Harris casts Trump as threat to democracy in final pitch to voters. Will they listen?
Policy positions are one thing, and Kamala Harris trotted out many in her “closing argument” campaign speech Tuesday night.
But in politics, the most important thing is symbolism, says Cornell Belcher, a Democratic strategist and pollster.
And for Harris to hold her rally at the grassy Ellipse near the White House — the same site where on Jan. 6, 2021, Donald Trump addressed thousands of his loyalists, sparking them to storm the U.S. Capitol — was “perfect symbolism.”
“You can’t ask for a better symbol for how she wants to close this argument,” he said. “I think it’s really smart strategy.”
It was the perfect backdrop, Belcher says, for the Democrat to make her case that Trump poses a threat to democracy — accusations that have also been hurled by former Trump White House officials, including former chief of staff John Kelly who recently said his old boss fits the “general definition of fascist.”
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It was also a much more ominous note than the joy and positivity that marked the campaign’s opening weeks back in the summer, and was part of a pivot toward more negative language that appeared to start in the days leading up to Tuesday’s speech.
Michelle Obama, at a Harris rally on Saturday, said some voters were ignoring Trump’s “gross incompetence” and “obvious mental decline,” for example. Running mate Tim Walz called Trump “un-American” and Harris herself echoed Kelly’s assessment during a CNN town hall last week, calling her opponent a “fascist” and a “danger to the well-being and security of the United States of America.”
One week before election day in the U.S., Vice-President Kamala Harris used what she called her ‘closing argument’ speech to warn against a second Donald Trump presidency at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., the same place where Trump helped incite the Jan. 6 attacks. Meanwhile, Trump described his controversial weekend rally as a ‘love fest.’
But some observers, including some Democrats, have questioned both whether alleging Trump is some kind of fascist should be the focus of the campaign’s closing days and just how much of an impact that will have on undecided voters.
“I kind of feel like everyone who has an opinion about Trump has made up their opinion about Trump,” said Sean Trende, senior elections analyst for the political website RealClearPolitics.
“Who has yet to make up their mind about whether Trump is a real threat to democracy or not? I don’t think very many people. So I’m not sold on how effective it is. I think kitchen table issues are a better bet for her at this point.”
Ahead of the speech, Trump outright dismissed Harris’s closing argument, saying it’s a message that doesn’t address everyday Americans’ day-to-day struggles and kitchen-table concerns.
Her speech wasn’t just about the potential dangers of a second Trump presidency. Much of it focused on her policy goals, including expanding Medicare coverage of home health care, boosting the supply of housing and working to restore nationwide access to abortion.
‘Wannabe dictator’
But arguably the most dramatic sections were those that cast Trump as a potential threat — a “petty tyrant” and “wannabe dictator” who is “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance, and out for unchecked power.”
It was those comments, and the setting of the speech, that grabbed the headlines:
“Harris holds rally at Ellipse warning of Trump’s threat to democracy,” was the Washington Post’s headline.
“In Closing, Harris Casts Herself as the Unifier and Trump as a ‘Petty Tyrant,” said the New York Times.
Ashley Etienne, a former communications director for Harris, says it was good strategy for the Harris team to zero in on Jan. 6. Her assessment is that the Republican campaign is underestimating the impact of the riot and how those undecided voters and disaffected Republicans are assessing it.
“They worry about the president’s actions and inactions on that day,” she said.
Polls suggest that the economy is the overall top issue of the campaign, but for Democrats and Harris supporters, protecting democracy is a priority.
To that end, Larry Sabato, founder and director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, says he thought her speech was a “home run” — that it outlined a very middle-class-specific agenda, while contrasting her presence on the National Mall on Tuesday to Trump’s on Jan. 6.
“When Donald Trump was on the Mall, we remember him particularly on Jan. 6, 2021, when he led essentially an insurrection, the first attempt to stymie the peaceful transfer of power in U.S. history,” Sabato told CBC’s Canada Tonight.
‘Political malpractice’
Yet some Democrats have expressed concerns about this message. Future Forward, the leading super PAC supporting Harris, warned that internal testing found that focusing on Trump’s character and the fascist label were less persuasive than other messages, the New York Times recently reported. Other Democrats have agreed, urging a bread-and-butter appeal to voters’ pocketbooks.
Unlike Belcher, the Democratic strategist and pollster who raved about the symbolism of the setting of the speech, Republican strategist Brad Todd criticizes its optics.
“I plan political events for a living, and I think this was political malpractice to put her in front of this White House,” Todd said on CNN shortly after Harris’s speech.
Todd said most Americans think the country is on the wrong track and they blame Biden and increasingly blame Harris. By standing in front of the White House, she will reinforce that disapproval, he said.
Ron Bonjean, another Republican strategist, said her closing argument was “a weak message that is not going to work for her, because it has already been tried out by Biden over the past couple of years.
“What she should be doing is continuing to sell herself to the American people who don’t know her quite yet, and she’s only had 100 days to define herself,” he told Business Insider.
Trende, the analyst for RealClearPolitics, said part of the problem for Harris is that she has had this “kind of whirlwind campaign” and didn’t have the opportunity that presidential candidates usually get to develop a package of ideas and to define herself in people’s minds.
“[It] has really reduced her opportunities to kind of make the kinds of arguments or to make the connections politicians usually make,” he said. “I follow this as closely as anyone. I couldn’t really tell you — [beyond] social issues where you know, where the parties fall — I couldn’t tell you where she stands on anything.”
