One of the Trump campaign’s most effective ads features Kamala Harris giving her full-throated support for taxpayer-funded trans surgeries for prisoners and illegal aliens.
Joe Scarborough lamented the effectiveness of the ad on a recent show. “I saw it this weekend while I was watching football games, commercial after commercial after commercial after commercial of Kamala Harris in 2019 saying that she supported federal funding for transition operations. She’s a radical, she’s a communist,” he said.
“It’s not you or me in Florida or New York that they need to worry about,” Scarborough added, referring to John Heilemann and other liberal Democrat men he works with at MSNBC. “It’s the guys in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania that are looking … If you go to one of those cities right now, one of those in a battleground state, and go to a city and watch sports on streaming, what you will see is a nonstop barrage of that kind of advertising attacking Kamala Harris, trying to make her, to disqualify her in the minds of all three of those subset of, irregular voters.”
You can watch the ad, which ends with the devastating line, “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” here:
“I don’t know if it was the backdrop of football, but when you hear the narrator say Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners. That one line …” said popular radio host Charlamagne tha God. “I was like, ‘Hell no. I don’t want my taxpayer dollars going to that.'”
In a New York Times article by Shane Goldmacher worrying about this and other similar ads, Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita notes the key is using Harris’ own words. “It doesn’t require any hyperbole,” he said. “It’s her.”
Exactly. And it’s a far more genuine version of herself than the one she’s awkwardly trying to pitch in her one debate and limited media appearances. After all, Harris still lists her pronouns in her X bio. And applicants to work in her campaign are given nine pronoun options.
Many corporate media types are obsessed with this ad buy. NBC News‘ Jonathan Allen has an article fretting about the ad campaign. Semafor’s David Weigel notes the Republican highlighting of trans radicalism as well.
What Biden had that Harris doesn’t is an ability to convince voters he was a moderate. It wasn’t actually true. Prior to Harris’ campaign, Biden’s late-in-life policies were the most radical from a Democrat nominee for president in history. However, Biden had the political chops to present himself as moderate and normal. When he ran for president in 2020, only one quarter of those polled viewed him as either liberal or very liberal. He avoided using language and terminology tied with the left flank of his party.
Harris struggles to articulate coherent policy views in interviews, but when she’s comfortable, her far-left views flow out. Whether that’s related to bans on fracking, bans on meat, support for taxpayer-funded gender mutilation surgeries, support for widespread illegal immigration, or any of the other views she consistently held in office until she was coronated the 2024 presidential nominee, Harris’ radicalism is much more difficult to hide.
That likely explains part of her problem with male voters, whether Hispanic, black, or white. Before he was pushed out of the race, Biden enjoyed the support of a majority of Teamsters. Afterward, the Teamsters switched to Trump. Biden was viewed as normal enough to enjoy their support whereas Harris was viewed as too radical.
The Real Clear Politics average has Harris up by two points over her Republican rival Donald Trump. But at this point in the race in 2020, Joe Biden was up by 10 points. And he only won the electoral college by 43,000 votes across three states.