Harris prepares closing pitch focused on Jan 6 Capitol attack, economy

WASHINGTON – US Vice-President Kamala Harris will make her closing argument on Oct 29 from Washington’s historic National Mall, looking to cast former president Donald Trump as a man consumed by grievance and retribution in the hope that Americans will prove willing to turn the page.

Speaking from The Ellipse on Oct 29 – from the same spot where Trump on Jan 6, 2021 called for supporters to contest the results of the election – Ms Harris will argue that her Republican opponent’s egoism crowds the needs of the American people, a senior Ms Harris campaign official said.

Ms Harris will then pivot to a more proactive argument for her economic policies to lower costs and enrich the middle class.

In the final stretch of an incredibly close presidential election, the Harris team needs the Oct 29 event steeped in symbolism to reframe the race as a referendum of her opponent, reminding voters of the divisiveness and chaos that defined much of his presidency while also appealing to voters who may be may still be reluctant to support her – or any – Democrat.

The Vice-President must present herself as sufficiently different from not only the former president, but the current one – and the pinch of inflation and schismatic politics and culture that have alienated many voters.

The Harris team has not been shy in recent weeks about courting moderate Republicans, as well as female voters who are dismayed by the conservative-leaning Supreme Court overturning of the federal right to an abortion.

“She hasn’t had as many opportunities to introduce herself to voters as you would in a ‘normal campaign’. I don’t know if any of us know what ‘normal’ is any more,” said Ms Karen Finney, a long-time Democratic strategist and Harris ally.

“This will be a high-profile moment to close out the campaign the way she started it. She stepped into this moment with grace and wisdom and strength and embraced it. This is a moment, like we saw at the Democratic National Convention, to pause and bring it all together,” said Ms Finney.

Democrats have been torn over the past few weeks over how much Ms Harris should call out Trump’s inflammatory comments – or the raft of former Trump White House officials who no longer support him – versus the time Ms Harris should spend speaking about her own vision.

Ms Finney said Ms Harris needed to respond to Trump’s former chief of staff, Mr John Kelly, and his warnings that Trump would rule like a dictator, but that she now needs to speak more about her agenda.

“This is a moment to shift that balance,” Ms Finney said. “The comments about Kelly were astonishing but needed to be underscored, but this speech revives the opportunity to remind voters that it’s about all of us, the American people.”

Still a toss-up

The Harris campaign is aiming to assemble a winning coalition of female and suburban voters, blacks, Latinos and Republicans, as Ms Harris tries to win the race in the seven battleground states of Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.

Behind the scenes, Harris officials have expressed more confidence about her chances of winning Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, while they are less sure about her standing in Michigan. There, a number of Arab-Americans may sit out this election, given their disgust with President Joe Biden’s handling of Israel’s war in Gaza.

The Trump campaign has been aggressively running attack ads in Michigan in an effort to suppress Ms Harris’ Democratic support.

“This is going to be a close race. We’ve known it the entire fall,” Harris’ campaign manager, Ms Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, said on MSNBC over the weekend.

Ms Dillon said the high levels of early voting and the turnout, so far, among Democrats shows Ms Harris will win, even as a bevy of recent polls show her and Trump locked in a tight race across all of the swing states, with the numbers within the margin of error.

Ms Harris’ speech on Oct 29 will speak to the roughly 3 to 5 per cent of voters who remain undecided. Polls show these voters care overwhelmingly about the economy, followed by immigration, democracy and abortion.

On the economy, Ms Harris has vowed to enact a larger child tax credit, offer first-time home buyers assistance with a down payment and expand Medicare to help pay for care for senior citizens.

In her speech, Ms Harris is expected to contrast this with Trump’s economic agenda, which the campaign official said revolves around tax cuts for rich people and corporations, as well as strong tariffs that the Harris campaign has taken to calling a “national sales tax”.

Part of her argument is that the tariffs would cost working families as much as US$4,000 (S$5,300) a year.

Ms Harris plans to take this closing message on the road to all of the battleground states in the final days, the official said. BLOOMBERG