Lorcan Nyhan: Kamala Harris goes low, leaving Donald Trump flailing for tactics
Democrats rediscover ridicule as an effective rhetorical weapon in the battle for the US presidency.
Originally published in the Sunday Independent.
With 92 days left, the US presidential election is already Kamala Harris’s to lose. The presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party has the momentum, message and path to beat Donald Trump in November.
Recent polling affirms this. A YouGov poll had her at 46pc, with Trump on 42pc. But at this early stage individual polls can only tell us so much; the most important metric right now is her party’s enthusiasm levels.
Partly driven by an almost visceral relief that they no longer have to pretend Joe Biden is a viable candidate, and partly buoyed by her charismatic delivery, Harris has engaged the Democratic base to a degree we haven’t seen since 2012.
That enthusiasm is evidenced by the $200m (€183m) the campaign has raised — and the 170,000 new volunteers signed up.
The polls tell their own story, with 88pc of Democrats enthusiastic about Harris’s candidacy. That’s 26 points higher than the corresponding figure for Biden in February numbers. Trump’s comparative figure is 82pc, so Harris is now more popular with Democrats, than her rival is with Republicans.
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