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The "Northern Route" (a.k.a., the "blue wall") consists of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. On Tuesday, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz campaigned in Philadelphia, PA. Yesterday, they campaigned in Eau Claire, WI, and Detroit, MI.
Their whirlwind tour of the swing states, first in the North and later in the South, is intended to introduce both candidates to the voters. While Harris' name is well known, many people have no idea what she stands for. Walz is even more of a mystery to the general public. In a recent poll, 70% of the voters had never even heard of him. The tour is intended to rectify that, at least in the swing states.
In Eau Claire, both of them hit Donald Trump and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) hard on abortion. They noted that now 20 states have now banned the procedure, often with no exceptions for rape or incest. Polls have shown that abortion bans are wildly unpopular with voters outside of the hard-core Republican base. Harris also talked about her time as a prosecutor who took on giant corporations for price gouging. Walz talked about his years as a teacher and his 24 years in the National Guard.
The campaign said it had raised $36 million from small donors in the 24 hours after Harris announced her running mate would be Walz.
The Republicans are not letting Harris and Walz get all the free PR. Vance is shadowing them wherever they go. Before Harris introduced Walz to the country on Tuesday in Philadelphia, Vance gave a lengthy press conference in that city. He said that Harris is a disaster and blamed her for the war in Europe, the war in Gaza, and Tuesday's stock market crash. And you thought the vice presidency wasn't worth a bucket of warm pi**. Silly you.
In Shelby Township, MI, yesterday, Vance continued calling Harris and Walz extreme leftists. This claim is so built into Republican ideology that he can't help it. But he should be careful. For many young Bernie fans, that is a plus, not a minus, and it may encourage people to get off their respective couches and vote in November.
Vance was also asked about Trump's comments about how Harris "turned Black" for political gain. He said: "She pretends to be one thing when she's in front of one audience. She pretends to be something else when she's in front of a different audience."
The youngsters—Harris, Walz, and Vance—are running around the country like crazy. Trump has only one appearance this week, in Bozeman, MT, in support of Senate candidate Tim Sheehy. This schedule does not exactly exude youth and vitality.
Trump has long had a slogan: Make America Great Again. Harris seems to understand she needs a slogan, too, so she has been road testing one: "We're not going back." That is the exact opposite of Trump's. His implies America used to be better. Hers implies things are better now than they used to be. Both are ambiguous enough to allow all manner of interpretation, though.
One difference between the two teams is increasingly clear. Harris/Walz are going to run an upbeat campaign and talk about how great America is already and how they will fix a few remaining bugs. They are also talking about how they are having fun campaigning. Trump/Vance are going to campaign on American carnage and how America is a horrible dystopia that only they can fix. Fun couldn't be further from their minds. It will be interesting to see how this develops. Historically, optimistic has beaten pessimistic. (V)