphia retreat, several big funders believed Harris could get there.

Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison’s thank-you dinner speech at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts left many buzzing. He suggested imagine Inauguration Day and Martin Luther King Jr. Day, when everyone is covered up in the cold on the steps of a Capitol erected by slaves.

Harrison told two individuals in the room to focus on two people: Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her black robe, holding Frederick Douglass’ Bible, and Harris, in white or a tan suit, walking out to swear an oath with her hand on the Bible. “Doesn’t have to be a fairy tale,” Harrison said. It can be our reality if we all act.”

Not counting on a ‘silent majority’

Signs reading “Your vote is secret” and “Your husband can’t know what you do in the voting booth” have appeared in women’s restrooms in North Carolina, Georgia, and other states. The Harris campaign is not behind them.

They do not care about those signals. When Cheney stopped by a luncheon speech in Michigan on Monday with Rep. Harris, Republican former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming said, “If you’re at all concerned, you can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody.”

Despite talk that this year may reverse the 2016 and 2020 polling trends that underestimated Trump’s support, top Harris aides aren’t counting on their own “silent majority” of women and Republicans in deep-red areas or families who aren’t saying how burned out they are by Trump.

Some Harris voters and frontline operatives and volunteers are. They tell stories of suburban women telling door-knockers they’re voting for Harris even though none of their friends or neighbours are, or Republicans at official events who seem relieved to be in rooms with other conservatives who’ve turned on Trump.

“The independents that I met are considering voting for Harris, which is a sign of hope for me,” Oakland County Democratic Party chair Nancy Quarles said last week in an interview with CNN ahead of the vice president’s Detroit suburb visit. Quarles said “there’s a big opening, and they’re paying attention and being willing to listen to the discussions,” even though she recalled being a Republican voter some years back.

Before the Walz rally on Saturday, Jennifer Norris, a health care analyst from rural Wahoo, Nebraska, and former Saunders County Democratic chair, told CNN that Trump supporters have vandalised her car. But “I know too many Republicans who will not say it, but they are ‘blue dot,’” she said, referring to Omaha’s Democratic concentration, where one of Nebraska’s electoral votes is at stake.

In his address introducing Walz, retired customer service professional Blaine McKillip, who restores Omaha properties, said he had voted Republican in every presidential election since Ronald Reagan until this year. But he doubts many would join him this year.

“I don’t think most can. They’ve bought into the Kool-Aid so completely that they’re immobile,” McKillip told CNN in the parking lot, holding a new Harris-Walz camouflage hat. “And they’re afraid to change because it would say, ‘I was wrong.’”

Again, McKillip answered, “I’m just talking to the guys.”

After rallying veterans at a campaign office in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where the Harris campaign has focused on Republicans, US Rep. Chris Deluzio told CNN that he believes these people would be won over.

Deluzio predicted that some traditional Republicans and independents will lean that way in November. They won’t accept Trump, who considers January 6 convicts ‘political prisoners.’ Even with policy differences, they will do the patriotic thing and keep our government strong.”

Harris strategists don’t expect silent-majority voters to support the vice president without more persuasion. Plouffe said the campaign’s data showing paths to victory do not rely on these people, but he left open the potential that they could assist deliver a bigger win than public or internal campaign polls show.

Plouffe further added, “I’m confident that we’re being conservative in how we view this race, so we are more likely to be surprised on the upside by things.”