The Republican candidate was going to win if Joe Biden had remained his opponent. Although the current president managed to launch large infrastructure, technology and environmental projects, a large part of the population blames him for inflation. He managed to bring it down, but people compare prices now, not with those of last month, but with 2020, when Trump governed.
Of all the possible replacements for Biden, the one who suited Trump the most was Kamala Harris, because her vice presidency has been gray, she is the most politically new and she is not classified as moderate.
In late July, when it became clear that she would be the replacement, and given that she was relatively unknown, Donald was quick to disfigure her in the public eye. To associate it with Biden’s economic and immigration failures; to present her as an enemy of jobs (due to her opposition to fracking), as a radical leftist (“Comrade Kamala”, he calls her) and as a softie in the fight against crime (for favoring the reduction of the budget of the police forces and for having promoted short sentences and early releases for violent criminals).
This put her on the defensive, forcing her to explain her previous positions and with little room to present a new offer to the electorate.
He immediately went on to destroy Harris’ personal image. To antagonize her with African Americans, he exhibits her as someone who identifies as black without being black, since her mother was Hindu and she lightened her face and married a white man.
With a whole offensive of sexist and sexist memes and jokes, they show her as someone who has had a dissipated sex life and has had no interest in having children. With that and with the song they play at their events (It’s a man’s, man’s world), has been losing the male vote, which forced her to spread spots in which muscular men talk glowingly about her.
They have also invented a conspiracy (“coup d’état”) to displace Biden from the candidacy. For this reason and because she has not adopted more moderate positions, she is unable to convince many of Joe’s supporters.
Finally, the purpose is to show that he is weak and unfit to be president.
Turbocharged
In reality, Trump hasn’t changed his strategy much since 2015. He continues to play the role of the rebel who defends workers from a corrupt and callous bureaucracy, which drags them into absurd wars and allows other countries to take their jobs.
The different thing is that they consider that when he lived in the White House he fulfilled what he promised: tax reduction; return of industrial plants (a few, actually) to American territory; elimination of environmental regulations (which had ended coal mining); nomination of conservative judges on the Supreme Court; no military involvement abroad.
That is why he has managed to consolidate a faithful base that forgives him everything. A base that believes that the election was stolen from them in 2020 and that, through rigged trials and strange attacks, want to prevent him from returning to the presidency.
However, it has had problems expanding that group. Some progress has been made among blacks and Hispanics, but it has failed to penetrate key constituencies, such as suburban women, even though it now has a more measured and ambiguous position on the issue of abortion and no longer announces the disappearance of the Department of Education.
He continues to campaign in the rural counties that have supported him since his first campaign, but is now devoting time and effort to trying to win the independent vote.
His running mate has tried to go beyond MAGA, facing hostile audiences and interviews with adverse media, but to little avail.
In this campaign he has organized fewer massive events, which he likes so much and which serve to galvanize his base, because he no longer fills the stadiums so easily. He fears that many of his supporters will not go to the polls and that is why he now accepts early and postal voting and launched an initiative (swamp the vote) to ensure your participation.
Furthermore, escalating his aggressive rhetoric did not work for him. It has begun to show signs of more constructive attitudes. He brings Elon Musk to his rallies and offers to create a government efficiency commission, chaired by him.
In short, without his competitor having grown much, he was unable to break the tie and ensure an easier and safer path to the presidential mansion.