Kamala Harris made her closing pitch to voters at the site of the Jan. 6 protest, while Donald Trump held a rally in Pennsylvania. Larry Sabato, founder and director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, reacts to the two events.
Published at Thu, 31 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000
Israel wants to enforce any Lebanon ceasefire deal, Netanyahu tells U.S. envoys
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told U.S. envoys on Thursday that Israel’s ability to counter threats to its security from Lebanon and return displaced people to the north were key elements of any ceasefire deal with Lebanon.
He was speaking shortly after a Hezbollah attack on northern Israel’s town of Metula killed five people, including an Israeli farmer and four foreign workers, while two more civilians were killed from shrapnel near the town of Kiryat Ata, Israeli authorities said.
Meanwhile, officials in Beirut said a series of Israeli strikes had killed six health workers in southern Lebanon.
“The main issue is not the paperwork of this or that agreement, but Israel’s ability and determination to enforce the agreement and thwart any threat to its security from Lebanon,” Netanyahu’s office cited him as telling the two U.S. envoys.
Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein were in Israel on a new push to secure ceasefires in both Lebanon and Gaza.
Sources previously told Reuters that talks were centred on a 60-day pause to allow for the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which would entail Hezbollah withdrawing its armed presence from south of the Litani River.
The diplomatic push comes amid intensifying fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which has run in parallel to Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas militants that has left the tiny enclave in ruins and has caused a humanitarian crisis.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister accused Israel of perpetrating a form of “genocide” with its grinding assault on northern Gaza — a charge Israel denies — and called on Lebanon to solve its long-running political crisis.
Palestinian civilians fleeing Isreali strikes against Hamas targets in northern Gaza are running out of food and places to shelter as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken tries to restart ceasefire negotiations on his 12th Middle East trip since the war began.
Israel bombarded areas around the eastern city of Baalbek on Thursday for a second consecutive day after issuing evacuation notices. On Wednesday it had conducted heavy airstrikes targeting Hezbollah in and around the city, which is famed for its Roman temples.
Dozens of cars could be seen speeding out of the area after Thursday’s warning, with wafts of black smoke emanating from the town of Douris, where an Israeli strike the previous day destroyed Hezbollah fuel stocks, according to the Israeli military and a Lebanese security source.
Thousands fleeing the violence have sought shelter in the nearby Christian-majority town of Deir al-Ahmar, where local official Jean Fakhry said authorities were struggling to cover even a fraction of needs and some people had spent the night in their cars.
“We cannot continue this way,” he said.
178 health workers killed in Lebanon
The killing of six Lebanese health workers and the wounding of four others in three separate strikes across south Lebanon on Thursday brought the total toll of health workers killed and wounded in over a year of Israeli strikes to 178 and 279, respectively, the Lebanese Health Ministry said.
Hezbollah said it had launched several rocket and artillery attacks against Israeli forces near the southern town of Khiyam on Thursday. It marked the fourth straight day of fighting in and around the strategic hilltop town, which is home to one of the largest Shia communities in southern Lebanon.
The mayor of the Lebanese border town of Wazzani, south of Khiyam, said he had pleaded with authorities to evacuate more than 20 people, most of them women and children, who were stuck in the crossfire of fighting but Lebanese authorities said Israel had not responded to his appeal.
“We keep asking for them to be helped but it’s like we’re in a jungle. No one listens,” Mayor Ahmed Mohammed told Reuters.
Hezbollah aims to keep Israeli forces out of the town to prevent them from detonating homes and buildings, as has happened on a large scale in other border towns, a source familiar with the group’s thinking told Reuters. The group says its fighters have prevented Israel from fully occupying or controlling any southern villages, while Israel says it is carrying out limited ground operations aimed at destroying the group’s infrastructure.
Hospital hit in northern Gaza
At least 30 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, mostly in the north, where one attack hit a hospital, torching medical supplies and disrupting operations, the enclave’s health officials said.
Israel’s military has accused the Palestinian militant group Hamas of using Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya for military purposes and said “dozens of terrorists” have been hiding there. It has not provided any evidence. Health officials and Hamas deny the charge.
Northern Gaza, where Israel said in January it had dismantled Hamas’s command structure, is currently the main focus of the military’s assault in the enclave. Earlier this month, it sent tanks into Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya to flush out militants it said had regrouped in the area.
Eid Sabbah, director of nursing at Kamal Adwan, told Reuters some staff had suffered minor burns after the Israeli strike hit the third floor of the hospital.
Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said on Thursday that one of its doctors at the hospital, Mohammed Obeid, had been detained last Saturday by Israeli forces. It called for the protection of him and all medical staff who “are facing horrific violence as they try to provide care.”
At least 93 Palestinians were killed or are missing, and dozens were wounded in an Israeli strike on a residential building in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya on Tuesday, the Gaza health ministry said. The U.S. State Department called the incident ‘horrifying.’
There were no reports of any casualties at the hospital, which Israeli forces stormed and briefly occupied last week. Israel said it had captured around 100 suspected Hamas militants in that raid. Israeli tanks are still stationed nearby.
The health ministry in the Gaza Strip called for all international bodies “to protect hospitals and medical staff from the brutality of the [Israeli] occupation.”
The Gaza war began after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and reduced most of the enclave to rubble, Palestinian authorities say.
Published at Thu, 31 Oct 2024 14:26:17 +0000
