Near the end of the 2004 film "Miracle," the scrappy college kids on the 1980 United States Olympic hockey team are skating in the semi-finals against the heavily favored Soviet Red Army team, and clinging to the slimmest of leads. As the scoreboard clock ticks down to 59 seconds left to play, the Russians are frantically trying to score as American goalie Jim Craig makes one heroic save after another.
Herb Brooks, Team USA’s coach, glances down the bench to see whether his Communist counterpart, Viktor Tikhonov, is pulling his goalie to put an extra attacker on the ice in a last ditch effort to tie the game. Seeing Tikhonov screaming at his players and nervously twirling the hairs of his right eyebrow in frustration, Brooks tells his assistant coach, “He doesn’t know what to do.”
That’s a little how it feels reading news about the Kamala Harris campaign in the closing days of this election, and it’s more revealing than any poll of likely voters. The establishment media, including the decidedly Left wing media, are increasingly reporting on fear and loathing among the Harris campaign staff, the Biden White House and the Democrat Party apparatus. Like Tikhonov, Harris also doesn’t know what to do as time begins to run out.
Under the headline “Tensions rise between Harris and Biden teams,” Axios reported how some on Team Harris complain that, “top White House aides aren't sufficiently coordinating Biden's messaging and schedule to align with what's best for the vice president's campaign.” Axios further reported on, “squabbles about whether Biden's main surrogates on television would continue in those roles.”
The writers at Daily Kos warned that “Kamala needs to sharpen her message,” on tariffs. “Let me explain in several plain talking points,” wrote the author. This counsel to the nominee concluded by saying, “When you talk to voters, especially young voters and minority voters, explain that they will be ‘The Biggest Losers.’” The DK article is reminiscent of one of the oldest axioms of campaign politics: If you’re explaining, you’re losing.
Sky News reported earlier this week that “Democrats are reportedly seething over Kamala Harris’ campaign strategies with the presidential election only two weeks away,” citing the decision to send the nominee to Texas. It’s unclear why Harris is spending time in a state in which the Real Clear Politics polling average shows Donald Trump with a +6 advantage.
But plans for the visit prompted one unnamed Democrat strategist to tell the New York Post, “They are not thinking ‘Blue Wall’ at all. They are just not thinking. Her press operation is that of a first-time congressional candidate running as a sacrificial lamb.” It’s not the sort of critique expected of a presidential campaign two weeks from Election Day.
Meanwhile, the EconoTimes tells us “The Harris campaign is reportedly grappling with rising internal fears.” These fears are apparently amplified because, “some Democrats have expressed frustration with the campaign’s strategy, suggesting that more attention needs to be focused on voter outreach and messaging in these crucial areas.”
This is just a sampling of the most revealing aspect of the 2024 campaign as it begins to wind down. I have worked on winning presidential campaigns and losing campaigns, and the concerns being raised about the Harris operation are not the conversations of people running a winning campaign.
When consultants are finger-pointing and complaining about a campaign’s strategy less than two weeks before Election Day, that’s a problem. Frustration and unsolicited advice over messaging in late October is a problem. Squabbles involving surrogates and schedule coordination when early voting is already underway is a problem. What to do? In the absence of a coherent strategy and consistent messaging, all that’s left is to yell at your players, like Soviet coach Viktor Tikhonov did.
The Times of London noted that when Barack Obama “suggested that sexism on the part of young black men lay behind their reluctance to back Harris,” during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania, it backfired. “The party has to stop scapegoating black men,” wrote actor Wendell Pierce on his X account. “This accusatorial tone will make some black men stay home - which is worse.”
This campaign is not over and the outcome is far from certain; remember the Red Wave of 2022? We must also hope for a minimum of irregularities as the ballots are counted. But what we’re seeing in the Kamala Harris operation right now is not the stuff of winning campaigns. It’s what happens when a team knows they’re losing and doesn’t know what to do. And if this keeps up, we might just be looking at a Trump mandate and a political echo of sportscaster Al Michaels, the play-by-play announcer for that USA vs. USSR face-off 44 years ago. Do you believe in miracles?