Washington: In the final week of the US presidential campaign, Donald Trump gifted his opponent, Kamala Harris, the opportunity to persuade three crucial demographics about why she is a better bet. Harris’s boss, President Joe Biden, gifted Trump the opportunity to consolidate his base and take the moral high ground when he was on the defensive.
The reference to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” at Trump’s rally in Madison Square Gardens last weekend, Trump’s insistence that he will “protect women, whether they like it or not”, and his comment suggesting that his Republican critics such as Liz Cheney needed to face the bullet (instead of being allowed to advocate sending Americans to wars abroad) opened the doors for Harris to make a final pitch to three constituencies critical for her win — Hispanics, women, and moderate Republicans.
Biden’s response to the MSG rally comments where he suggested that Trump’s supporters were “garbage” — White House somewhat disingenuously insisted that Biden only meant that particular supporter who had made the comment and not all of Trump’s supporters — allowed Trump the opportunity to don the everyday garbage collector uniform, hop on to a garbage truck, rile up his base and convince a key demographic of the working class that he is their leader.
And it is in this fight over the past week that the strategies and calculations of both campaigns became clearer.
Harris’s openings
The Harris campaign has made alerting the American electorate of the danger Trump represents as a central plank of his campaign. To buttress this argument, they point to his past record, including his decision to appoint Supreme Court judges who reversed abortion rights, his encouragement of a mob on January 6, 2021, to block the certification of the 2020 electoral results, his status as a convicted felon, and his encouragement of racist language and patronage of racist groups. But translating this argument into electoral win requires three groups.
When Trump’s rally in New York saw a comic suggest Puerto Rico was garbage, or other speaks make fun of Latinos, the Harris campaign saw it as an opportunity to remind the Hispanic community, an increasing share of which is moving to Trump, of the racism that exists in the far-Right ecosystem.
Pennsylvania, the most critical of swing states, has over 100,000 Puerto Ricans, while Arizona and Nevada have substantial Hispanic population. On Friday, among the biggest Latino stars, born to Puerto Rican parents, Jennifer Lopez introduced Harris at a rally in Nevada making an impassioned plea to her community to back the Democratic ticket.
When Trump claimed that he had disregarded the advice of those who told him that he shouldn’t be saying he was the “protector” of women, and said that he would insist on saying it, whether women liked it or not, Trump may have thought he is appealing to those who see him as a strong alpha figure — a definite source of his appeal. But the Harris campaign found an opportunity to remind women how Trump saw them, not as independent agents with control over their own bodies and with their autonomy but as mere objects. If Harris wins, there is little doubt that her victory would be propelled by women, and 2024 will be remembered as the abortion election; she got a chance to play on this gender gap.
And when Trump attacked Cheney, he may have been making a distinction between the older Republican Party which did fight wars outside with his own movement that promises a more insular America. But his violent language offered the Harris campaign an opportunity to focus on the militant language and the violence that is a part of the Far-Right ecosystem. Harris has spent an extraordinary amount of time with moderate Republicans, the so-called “Nikki Haley voters”, pointing out how the party’s tallest political figures have chosen country and constitution over party and Trump. Trump’s attack gave Harris a chance to reach out to these middle of the road conservative voters once again.
Trump’s opportunity
But Trump got his opportunity too, thanks to his old rival, Biden, who, in a fumble that became so typical of him and forced him out of the race after a disastrous debate, appeared to indicate that Trump’s supporters were garbage.
The White House insisted that Biden only meant the supporter who had called Puerto Rico garbage. But this claim had little credibility, especially after the White House stenographers office said the transcript said “supporters”, and the press office had edited the word to “supporter’s”.
Trump ran with it, playing the victim card and rallying his substantial base, which polls estimate to be at least 47% of the electorate, on the grounds that this is how Biden and Harris thought of them. To be fair, Harris had spent the very evening Biden made the comment speaking in Washington DC pledging to be a president of all Americans, respectfully telling Republicans that she would listen to them even if she disagreed, and projecting an air of humility. Biden’s comment took away attention from her speech and forced her to clarify the next day that she didn’t judge people based on who they voted for.
But the damage was done. Trump spent a day donning the garbage collector uniform and jumping into a truck, to consolidate this sense of resentment and victimhood that animates his base, portray Democrats as elitists who looked down on the common voters, and project himself as a champion of the working class — a constituency that Trump’s movement had assiduously cultivated.
None of this may be decisive in shaping voter motivations and decisions. But given the close margins in the swing states, once the results become clear, both sides will look back at the final week of the campaign and regret the errors they made, or thank the other side for the openings they offered.
