A Tale of Two General Election Campaigns

Trump and Harris are running very different general election campaigns. Which one will prove to be better?

Photo by rupixen on Unsplash

There are 70 days until Election Day — ten weeks! And the dearth of recent quality polling makes it difficult to parse the current state of the race. Describing it as a statistical dead heat seems accurate. With the summer conventions done and the tsunami of summer shocks also done, both the Harris and Trump campaigns are gearing up for their final sprints to November. And the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World cannot help but notice that the way the two campaigns are managing that sprint look very different.

Let’s start with Kamala Harris! Axios’ Sophia Cai describes the Harris campaign’s general election strategy:

Kamala Harris' strategy for the 71-day sprint to the Nov. 5 election is built around a few key goals: Outwork Donald Trump, stay in the news, and campaign aggressively in states that could increase her paths to victory.

That's why the vice president is packing her campaign schedule this week, starting with a bus tour in southern Georgia. She'll also sit for her first interview as a presidential candidate and ramp up preparations for her Sept. 10 debate against Trump….

She has rolled out a few policy proposals to help first-time homeowners, the working class and others, but her senior advisers are tempering expectations that she'll put forward fully fleshed-out policy ideas before Election Day.

Their reasoning: There's not enough time.

Harris' late entry into the race has forced her team to set priorities, and Harris is calculating that her best move to counter Trump is to emphasize lofty ideals such as strength, decency, the rule of law and individual freedom.

In other words, Harris’ general election campaign will be light on policy minutiae, heavy on lofty ideals, and very heavy on sweat equity. The campaign seems bound and determined to use its army of surrogates, massive war chest and army of volunteers to outwork and outhustle Trump’s campaign.

They are very likely to succeed in that task! Trump is already waffling on whether or not he will participate in the September debate; CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reports that Trump would back out if he could do it and not be labeled a chicken. Meanwhile, Politico’s Playbook AM has this truly damning description of how the Trump campaign is thinking about the general election campaign:

The post-Labor Day election sprint starts early this cycle — at least for Trump.

Unusually clear-eyed about the threat Harris poses to his presidential bid, the former president is ramping up his campaign schedule, making plans to hit the trail more frequently — even, eventually, daily — from now until Election Day.

In a series of stories that posted [Sunday], Trump’s inner circle seemed to acknowledge that reality is finally sinking in for the former president, who had previously dismissed his Democratic opponent as “dumb,” but has more recently envied her momentum. It also comes as his own team has predicted she’ll receive a post-convention bump — atop the positive glow in which she’s already basking.

Trump, of course, was almost certainly going to press the gas as the election neared. But “the heightened pace planned for the coming weeks goes well beyond previous preparations and is a direct response to the enthusiasm spike from Democrats,” CNN’s Alayna Treene and Steve Contorno report.

“Think Trump on steroids,” one Trump adviser told CNN. “It’ll be all hands on deck.”

Whoa, did Politico say “daily” campaign events?! What stamina!!¹

A general election campaign in which the candidate is not campaigning almost every day is a rather weak, low-energy campaign. And the CNN story referenced above cannot quite confirm that Trump will get to campaigning every day this fall:

Through November, Trump is expected to hold “several events each week, if not daily,” one adviser said, while another predicted the former president will regularly visit two states in a day….

Even his choice of where to hold events — visiting deeply red Montana and solidly blue New Jersey while leaving monthlong gaps between stops in key states — sometimes left Republicans scratching their heads….

As he did over the last week, Trump is expected to hold smaller events — in addition to his larger rallies — centered on tailored messages in the hope that some guardrails could help the campaign better focus their candidate. Unlike Trump’s sprawling, daylong rallies, these stops will take place in more intimate venues with fewer people and — many of his allies hope — a sharper focus.

The limitations of those efforts, though, grew increasingly apparent throughout last week. Those who know the former president best have long acknowledged that Trump’s innate predilection to veer off script and air his grievances can’t be changed.

“He’s 78 years old and has never been someone easily controlled,” one Trump ally told CNN….

Still, the week of events marked one of the most active periods on the campaign trail of Trump’s third White House bid. Since effectively wrapping up the GOP nomination in March, Trump has maintained a notably light campaign calendar, holding one or two rallies a week and spending long stretches out of the public view.

In other words, Trump’s general election campaign will be heavy on [attempts at] policy discussions, heavy on economy-bashing, heavy on media availabilities, light on lofty ideals, and surprisingly light on sweat equity. The campaign has outsourced a lot of its ground game, so it makes some sense to rely on media availabilities and warning that the world will end under Harris as a political strategy. The point is, Trump is not campaigning all that vigorously compared to his previous runs.

Does this mean Harris is gonna thump Trump?! While the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World would really like to see that, there is another dimension to Trump’s campaign that needs to be considered: his overt efforts to buy out the weird vote.