Basement bombing: Harris borrows a tactic from Biden and another from Trump

If Vice President Kamala Harris wins the top job, it will be because she can convince voters that she represents a change from the last two unpopular presidents.

But Harris’ current campaign strategy is a fusion of the contrasting approaches that enabled former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden to win the White House.

Harris is flooding the zone with free media like Trump did in 2016, while at the same time resorting to Biden’s “basement” strategy when it comes to difficult interviews or unscripted moments.

In a truncated campaign, Democrats are hoping this will be enough to get her over the finish line. Harris doesn’t have to last 18 months like a normal presidential candidate. She just has to survive from the rest of the summer through November, and before then early voting will begin in several battleground states.

“Kamala Harris is very prone to making mistakes,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told the Washington Examiner“So I hope that in the next 100 days they lock her in the basement like they did with Joe Biden for the last five years. They write down every word that comes out of her mouth with great precision, put it on their teleprompter and create an artificial candidate.”

Unlike Biden in 2020, though, Harris will maintain an active campaign schedule. When she introduces her running mate early next week, they will spread out across several key states. She has brought new energy to Democratic campaign rallies, giving some that old-fashioned Obama-in-2008 feel. Media coverage, which turned unusually adverse toward Democrats in the weeks between Biden’s poor performance at the June 27 debate and his eventual withdrawal from the race, has turned relentlessly positive. Major entertainers and celebrities have rallied to Harris’s side.

While Harris has raised a lot of money, much of her exposure is free — much like Trump in 2016, but without the hostility.

“The media is doing all the work for her,” said Republican pollster Brent Buchanan. Washington Examiner“Trump is having to spend money to counteract that. In a race between Biden and Trump, ads weren’t going to be very important. Now they matter a lot.”

Harris is a more effective and forceful communicator than Biden, who at 81 has lost the ability to read teleprompted speeches. She is also a more disciplined communicator than Trump, who often speaks off-the-cuff and can stray dangerously off-script.

But most of Harris’s gaffes have come in contentious interviews or debates. She could also face tough questions about abandoning her 2019-2020 campaign platform altogether as she resets, if she ever finds herself in the position of having to answer them. Since no one is concerned about Harris’ age or mental acuity, there is not the same political downside to avoiding such encounters.

“The media and the campaign are desperately trying to sidestep her record, whether it’s her disastrous failure as border czar or her ranking by nonpartisan trackers as the most liberal senator in the U.S. Senate,” Cruz said.

“Kamala Harris has never run a real campaign,” Buchanan said, noting the left-leaning lean of the California electorate “even compared to New York State.” Even there, Harris won her first race for California attorney general in 2010 by less than a point over Republican Steve Cooley.

A carefully organized campaign complemented by fawning press coverage could maximize Harris’s assets and minimize public exposure of her liabilities. Biden couldn’t do the kinds of acts Harris can do because of his deficits and then couldn’t hide from them any longer after the debate.

“In a swing election, people are willing to vote for the unknown rather than the known and unsavory,” Buchanan said. “In 2020, the guy in the basement who I don’t know much about seemed like a safer, calmer choice than the guy in the White House.”

The key to Trump’s campaign is to remind voters why they didn’t like Harris in the first place and to make the unknowns known.

“They need to educate voters about where they stand as they define it,” said Republican pollster Neil Newhouse. Washington Examiner“For most voters, this will be new information and will need to be re-accredited and repeated frequently.”

That’s why it’s crucial to link Harris to the Biden administration, remind voters that she has often been to the left of her boss on important issues and point out the extent of her shifts in stance since ascending to the top of the ticket.

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“It’s clear that this is not the race anyone expected or had planned for,” Newhouse said. “That increases the degree of difficulty for the Trump campaign. After all, they’ve spent the last two-plus years preparing for a race against President Biden. The Trump campaign is extremely capable, but it takes time to pivot to run against Harris. While she has been an integral part of the Biden administration and can shoulder many of the administration’s negative aspects, she is clearly no Joe Biden.”

For many Democrats, that’s enough.