CHICAGO — In his presidential career, Donald Trump has never experienced anything like the past month. Vice President Kamala Harris, an American of black and Indian descent, has relegated the white alpha male to the fringes of the national debate, denying him the spotlight he craves and constantly demands.
With Harris as the main attraction, Democrats wrapped up their electrifying convention here Thursday night, her speech designed to keep her riding the crest of a wave that has changed the course of the presidential election.
The Democrats are in the game, the former president is in a tight spot, and it is not clear whether he knows what to do.
To extricate himself from this predicament, Trump has resorted to a once-tested tactic that he has used in the past to unbalance his opponents and put himself at the center of attention. But now, as the campaign enters its next phase, the focus on him and his efforts to regain his balance will attract at least as much attention as on Harris’s future path.
In her acceptance speech, Harris bluntly defined what is at stake in this election. “Dear Americans, this election is not just the most important of our lifetimes, it is one of the most important in the life of our nation,” she said. “In many ways, Donald Trump is an untrustworthy man. But the consequences – but the consequences of bringing Donald Trump back into the White House are extremely serious. … Imagine Donald Trump without guardrails.”
As she spoke, Trump continued to criticize on Truth Social, albeit in the same unfocused and sometimes confusing style that has characterized many of his recent appearances. “IS SHE TALKING ABOUT ME?” he wrote in one post.
As Harris glided through the media over the past month, Trump tried to set the terms of the conversation on social media or in friendly interviews with the media. But it backfired. He tried name-calling, exaggeration and lies, something he has used in the past to shift the focus, sometimes to distract from his own problems, sometimes to take attention away from a rival. It hasn’t done what he hoped.
The former president has tried to get the media to look at him this week with counter-programming. It should have been clear to him that this would be Harris’ week, just as the Republican convention was his. The only news the Democrats were spreading during his convention was that pressure was mounting on President Joe Biden to abandon his re-election bid. Trump has learned, perhaps painfully, that he is less listened to at the moment. In short, nothing seems to be working the way it used to.
As Democrats leave Chicago and the campaign enters its final season, Harris is enjoying the attention and momentum. Whether that can continue much longer is uncertain. Everyone now awaits the next round of national and swing state polls to see if Harris gets the traditional boost that comes with a successful convention, and if the enthusiasm felt at the United Center this week and at the large rallies in the days leading up to it will subside somewhat.
Many of the prominent figures who spoke here this week have reminded Democrats that this is a very close race. Certainly so close that even a disoriented Trump could win – if he can get back on his feet as a candidate, which is one of the biggest questions right now.
Election campaigns are about many things: the state of the nation and the mood of the country, the character and quality of the candidates, policy endorsements, the strength of a party’s infrastructure, money and advertising. But they are also about intangible things, things that do not rise to the level of sophisticated politics or dignified debate, including sometimes a daily jiu-jitsu contest, at which Trump once excelled.
Take the ratings. Trump cares more about ratings and viewership, but over the past month, Harris has beaten him at his own game, even outperforming him. Her viewership now matches or exceeds his. Her supporters are now as enthusiastic as his, a dramatic shift from when Biden was the expected Democratic nominee. Her campaign contributions, which come from grassroots donations, far exceed Trump’s. Now, her convention ratings, at least through Wednesday, were better than his. In short, by the standards that seem to care most about Trump, he has fallen behind a woman he despised and for whom he says he has no respect.
On the substantive issues, the debate Republicans wanted has not taken place. The Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll from a week ago showed that voters trust Trump more than Harris on some of the most important issues, including inflation, the economy, immigration and the Israel-Gaza war. Harris is ahead on abortion, race relations, health care reform, protecting democracy, Supreme Court appointments and gun violence.
Harris began answering some of the unanswered questions about her positions at this week’s convention, but there is much more to learn. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page called her “the least known presidential candidate of modern times.” She will continue to face pressure to fill in the gaps, but with so little time left in the campaign, she may choose to keep her policy priorities broad and general in the hope that she can win the public’s trust without having to reveal details that threaten to anger certain groups of voters.
Trump is now one of the most high-profile presidential candidates of all time, in part because he has already served one term. Since he rode down the escalator at Trump Tower to launch his first campaign in 2015, he has never retreated from the public eye. But even for him, there are questions about what his real priorities would be in a second term. He has avoided Project 2025, the conservative plan that many of his allies have drafted. Although he has published policy positions on his website, he does not offer many specifics or details about his plans. He has always liked things to be vague and has a long history of shape-shifting.
Many of these issues will come up at the first debate between Harris and Trump on September 10. Unless something unexpected happens between now and then, this is Trump’s chance to reassert himself and regain momentum. But will he be ready? Were it not for Biden’s poor performance at the CNN debate in Atlanta in June, Trump might have drawn the bulk of the criticism. He spent much of the 90 minutes spreading falsehoods old and new, using so many distortions that fact-checkers would have been busy all night.
The debate will be a test for Harris, too. Although her experience as a prosecutor was the focus of testimony this week in Chicago, debates are about prosecution and defense. She will have to prove she is as good on defense as she is on defense. But her performance may matter less if Trump is as unfocused and undisciplined as he has been.
Most candidates would be unsettled by what has happened, the surprise decision of a president to end his candidacy just months before the election, and the speed and skill with which Harris took over the party. The basic issues of the election have changed overnight. What was a backwards-looking battle between two old and unpopular men became a battle between the future and the past, pitting a woman of the new generation against the aging Trump.
Any candidate would have needed some time to regroup, find new lines of attack and focus issues. Trump’s campaign advisers believe they know what they want from their candidate, but they have so far failed to get Trump to listen to them.
But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Eight years ago in August, Trump’s campaign was in turmoil. He shook up his staff and made a course correction. Even in the face of his vulgar, sexual comments in the Access Hollywood tape that came to light a month before the election – a revelation that many Republicans thought would destroy his campaign – Trump persevered with greater discipline and won the election.
When Biden was in the race, the focus was on his age and, in particular, whether he would be physically and mentally capable of serving another term. Trump, who exudes more vigor, escaped more scrutiny. But anyone who watched Trump in 2016 and also somewhat in 2020 and compares that to today’s candidate on the campaign trail can see the differences. Whether it’s a genuine decline in his abilities or just the fact that he’s not yet used to campaigning against Harris, his performances have been a far cry from those of the focused and at least somewhat disciplined Trump in his prime. He says he misses Biden, and it shows. But as Democrats have been saying all week in Chicago, there’s no going back.
