It seemed like Joe Biden had been running against Donald Trump for an eternity. You can be forgiven if the past four years have felt like an overwrought continuation of the 2020 election, with indictments and legal wrangling surrounding Trump’s refusal to leave office and his relentless lies about the outcome providing the backdrop to what long appeared to be an inevitable slog of a rematch this year.
Then a few short weeks ago, Biden dropped out, Kamala Harris replaced him, and the tense, tired rerun that had been the 2024 election was abruptly canceled and replaced with a startlingly fresh script. What had been an endless marathon became a fast-paced sprint. In a matter of days, Harris had to re-invent Biden’s presidential campaign with a new message and a new strategy for a new candidate, knowing that only a few weeks later the presidential choice would be set before voters.
That moment of decision has now arrived. Last Friday, people started lining up to cast early ballots in Virginia and Minnesota. Other states will soon follow, and as we move into October much of the country will be engaged in early voting.
The final phase of the election has begun even as people are still getting to know Kamala Harris and still trying to envision her as president. But time is rapidly running out. The race just started yet it is time to decide.
When Harris took over, she knew she would have to work swiftly to define herself before Donald Trump could define her. It was her most important job and she has done it well, drawing on talents for communication and strategic thinking which had gone unrecognized by Washington insiders who dismissed her as a lightweight and thereby set her expectations low.
Facing low expectations is a gift to politicians with the skill to exceed them. Harris has exceeded them and more. She deftly played off the enthusiasm unleashed by her entry into the race, recognizing that joy can motivate supporters and motivated supporters are willing to donate the money and do the hard work that bolsters an upstart campaign trying to land on a short runway. In the process, she marshaled a movement that was waiting for a leader, and transcended politics to become a figure of cultural significance.
No modern politician has had to do so much and do so much right in such a short time with no margin for error. But here she is, well positioned to win this election as the voting starts.
In contrast, the fire that was ignited by the September 10 debate continues to burn unabated in the dumpster that is the Trump campaign.
Consider what the two campaigns were doing on the evening before the first early votes were cast.
Harris was sitting down for a nationally televised town hall event with Oprah Winfrey. Donald Trump was watching Republicans beg the gubernatorial candidate he endorsed in North Carolina to drop out of the race in light of a damaging CNN story about comments he made in a pornography site chatroom.
The Oprah event was classic political theater, staged to play to Harris’ innate ability to relate to people. Yes, there were celebrities in attendance, but there were also walls filled with video panels of ordinary people representing the roughly 100 affinity groups that have sprung up to help elect Harris—a life-sized Zoom meeting that complemented the live audience assembled in the key state of Michigan.
In a manner reminiscent of Bill Clinton circa 1992, Harris spoke directly to the people in the room and by extension to the audience at home. Here was Kamala the cultural phenomenon, in the company of Oprah and Meryl Streep and Chris Rock and other celebrities speaking plainly to ordinary people in language they could understand about what America might look like on her watch.
It was, as the old expression goes, good television. It was also good politics, taking aim at voters who might not be engaged in the election but who are attuned to popular culture.
Meanwhile, Harris’ opponent was busy trying to stem the fallout from revelations about Mark Robinson, the MAGA gubernatorial nominee in North Carolina who is alleged to have done things that quite honestly appear to be on brand for Donald Trump. Last Thursday afternoon, CNN reported about Robinson’s long history of engagement with an online pornographic forum, where he referred to himself as a “Black Nazi,” waxed nostalgic about slavery, and made comments that CNN gently described as standing “in contrast to his public stances on issues such as abortion and transgender rights.”
None of this is particularly new for Robinson, whose extremist views have been well publicized. But the revelations are an additional anchor around a candidacy that is already underwater in a state Trump can’t afford to lose. Nationally, they draw attention to the ugliness of MAGA just as people are starting to vote.
Trump, of course, can’t afford to pull his endorsement. Robinson is what his supporters want.
This split screen image of where the two candidates found themselves last Thursday night is emblematic of where the campaigns stand as we enter the final and decisive phase of the contest.
Democrats are on offense, propelled by momentum built over two months by a movement that’s carrying the campaign.
Republicans are struggling.
Donald Trump still hasn’t figured out how to run against Harris. In a Fox News interview last week, he expressed disbelief that a woman could be doing better than Joe Biden:
“[Democrats] said, ‘Joe, it’s over, you’re getting out’. . . and they were very nasty. He got out. And they put her in. And she somehow—a woman—somehow she’s doing better than he did.”
Somehow.
I could speculate about what Trump sees when he looks at Kamala Harris, but it might be more useful to point out that he could barely look at her during the debate. Where he once stalked Hillary Clinton on a debate stage, Trump couldn’t bring himself to look at someone who isn’t just doing better than Biden. She’s doing better than him.
Sapped of the aura of strength he once enjoyed, his strategy has been reduced to name calling. Which is to say he has no strategy at all. He hurls ridiculously contradictory epithets at Harris—calling her a “Marxist, communist, fascist, socialist”—without generating the fear this hodgepodge of accusations is supposed to create.
Absent an effective line of attack, Trump finds himself running a campaign without a rationale. At this point, the Trump campaign is at best tactical, moving from outrage to outrage in an effort to keep their base engaged while trying to change the rules to their advantage and preparing to invalidate the election if they lose.
Trump needs to enrage his base because he has not figured out how to expand beyond it, while Harris is making a play for the portion of the electorate that is still up for grabs.
Unlike Trump, Harris is very strategic. She is targeting traditional Democratic coalition members—women, young people, people of color—and motivating them join her campaign while at the same time building an electoral majority by reaching out to groups that are typically not part of a Democratic alliance.
She is assembling an unprecedented bipartisan pro-democracy coalition around her candidacy, which now includes Dick and Liz Cheney, George Will, and hundreds of former Republican aides and officials. She hired a rural engagement director to organize a ground game deep in Trump country and talk to a segment of voters Democrats usually ignore. White Dudes for Harris boasts 200,000 members (and a line of White Dudes merch) who “aren’t going to sit around and let the MAGA crowd bully other white guys into voting for a hateful and divisive ideology.” Her running mate has a video where he offers car maintenance tips while talking about the dangers of Project 2025.
Harris’ strategic approach to the election appears to be paying dividends. Gradually since day one, the election has been moving her way. We see this reflected in the structure of the contest as it enters its final phase, where the direction of public opinion, its intensity, and the remarkable stability of the race all favor Harris.
We’ll take a look at these details on Wednesday.