“They don’t have a narrative that they’re comfortable with about how to take down Harris,” said Chuck Coughlin, an Arizona-based political strategist. “He’s grasping around. I think he’s desperately grasping around with his instincts. I don’t think his team has any way to put their handle on this, and so he’s instinctually grasping around for what to say.”

The Trump machine had in recent days begun a multi-million-dollar TV advertising blitz hammering Harris for her record on the border, an issue the former president’s campaign sees as a winner — and portraying her as ideologically out of the mainstream. One ad from a pro-Trump group labeled the vice president a “dangerous San Francisco liberal.”

Harris had even begun defending herself from the attacks, hitting back Tuesday night in Atlanta about her border record, and simultaneously releasing a nearly minute-long video framing her as pro-border security.

But Trump’s comments Wednesday on Harris’ racial background drew some of the biggest gasps from the audience, and provided Democrats with ammunition. During the appearance, Trump said Harris “happen[ed] to turn Black … She was Indian all the way and all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black woman.”

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    People always talk about how he is doing things to please his fan base. Maybe. But they are at most 30% of the country and he needs more than that to win.

    This is not going to help him with people who are not in his fan base.

    • tacosanonymous@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      I’d love to agree but gerrymandering, along with other dubious anti-democratic policies, means that Republicans have a gross advantage. This presidential election will probably be as close as the last.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Gerrymandering has nothing to do with a presidential election. It doesn’t even help with senatorial elections.

            • ImADifferentBird@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              3 months ago

              I said they have an advantage. Not an insurmountable one.

              It’s not for nothing that the Republicans have only won the popular vote in the presidential election once in the last 25 years, and yet we’ve had three Republican presidential terms.

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                3 months ago

                But one of those times was due to a SCOTUS decision over Florida ballots. Gore would have won even with the electoral college if that bogus decision hadn’t been made. So you need to discount the 2000 election in that list if you’re talking about an EC advantage. Really, you can only go with Trump in 2016 at that point.

              • Psychodelic@lemmy.world
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                3 months ago

                Hell, one of those two didn’t even win the fuckin electoral college and still became president.

                Anyone remember how sleepy we all felt that day? Or maybe there was something really good to watch on TV or something. Idk, I’d just turned 10 so I couldn’t even vote

        • Psychodelic@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          That wasn’t their point. Go back and reread the whole thing. They’re just saying the popular vote is meaningless and that Republicans have multiple political advantages that favor them