Is It Time For The Harris Campaign To Panic?

With only weeks left until Election Day, Harris can go from underdog to frontrunner by winning over working-class and anti-war voters.

By Miles Kampf-Lassin, In These Times

Since Vice President Kamala Harris took the reins at the top of the Democratic ticket in late July, she has repeatedly declared: “We’re the underdogs.”

Even after a stretch of positive media coverage, a widely praised Democratic National Convention and a debate performance in which she dominated former President Donald Trump, Harris has continued to cast her campaign as a longshot.

Why the handwringing, when Harris is polling far better than President Joe Biden was before he dropped out of the race?

Some pundits have stacked it up to a savvy get-out-the-vote strategy. But the race really is that close: Especially in decisive swing states, the Harris campaign is, in many ways, the underdog. And considering the far larger size of Biden’s 2020 lead — and how narrow his win turned out to be — Democrats have every reason to worry.

kamala harris and tim walz stand on a stage

Trump is a uniquely flawed candidate and his dismal record in office is easy to excoriate, as Harris demonstrated during the September debate. His presidency showered the rich with tax cuts, squeezed working people, offshored jobs, terrorized immigrant communities and failed to respond to a pandemic that led to mass preventable death and turned the economy upside down. The Supreme Court justices he appointed have curtailed reproductive rights and targeted the entire regulatory apparatus. And the far Right’s Project 2025 playbook promises to roll back decades of progressive reforms, from voting access to LGBTQ rights.

What’s more, Trump has promised a regime of vengeance that would directly target journalists, organizers and anyone considered a political enemy.

Still, Harris has not yet rebuilt the fragile coalition that pushed Biden over the finish line four years ago. Compared with Biden in 2020, polls show Harris underperforming with voters of color, younger voters and seniors — all key for Democrats. And when it comes to lower-income voters and those with less formal education, Harris is being outrun.