At long last, the Kamala Honeymoon appears to be flaming out. Roiled by bad press, a fumbling speech on economic policy, and now reports that the pressures of the campaign have exacerbated an ongoing problem with alcohol, Kamala Harris enters DNC week in a much weaker position than she was just three short weeks ago.
Part of her coming down to earth is a function of more voters being exposed to her, and perhaps even worse, her policies. Kamala Harris has never in her entire political career eclipsed single digits when put before the entire electorate. Her political incompetence was readily on display in remarks the Vice President made in North Carolina last Friday, in which her proposals of ending “price gouging” in the food industry, and adding trillions more to the national debt – reminiscent of the disastrous reforms Jimmy Carter implemented in the mid-1970s, resulting in stagflation and economic malaise that precipitated the Reagan Revolution – received widespread criticism, even among left-leaning outlets like CNN, The Daily Mail, and the Washington Post.
For its part, The Washington Post excoriated Harris’ remarks as “populist gimmicks,” arguing, “It’s like she’s trying to fix the economy with a magic wand, which … wasn’t in the presidential toolkit.” The normally left-wing paper continued its withering critique, arguing that her policies amounted to “wishful thinking” and that her overall strategy was “more about the sizzle than the steak” – in short, all talk no action.
CNN’s condemnation was even more blistering:
Kamala Harris’s economic speech was a bit like watching someone try to juggle with invisible balls. You could see the effort, but the substance? Well, it seemed to vanish into thin air. She promised an ‘opportunity economy,’ which sounds great until you realize it’s like promising everyone a unicorn for Christmas. Sure, it’s a lovely thought, but where’s the unicorn farm?
As these remarks were being made, the prediction website, Polymarket, which had given Kamala Harris a slight edge over Donald Trump in recent weeks, based on manufactured polling, reversed course, again positioning the 45th President as the frontrunner in a head-to-head contest. The collapse occurred midway through Kamala’s harebrained speech, inspiring many pundits to attach her with monikers like “Commie-la” and “Comrade Kamala” given her Marxist devotion to price controls.
Indeed, the fallout continues entering what was supposed to be a celebratory coronation week for the regime’s latest handpicked puppet. One day after Kamala’s universally lampooned remarks, the cover of the New York Post read “Kamunism,” featuring an image of Harris before a podium decorated with a hammer and sickle. President Trump himself piled-on with the mockery, truthing a photo on Sunday of Kamala speaking before the DNC – which was decked out in communist regalia.
The collapse of Kamala should have been foreordained: she was – and remains – the least popular vice president in recorded history. She is only serving as Vice President due to pressure placed on Joe Biden in 2020, in the aftermath of the George Floyd riots, to choose a black running mate (though back then, Kamala identified as Indian, so maybe we don’t give Joe Biden enough credit for being clairvoyant). She now only enjoys her current position, as presumptive Democratic nominee, thanks to a deep state-led coup d’état, aided and abetted by regime agitprop like CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Times – and Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, pulling the strings behind-the-scenes like marionettes – who tirelessly worked to switch Joe with Kamala, completing the greatest bald-faced power grab in modern history.
The emperor without clothes, however, can only go on for so long without being noticed. As an example: Saturday’s recent spate of NY Times/Siena polls, which purport to have the Vice President now leading, in reality demonstrate the fake polling phenomenon on hyperdrive. That poll consistently oversampled Democrats, who, in truth, break even with Republicans among the general electorate, and lagged Republicans in terms of total registration in pivotal swing-states like Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, and even Virginia. Yet, Saturday’s Times/Siena poll oversampled Democrats in four of the swing-states sampled: Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Nevada.
The wild oversampling and skewed methodology in general – all by design – prompted a rare clarification by long-time Trump campaign pollster, Tony Fabrizio. In his statement, Fabrizio said the following:
“The latest Sun Belt swing state polls of Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada conducted by the New York Times and Siena College are, once again, a perfect example of how wildly inaccurate recalled 2020 vote between President Trump and Joe Biden is being used to create a phony lead for Kamala Harris. Fortunately, they proved our case for us this week, because they actually got Georgia right: among registered voters, they have a dead-even split between President Trump and Joe Biden on the recalled 2020 vote. As a result, President Trump leads Kamala Harris by 7 points (51-44) in the 2024 head-to-head matchup among all registered voters. Arizona and Nevada however look nothing like the 2020 reported results. If they did, President Trump would lead by 3 points (50-47) in Arizona and by 9 (53-44) in Nevada.”
In other words, at this stage in the campaign, even with all the contrived media hype Kamala Harris has received to the tune of tens of millions of dollars of free positive press, Donald Trump is still outperforming his numbers from both 2016 and 2020, where he received more votes than any incumbent president in history.
But even though Kamala’s poll numbers are maliciously deceptive – and indeed, fraudulent, much like the Harris campaign overall, which duped (some might say, defrauded) the RNC into expending hundreds of millions of dollars for months on a decoy candidate in Joe Biden – they can prove damaging from this perspective. The Democrats are trying to accomplish two things: kowtow mega donors who are lining up tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars behind President Trump – in one of the greatest fundraising hauls in American history – into submission, by making them not spend any more money or by distracting them into focusing on trivial matters. For example, the idea that the presidential contest is now close in a swing-state like North Carolina, or even solid red states like Texas and Florida, as has been reported by outlets like MSNBC, is ridiculous.
But the bottom line is this: 2024, much like 2016 (and even 2020, though that race was illegitimate) will be won in the rust belt states. The so-called “sunbelt” states like Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Nevada are shoo-ins, for all intents and purposes, for President Trump. That is not to say that they should be taken for granted and ignored. Indeed, they remain pivotal to President Trump’s pathway to victory in November. But it is to say that we should not be baited into fabricated left-wing narratives into thinking that we are losing those states, and thus must allocate precious time there where the focus should be on the same playbook that won President Trump the White House back in 2016: the rustbelt states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, the latter arguably the most important of them all with its 19 electoral votes.
