Vice President Kamala Harris is using the power of strong images to maintain the momentum of her candidacy, hoping to build a cultural movement for Democrats that President Joe Biden has long failed to achieve.
Harris is following the former president’s strategy – and thereby incurring his wrath.
The increased interest in her campaign has led to a rapid buildout of Harris’s infrastructure. Online merchandise sales have exploded. Harris’s crowds are filled with supporters wearing shirts, buttons and hats of all kinds – a scene more akin to a Trump rally than a Biden one.
Large crowds of supporters have already greeted Harris in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada. In Wisconsin last week, some supporters abandoned their cars on the side of the road a mile from the event venue and walked the rest of the way.
“It’s not like anyone cares about the size of the crowd or anything like that,” Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz joked Friday night, praising the crowd at a packed rally outside Phoenix.
Get Trump’s attention: The large crowds for Harris are now a central part of the new plan to defeat Trump.
On Sunday, Trump falsely claimed that “nobody” was waiting for Harris at her rally in the hangar at Detroit airport – which was attended by thousands – and that photos of the crowd in front of Air Force Two and at other speeches were created using artificial intelligence.
“Did anyone notice that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was no one on the plane and she put an ‘AI’ on it and showed a huge ‘crowd’ of so-called supporters BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!” Trump said on social media. “She is a CHEAT. She had NOBODY waiting and the ‘crowd’ looked like 10,000 people! Same thing happens with her fake ‘crowds’ at her speeches.”
At a press conference on Thursday, Trump said: “The crowd was ten, twenty, thirty times that size, and no one ever says it was big.”
This post has been updated with additional information.
Read more about Harris’ strategy for the Oval Office Here.
