Harris' Closing Message Takes a Turn

She's depicting Trump as a dictator, a shift from more optimistic tone when she entered race
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 25, 2024 1:00 PM CDT
Harris' Closing Message Takes a Turn
A video with Vice President Kamala Harris plays as former President Trump watches during a campaign rally at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport, Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024, in Latrobe, Pa.   (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Kamala Harris' message about Donald Trump has gotten darker as Election Day nears. She has embraced the Trump-is-a-fascist message—on a podcast, by supporting comments made by former Trump chief of staff John Kelly to that effect, and at a televised town hall. The outlet Vox sees it as a shift from the sunnier message Harris voiced through the summer, with the new "threat to democracy" theme more similar to what President Biden was saying before he left the race. It "seems to be in response to the closeness of the presidential contest in battleground states, writes Christian Paz, as Harris' team reportedly thinks it might make a dent with undecided voters and moderate Republicans.

However, to the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, it smacks of desperation. The "climb up the rhetorical dictator chain in the final stages of this election looks like a last-ditch Democratic strategy to save Ms. Harris from defeat," reads an editorial. It notes that Democratic Sens. Bob Casey and Tammy Baldwin have been running ads trumpeting areas in which they agree with Trump, wondering why they would do so if Trump truly were a fascist. "Then again, maybe Democrats don't really believe what they're saying about Mr. Trump," the board notes.

The Trump campaign also accuses the Harris campaign of "floundering" by "throwing everything they can at the wall to see what sticks," per Fox News. Meanwhile, an ABC News poll finds that 49% of registered voters see Trump as fascist, compared to 22% who say the same of Harris. The poll with Ipsos defines the term as "a political extremist who seeks to act as a dictator, disregards individual rights, and threatens or uses force against their opponents." (More Election 2024 stories.)

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