Put differently, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Our side ought not to fret and overcomplicate things: we know the playbook for securing victory: piercing the blue wall, once again. President Trump’s team should allocate its resources, time, and energy to the rustbelt region by deploying boots on the ground, in terms of lawyers, poll watchers, and bodies – like Scott Presler – equipped with the resources and knowledge of local rules to continue to register voters in this home stretch.
There is quite a bit of evidence that significant inroads have been made in terms of remedying partisan imbalances in many of these key battleground states, particularly Pennsylvania, where James Blair, the Trump campaign’s political director, earlier this month posted a series of tweets illustrating the gains made over the past four years for voter registration. For example, in Arizona, the GOP expanded its lead of registered voters from 130,000, in 2020, to 259,000, as of today.
In addition, Democratic leads in Pennsylvania and Nevada have been halved and cut by two thirds, respectively. The RNC has also filed a bevy of lawsuits in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona to clean up voter rolls in those battlegrounds. Recent reports of Georgia purging hundreds of thousands of ineligible voters from their rolls is a promising sign, offering a model for other battlegrounds – particularly those states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, where the problem of illegal voters (be they illegal aliens, non-residents, deceased, etc.) is of the highest concern. These are two states also with Democratic Governors – in Whitmer and Shapiro – and, therefore, are unlikely to have a political interest, much like Georgia, Nevada, and Virginia, in automatically cleaning up rolls themselves to secure Republican control over the long-term.
For his part, despite this being DNC week, and despite being on the heels of the most tumultuous two-month stretch in American political history, one that observed him knocking out his opponent, then nearly getting his head blown off, and then being forced to pivot to a new candidate, who was unconstitutionally put in her position by shadowy operators seeking to sabotage a democratic electoral process, Donald Trump remains fierce, strong, and a formidable threat to the political establishment. He charges ahead. This week he has a full slate of appearances on his docket, including two trips to the rustbelt – remarks on the economy and energy in York, Pennsylvania on Monday, followed by a crime and safety event in Detroit, Tuesday. And then there are more events in the sunbelt later in the week, with appearances in North Carolina alongside JD Vance on Wednesday, followed by Arizona rallies Thursday and Friday.
The incredible pace with which President Trump carries forward, despite the many obstacles he navigates on a day-to-day basis, including an extremely hostile media that has entered hyperdrive with their disinformation and smear tactics, alongside a weaponized justice system – and, downstream of that, a looming sentencing next month. It is incumbent for We, the People, do our collective part to recognize the stakes of this race and deploy to the ground in the rustbelt and sunbelt if we are going to have any chance of saving this country.
Pennsylvania is probably the most important state this cycle. It was the pathway to victory in 2016 and boasts the highest number of electoral votes (19) – more than Arizona and Nevada combined, of any of the key swing states. Moreover, it is a state with a Democratic Governor who is working vigilantly to prevent voter rolls, likely teeming with ineligible and downright illegal voters, including potentially tens if not hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens, from being disclosed to the public. That means Pennsylvania lawmakers, including in notoriously corrupt Philadelphia County, can with virtual impunity manipulate election contests by flooding ballot boxes with otherwise illegal votes. This is not a conspiracy; this is a fact playing out in real time.
Lest we forget: Pennsylvania was on the verge of handing its 19 electoral votes to Donald Trump in 2020, before the sabotage that caused President Trump’s lead over Biden to magically disappear in the hours well beyond midnight. It is absolutely critical that something like this does not reoccur – though Democrats are actively plotting behind the scenes for another cheat.
Further evidence of this plot is observed in Saturday’s New York Times article that detailed Left-wing lawfare groups being led by Democratic legal agitators like Marc Elias, one of the chief architects of all the lawfare being waged against Donald Trump and his supporters in recent years, which should ring alarm bells for any conservative. The Times article described these efforts by the Harris campaign as follows: “The legal apparatus within the Harris campaign will oversee multiple aspects of the election program, including voter protection, recounts and general election litigation, and it is adding Marc Elias, one of the party’s top election lawyers, to focus on potential recounts.”
The program has targeted eight states it considers to be battlegrounds – AZ, NV, MI, WI, PA, GA, NC, and NH, with additional resources allocated to four “states of interest”: FL, VA, MA, and MN. The program has been described as “the largest of its kind in Democratic presidential history,” and stands as a bulwark to RNC-led efforts, such as deploying hundreds of thousands of lawyers and volunteer poll watchers to similar battleground states, to protect the vote.
What all this means is that for the remaining eleven or so weeks of this cycle, Republicans cannot let their foot off the pedal one bit – they must double down. The rust belt is where victory lies, in this writer’s humble opinion, because demographic realities – particularly appealing to blue collar white voters – favor Republican victories in those states (the non-Hispanic White populations in Michigan and Wisconsin are above 70%, and above 80% in Pennsylvania), which are replete with such voters. These voters most resonate to law and order and tough on immigration rhetoric, as well as appeals to economic nationalism like Chinese tariffs, tax breaks for starting families, and ending reckless spending on overseas conflicts. This formula was exactly what won President Trump the White House in 2016, and will do so again this year: trade, immigration, foreign policy. Time to put the work in!
Paul Ingrassia is an Attorney; Communications Director of the NCLU; a two-time Claremont Fellow, and is on the Board of Advisors of the New York Young Republican Club and the Italian American Civil Rights League. He writes a widely read Substack that is regularly posted on Truth Social by President Trump. Follow him on X @PaulIngrassia, Substack, Truth Social, Instagram, and Rumble.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.