The honeymoon period for Kamala Harris’ White House campaign appears to be over following a week that saw the vice president have polling go against her alongside more serious attacks.
Harris and her 2024 running mate Tim Walz had enjoyed a wave of support that had been missing from President Joe Biden’s reelection bid, which ended on July 21.
But in the past seven days, Harris has been met with multiple issues that threaten to harm her 2024 campaign.
These include criticisms against her and the Biden administration after six Israeli hostages were found dead in a tunnel in the southern Gazan city of Rafah. Harris had previously warned Israel it would be a “mistake” to launch a military offensive in Rafah amid its war with Palestinian militant group Hamas.
The past week has seen families of the U.S. troops who died during the August 2021 bombing attack at Kabul airport during the withdrawal from Afghanistan unite to condemn Harris in response to her criticism of Donald Trump’s recent visit to Arlington National Cemetery.
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Harris is also seeing some warning signs in the polls, including Trump cutting into leads the vice president previously enjoyed over the former president, as well as bookmakers and forecasters suggesting the Republican is now the favorite in the close race.
Carl Cavalli, a Professor of Political Science at the University of North Georgia, said the race between Harris and Trump has become a “classic two-month sprint to the finish line” and that the fresh enthusiasm for the Democrat’s campaign is dwindling.
“No matter what, over the last week or so, the Harris momentum has stopped and possibly reversed at least somewhat,” Cavalli told Newsweek. “They (Harris and Walz) no longer have the spotlight to themselves.”
T.J. McCormack, a Republican communications specialist, said that after a “stratospheric liftoff” to her campaign, any “less-than-stellar few days would constitute a bad week” for the vice president.
“For a coddled candidate the real world can be a terrible thing, especially when that world has several multi-front wars, murdered hostages and polling firms carving up swing states with scalpels,” McCormack told Newsweek. “Kamala loved the big stage, now she’s in the trenches.”
Newsweek has contacted Harris’ office via email for comment.
Poll Leads Cut
On September 2, an ActiVote poll of 1,000 likely voters showed that Harris’ previous 5-point lead over Trump from late August had been “steadily cut” to just under 2 percentage points.
Elsewhere, the 2024 election prediction model created by forecaster and statistician Nate Silver shows that Trump’s chances of winning November’s race has improved over the past seven days.
On September 1, Silver said his model showed Trump’s chances of getting the required Electoral College votes to win stood at 55.8 percent, compared to 44 percent for Harris. As of September 5, Harris’ chances of winning the 2024 race had fallen to 39.7 percent percent, while Trump’s had increased to 60.1 percent.
This is despite Harris being ahead overall in the national polls, with the results in battleground races becoming more significant.
“National polls look decent-to-good for Harris, but the probability of an Electoral College/popular vote split is up to almost 20 percent,” Silver wrote.
In comparison, 538’s forecast model suggest Harris has a 57 percent chance of winning, with Trump given a 42 percent chance.
Online betting site Polymarket, over the past seven days, also increased Trump’s chances of defeating Harris. On September 1, the platform, where users can place “yes” or “no” bets on the likelihood of world events, forecast Trump with a 50 percent chance of winning the election, with Harris on 48.
As of September 6, Trump had a 51 percent chance, with Harris 4 points behind on 47.
Harris can take some comfort, however, in knowing that she is heading into the final two months of the election campaign with a much bigger war chest than Trump.
Harris’ team announced had raised $361 million in August, compared to Trump’s $130 million. The Harris campaign added it had $404 million in cash on hand at the end of last month, while Trump’s campaign had $295 million.
Sean Freeder, an assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of North Florida, suggested Harris now may have reached her peak in polling “baring another major unforeseen event.”
“At least in terms of vote share relative to Trump, not absolute vote share,” Freeder told Newsweek. “I’d expect no real change in polling until the September 10 debate, which provides one of the only obvious opportunities to change the playing field.
“Historically, debates have nearly zero effect on presidential race outcomes, but this can change if the performance gap between the candidates is enormous. This would require both one candidate doing unusually well and the other candidate doing unusually poorly. If this were to occur, I’d expect it’s significantly more likely for Harris to do well and Trump poorly, rather than the reverse,” Freeder added.
