CHICAGO — Former President Donald Trump is hoping to blunt the momentum Vice President Kamala Harris is carrying out of the Democratic National Convention as both candidates prepare for the closing months of the 2024 race.
Harris and Democratic vice presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) will embark on their second bus tour on Wednesday, this time in Georgia, after traveling around Pennsylvania the weekend before their convention. Meanwhile, Trump will spend time in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin this week.
The Trump campaign expects that Harris will experience a 2 to 3 percentage point polling bump after her nomination in Chicago, but the former president is hoping to reset the race with a campaign strategy that includes a higher tempo of events.
Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), crisscrossed the country during the week of the convention as a form of counterprogramming. But he has continued that pace into the following week.
On Monday alone, he visited two states: Virginia to lay a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery for the third anniversary of the Abbey Gate terrorist attack and to visit a Vietnamese restaurant, plus Michigan for an event with the National Guard.
The higher frequency is expected as Labor Day approaches and is part of a larger strategy. Trump has begun to sit for more interviews with media outlets and even podcasters, while each campaign is spending tens of millions on the airwaves.
But the burst of activity from Trump is the first real test of whether he can make a dent in the political honeymoon Harris is enjoying five days after she was nominated for president. She leads Trump narrowly in national polling and in a handful of swing states, while election forecasters are already seeing signs those numbers will improve.
In an interview from Chicago, White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs Director Tom Perez described enthusiasm for Harris as being “off the charts.”
“And not just momentum from this week, but momentum from the last 30 days,” Perez, once the Democratic National Committee chairman and former President Barack Obama‘s labor secretary, told the Washington Examiner on media row. “The party has come together remarkably. The unity here is palpable. The energy here is palpable.”
But there was also an undercurrent that Democrats could not afford to be complacent.
Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ), who called the presidential race “a dead heat,” preferred to be optimistic but not overconfident.
“I’m not worried because they’ve had 35 straight really impressive days, almost unparalleled,” Murphy told the Washington Examiner at a Georgia delegation breakfast. “I feel really good that they’re going to be able to propel that beyond the convention.”
At the same breakfast, Georgia DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston called the race “a marathon” and said Democrats are “not going to stop running” until they “sprint across the finish line.”
“This is not momentum, this is a movement, and we have to continue to ride that wave all the way to Election Day and beyond,” Boston told the Washington Examiner.
Harris has a series of obstacles before her. She has yet to sit for an interview with the press, while her September debate with Trump, freshly in doubt as the two sides negotiate the rules, could prove influential if it takes place.
Retiring Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI) told the Washington Examiner that Harris is in a good position electorally if their momentum can be maintained. But he worried about the unknowns with two months still remaining until the November election.
“The things you’re most worried about are the things you can’t think of, they’re the things, the surprises that throw us off our game,” Kildee said at a Michigan breakfast in Chicago. “[We have] 76 days to maintain this momentum and, unabated, that takes us where we need to be. The question is, like, is there something that’s going to be a turn, some kind of a moment?”
Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY) encouraged the Harris campaign to “fight every day like you’re 10 points behind … through hard work.”
“You do it by knocking on doors. You do it by making telephone calls, going not just to big rallies but one person to one person,” Beshear told the Washington Examiner as he walked to a North Carolina breakfast. “You do it sharing your individual enthusiasm. When people get out there and they talk to their friends and neighbors about why they’re excited for the Harris-Walz ticket, that’s going to spread that enthusiasm even further.”
New York state Rep. Alicia Hyndman underscored the importance of registering people to vote and advising them on mail-in, early, and Election Day voting, if need be.
“Sometimes you have to bring government to people,” Hyndman told the Washington Examiner on the convention floor after Harris’s acceptance speech. “This momentum is really great that we’re all, don’t get me wrong, I’m pumped, I am overtired, I’m excited, but we have to make sure after today, tonight, that we go back home and do the work because the last thing we want to do is wake up on Nov. 6 and she’s not the president. So, we’ve got to make it happen.”
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Maryland state Rep. Lily Qi agreed that Harris had given conventiongoers their “marching order,” conceding Democrats “have a lot of work cut out for us” before November.
“I knocked on doors in Pennsylvania for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and was so disappointed that we did not crack the glass ceiling,” Qi told the Washington Examiner, recalling how she conducted interviews in two languages, English and Chinese, to reach the immigrant communities whose votes Democrats’ need. “A lot of the immigrants don’t like to join Democratic or Republican parties, right? They are skeptical about partisan politics. This is a time to make sure these swing voters can be earned.”
