Desperate, Kamala Harris shows how dangerous she is

After all the “joy” of the summer, Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign has been on the ropes in recent weeks, with her slight lead in the polls eroding as Donald Trump’s fortunes have rebounded significantly. With less than a fortnight to go until the November 5 election, most analysts now estimate that Trump has a better than 50 percent chance of returning to the presidency.

According to RealClear Politics, a news organization that compiles daily polling averages, Trump currently leads Harris in all seven swing states, where neither Democrats nor Republicans have a reliable majority, with some of his leads exceeding the statistical margin of error. Trump could also be on track to overtake Harris in the national popular vote.

Some Republican pundits are predicting a landslide Trump victory. Its rising momentum rests on key clues on the economy and immigration, which are by far the two most important issues for many American voters. He also benefits from the powerful feeling among the public that he has been unfairly targeted by overt media bias and criminal charges that conservatives widely believe are politically motivated.

The stunned left is likely already forming a firing squad to assign blame for Harris’ likely loss, while many of its allied media outlets can only meditate in amazement at Trump’s remarkable staying power.

Harris himself is grasping at straws. She has foundered in her efforts to blame Trump for the immigration crisis, which she mismanaged in one of her few assignments during nearly four years as Joe Biden’s vice president. Rhetorically challenged and chronically unable to articulate policy in detail, she is now desperately trying to convince voters that she will create an “opportunity economy,” an empty concept designed to appeal to the country’s suffering middle class, but which is seriously lacking in detail.

Harris has also proposed a strange patchwork of radical left measures that will have done more to remind American voters that her father is a Marxist economics professor than to convince them that she can handle the economy better than Trump. Her latest proposal is a disastrous measure — for an economy still suffering from inflation twice that of Trump’s first term — to more than double the national minimum wage to $15 an hour, a long-standing demand of the so-called ‘democratic socialists’. ‘who dominate the controlling progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

Last week, Harris proposed a massive government program to subsidize business loans and credits specifically targeted at black men, a policy that could violate federal civil rights and anti-discrimination laws. She has also flirted with the possibility of government-funded slavery reparations for black Americans, a policy that 68 percent of Americans oppose but which Harris signaled she favored when she became a senator and Democratic nominee presidential nomination in 2020.

Harris’ radical proposals have a specific electoral purpose: Trump is attracting an increasing percentage of minority voters, with polls showing him with the support of nearly one in five black adults, a figure that rises to 26 percent among younger black men. While that’s far from a majority, it’s a huge win for a Republican presidential candidate, and could be decisive in states where just a few thousand ballots could decide the election.

With all else failing, Harris descends into pure demagoguery. In brief remarks Wednesday, she denounced Trump as a “fascist” who, she claims, is “unhinged and unstable,” wants to rule with “unchecked power” and would “invoke Adolf Hitler.” She returned to the “fascist” attack line last night at CNN’s town hall with Anderson Cooper.

That’s a bold claim from a candidate who has previously threatened action against social media companies that fail to satisfactorily “monitor” speeches. But reductio ad Hitlerum could be Kamala Harris’ swan song on the national stage.

Paul du Quenoy is a historian and president of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 3 months with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.