Anonymous Harris campaign officials tried to reframe the presidential race on Monday in a positive light by leaking an internal assessment to the New York Times.
The spin, which may or may not be true, is a drastic change from what the Harris campaign’s previously signaled: that it was an underdog in a deadlocked race.
The reorientation follows weeks of negative headlines for the Harris campaign and the appearance of it losing momentum to former President Donald Trump, who appears to be enjoying the campaign trail.
Anonymous Harris officials indicated the campaign is “cautiously optimistic” about Vice President Kamala Harris’s “chances of victory, saying the race is shifting in her favor” in battleground states.
National and swing state polling suggests Harris and Trump are virtually tied. Early voter data, which is more valuable than polling at this point in the race, indicates a stronger position for Trump, although it is unclear if the data will continue to trend in the right direction.
The Times’ Reid J. Epstein, Lisa Lerer and Maggie Haberman reported the Harris campaign shift in tone:
Top Democratic strategists are increasingly hopeful that the campaign’s attempts to cast former President Donald J. Trump as a fascist — paired with an expansive battleground-state operation and strength among female voters still energized by the end of federal abortion rights — will carry Ms. Harris to a narrow triumph. Even some close to Mr. Trump worry that the push to label him a budding dictator who has praised Hitler could move small but potentially meaningful numbers of persuadable voters
…
Officials within the Harris campaign and people with whom they have shared candid assessments believe she remains in a solid position in the Northern “blue wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, saying internal polling shows her slightly ahead in all three — though by as little as half a percentage point.
They think she remains competitive across the four Sun Belt battleground states. Arizona and North Carolina appear to be the toughest swing states for Ms. Harris, these Democrats said, and they feel better about Georgia and Nevada.
The Times hedged the Harris campaign’s claims with a warning about it “not correctly modeling the electorate in its polling, repeating a misstep that led Mr. Biden’s campaign aides to overestimate his strength in the final days of the 2020 race.”
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
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