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Vice President Kamala Harris closed out a nearly flawless convention with a powerful rousing speech for Democrats. She is expected to continue to grow in the polls, as is common after conventions, and Democrats are arguably in a better position now than they would have been if they had retained President Joe Biden as their nominee.
Above all, what Harris has accomplished is winning back core Democratic supporters, including black voters, young people, women and elites, putting the race back on at least parity.
The second thing the convention did was to create the impression that it was the sitting president, former President Donald Trump, who was responsible for the past four years, not the Biden-Harris team. Their message was that the future was Harris and the past was Trump, with little to no attempt to justify the past four years, which is to say, they never existed.
Democrats defend Harris’ lack of substance: Americans ‘don’t vote for policy dictates’
Perhaps the surprise of the night was Ms Harris’s explicit statement that she is prepared to defend Israel and defend it against Iran — elements that were absent from nearly all of the convention speeches and were also absent from Mr Biden’s remarks.
The massive and feared protests against Israel never materialized, replaced by thousands of extremists calling for Israel’s destruction. Biden should never have respected them. Harris did not repeat that mistake.
Trump has come under fire for every criticism he has given of Harris, but the vice president and most of his major speeches have attacked Trump in deeply personal terms and frequently misrepresented his views, after calling for national unity in speeches that followed with scathing criticism.
Trump does not support a nationwide abortion ban, nor has the Supreme Court upheld one, nor does he support Project 2025. The immigration bill Trump opposed would allow 5,000 immigrants a day to enter the U.S. before closing the border, or allow about 2 million people a year, roughly the same as today.
Harris offered no concrete plans to address inflation or the economy beyond promising to lower prices. Her campaign said on the same day that she supports all of Biden’s tax increases in the budget. Biden’s tax plans would be the largest in history, eliminating capital gains taxes, taxing unrealized gains, raising the top federal tax rate to about 45% and bringing large state combined rates to nearly 60%.
Such a massive increase would essentially destroy innovation and capital markets, stifle investment of any kind, and potentially bankrupt 401(k)s.
Harris didn’t address energy at all, didn’t say whether she still supported the Green New Deal, and avoided addressing divisive social issues, but she did clearly rally women around reproductive freedom.
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“Coach” Tim Walz has proven to be more of a liability than an asset, raising questions about his military record and how left-leaning he actually is, which underscores the fact that she would likely have been better off with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, but the vice president is rarely all that important.
After the speech, Trump called into Fox News, ignoring the political rule that you shouldn’t respond to artillery with guns, to underscore how difficult it was to get through the speech.
Just a few weeks ago, with Democrats facing a death spiral and Trump solidifying his support nationwide, they turned things around, with a new team and a new message, to revive their chances.
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The challenge for the Trump campaign will be to distinguish leadership from issues that affect voters’ daily lives – war and peace, inflation, taxes, crime, immigration – and to hold Harris equally responsible for four unhappy years.
Nearly two-thirds of voters believe the country is heading in the wrong direction, oppose open borders, want tougher crime laws and hold the administration responsible for inflation that would essentially mean huge tax hikes for all Americans.
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