Gold Star Backlash
It is not just the polls where Harris has been hurt this week. The vice president also faced intense scrutiny from Gold Star families soon after the three-year anniversary of the suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. troops during the evacuation of Afghanistan, which had been overseen by Biden.
Harris had previously criticized Trump for his visit to Arlington National Cemetery, where the former president’s campaign team were alleged to have been involved in a conformation with cemetery staff who were trying to prevent them filming.
“It is not a place for politics,” Harris said in a statement. “This is a man who is unable to comprehend anything other than service to himself.”
In response, Trump shared multiple clips of Gold Star families attacking Harris and blaming her and the Biden administration for the deaths of the service members in Afghanistan.
Jim McCollum, father of Lance Corporal Rylee McCollum, said in a video posted on social media: “Your recent remarks related to Trump’s visit to Arlington are filled with nothing but lies and deceit.
“How do you sleep at night knowing it was you—this administration, you and Biden, you being the last one in the room—[who] are responsible for the death of our 13 kids?”
Herman Lopez, father of Corporal Hunter Lopez, said that his family has “not seen any support” from Harris in the three years since the Kabul airport attack.
“As a Gold Star father, I know that you have not supported us, I know that you have not supported other Gold Star families,” Lopez said. “Please stop making these types of comments, because your support has not been demonstrated. Your words are hollow and empty.”
Israeli Hostage Scrutiny
Harris and the Biden administration also faced difficult questions this week after the bodies of six hostages being held by Hamas, including American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, were discovered in a tunnel under Rafah. Goldberg-Polin’s parents, Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last month.
The discoveries were made after both Biden and Harris warned Israel against entering Rafah in the Gaza Strip. In March, Biden said an Israeli invasion would be a “red line” for the U.S.
Speaking to ABC News the same month, Harris also said that a military operation in Rafah would be a “huge mistake” from Israel.
“We’re looking at about 1.5 million people in Rafah who were there because they were told to go there, most of them,” Harris said. “And so we’ve been very clear that it would be a mistake to move into Rafah with any type of military operation.”
Harris said that she was not “ruling out” potential consequences if Israel carried out a military attack in Rafah, where it had previously claimed hostages were being held.
Republican Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton was one of those to condemn Harris and Biden in the wake of the discovery of the murdered hostages.
“We should note that these hostages were discovered in the tunnels under Rafah. That’s where Joe Biden and Kamala Harris put pressure on Israel not to enter for months, using arms embargo to try to keep them from entering,” Cotton told NBC’s Meet The Press.
“Kamala Harris even said that Israel shouldn’t enter Rafah because she had ‘studied the maps.’ What the Biden-Harris administration should’ve done from the beginning is not pressure Israel to restrain its response but let Israel win from the very outset,” Cotton added. “For 11 months, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have put more pressure on Israel than they’ve put on Hamas and Iran and Iran’s other terror proxies.”
Harris has also faced more superficial scrutiny in recent days, including claims she wore plug-in earphones while boarding Air Force Two on September 2 to avoid speaking to reporters gathered outside the plane.
“She may not have been a senator long, but mastered the ‘Can’t talk, on a call’ play,” NBC News White House correspondent Mike Memoli posted on X, formerly Twitter.
McDonald’s Controversy
Trump has also reignited claims that Harris lied about working for McDonald’s, repeatedly disputing that the vice president took a summer job at the Golden Arches between semesters at Howard University in the 1980s.
“Comrade Kamala Harris lied about working at McDonalds. SHE NEVER WORKED THERE, they think she’s ‘nuts,'” Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday.
“Kamala said she worked at McDonald’s—she never did. Lie!”
Harris has previously talked about working at the fast food restaurant, recalling that, “I did the french fries and I did the ice cream.” Last weekend, she described herself on X as “a daughter of Oakland, California, who was raised by a working mother and had a summer job at McDonald’s.”
With just two months to go until November’s election, Cavalli said that both Trump and Harris both are essentially on equal footing in terms of potential scrutiny from voters.
“Events will happen and both candidates will have to react to them. Both will make mistakes and will have to deal with the consequences,” Cavalli told Newsweek.
“Yes, Harris can still build on her lead and eventually win, but she no longer has the spotlight to herself. Trump can do the same—and has the same factors to consider.”
