Harris's discipline is pushing Trump into his 'Fat Elvis' era

KAMALA HARRIS has enjoyed three weeks of astonishing momentum by capturing the “hope” represented by Barack Obama’s presidential campaign while copying the “basement” strategy of Joe Biden.

- Sarah Baxter

Starting tonight at a rally in Philadelphia, she is embarking on a whistle-stop tour of six swing states designed to fire up enthusiasm for her candidacy, while leaving little opportunity for the face-to-face interviews and media scrutiny that could create gaffes that Donald Trump can exploit.

This is her version of Keir Starmer’s “Ming vase” approach. Harris’s tightly-controlled campaign is driving Republicans to distraction but she would be foolish to change it now. The same disciplined tactics produced 12 years of Democratic control of the White House, interrupted only briefly by Trump from 2016-2020. If Harris can keep a grip on events, there are only two weeks to go before the razzmatazz of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 19. Then she will be into the presidential election home stretch, with early voting in some states starting in late September.

Trump, in contrast, is losing his touch and has responded in the only way he knows how — by doubling down on his meanness. The full antiObama attack manual is being deployed against Harris. There have been attempts to out her “Marxist” father, a Left-wing Stanford economist, and her “radical” pastor and mentor for criticising America (somewhat obliquely) after the 9/11 attacks. Have the Republicans forgotten they failed to stop Obama from winning? Last week, Trump lashed out at Harris at a conference of black journalists for being “Indian” before “she happened to turn black”.

It was a deliberately offensive hit job on the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father.