Vice President Kamala Harris‘s closing argument rally next week at the Ellipse will be one of her last opportunities to underscore the contrast between herself and former President Donald Trump.
But the rally, scheduled seven days before the election, doubles as an opportunity to create a viral moment for Harris and troll Trump one last time if the vice president can gather a large crowd near the National Mall.
Against the decidedly presidential backdrop of the White House, Harris’s rally will take place at the same location of Trump’s infamous “Stop the Steal” event, where rioters then stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 to overturn the 2020 election results. She intends to use the platform to implore voters to turn the page on the former president’s chaos and division and pursue a “New Way Forward,” her campaign slogan.
“Just imagine the Oval Office in three months,” Harris said this week in Georgia in an example of what she could repeat next Tuesday. “Picture it in your mind … It’s either Donald Trump in there stewing, stewing over his enemies list, or me working for you, checking off my to-do list.”
As poll after poll emphasizes how close the election remains, the Harris campaign is hoping the rally will crystallize the choice for voters between Harris and Trump as she dispenses with the “joy” and amplifies President Joe Biden‘s concerns about the risks Trump poses to democracy.
But it also provides one last opportunity to present a united Democratic front and needle Trump over his insecurities regarding crowd sizes if her audience is larger than his “Stop the Steal” rally, which was attended by 53,000 people, according to the House Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Trump’s crowd did include people on the National Mall, but the Harris campaign only applied for a permit for the Ellipse with the city of Washington, D.C. for a crowd of 7,500. For reference, 23,000 people were at her rally-concert this week with former President Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen in the suburbs of Atlanta. An estimated 30,000 people attended her Friday night rally with Beyonce in Houston, marking her biggest crowd to date.
Meanwhile, Democrats are receiving texts and emails, encouraging them to RSVP for Harris’s DC event. “We’d love to see you there!” one text message read.
For Democratic strategist Mike Nellis, Harris “standing at a place that represents one of the lowest points in American history, where violence erupted during the transfer of power after Trump lost the election,” “sends a strong message.”
“It’s a powerful way to close out the argument, especially for those undecided voters,” Nellis told the Washington Examiner. “A lot of folks might agree with Trump on some of the issues, but they’re deeply uncomfortable with what he did on Jan. 6. We need to remind them of that. We have to remind people who he is, what he stands for, and how he’ll hurt people.”
Another Democratic strategist, Mike Lux, downplayed Harris’s rally as an opportunity to troll Trump, contending the Ellipse “is a serious place to raise issues about saving our democracy and stopping Trump’s fascism.”
Nellis agreed, arguing people are concerned “about the possibility of going back to the chaos that defined the Trump administration.”
But Republican strategists and pollsters disagreed with how the Harris campaign is spending the days before the election making the negative case against Trump as opposed to a positive one for Harris.
“The best thing Harris could do is spend the next 10 days telling voters what the first 100 days of her presidency would look like,” former Republican National Committee communications director Doug Heye told the Washington Examiner. “But they’ve made a strategic decision not to do that, despite unaffiliated voters saying that’s what they want to hear. It’s mystifying.”
Heye cited how Senate Democratic candidates in races that will determine the chamber’s majority, including in Michigan, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, “are trying to talk about issues voters are talking about.”
“Social Security, prices, abortion, even the border,” he said. “Harris? Not so much.”
Suffolk University Political Research Center director David Paleologos similarly considered Harris’s rally to be ill-conceived but for a different reason.
“With millions of people voting every day, it’s hard to imagine any single campaign event moving a significant amount of undecided voters,” Paleologos told the Washington Examiner.
Days before Harris’s rally, Trump will make his own closing argument on Sunday at Madison Square Garden, which has a capacity of 20,000 people.
“President Trump will deliver his forward-looking closing message among a full house of patriots in deep blue New York City, because Americans of all backgrounds are joining his ‘big tent’ coalition to Make America Great Again,” Republican National Committee spokeswoman Anna Kelly told the Washington Examiner. “Harris will deliver her joyless closing message of fear and retribution by being divisive and looking backward.”
Trolling Trump for his crowd sizes has been a Harris campaign strategy throughout the election, best demonstrated in Harris and former president’s only debate in September, in addition to an ad that debuted that same day.
“I’m going to actually do something really unusual and I’m going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies because it’s a really interesting thing to watch,” she said. “What you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”
Harris’s quip prompted an immediate response from Trump, who counter-claimed that “people don’t go to her rallies,” permitting the vice president to pivot from an immigration question.
“There’s no reason to go,” he said. “People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics. That’s because people want to take their country back.”
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Obama adopted a similar approach to his remarks this summer at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, implying with a hand gesture that crowd size wasn’t the only thing small Trump had to worry about.
“This is a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago,” he said. “The childish nicknames and crazy conspiracy theories and weird obsession with crowd size. It just goes on and on.”
