Her first debate performance got EVERYONE’S attention…
Including Donald Trump people….
The issue for here will be getting the nomination on the Democratic side…
Her polling numbers have actually dropped since the first debate….
She’s back in fourth place as of today….
She HAS to put in another strong performance in this coming week’s second debate….
About the time Kamala Harris finished slicing and dicing Joe Biden,like Ed Valenti demonstrating a Ginsu knife, my cell phone started pinging with Republican operatives saying, in effect, “I told you so.”
For months I’ve been in contact with a group of senior Republican strategists keeping tabs on Donald Trump and the party’s view of the unfolding Democratic presidential primary. Since the beginning of the campaign, these people have been worried that Biden constituted the biggest political threat to Trump’s reelection. Early public opinion polls certainly lend credibility to their concerns. But a smaller, though equally distinguished group of Republican operatives in my Rolodex, a sort of GOP cult of Kamala, had been insisting for weeks that Harris was being radically underestimated. With her surgical vivisection of Biden in the first debate, it seemed their fears had been realized. Now, as Democrats prepare for a second round of debates next week, these strategists are raising the alarm.
“I think she’s dangerous, and probably maybe the most dangerous, from our view,” a veteran Republican political consultant told me this month. “She theoretically would do very well with African American turnout and end up being positioned as a Vienna Soccer Mom.” In case you’re wondering, that’s Vienna, Virginia, an upscale bedroom community just west of Washington, D.C., that has accelerated its drift from the Republican orbit since a certain former reality-television star secured the Republican nomination three years ago. Suburbs just like it in critical battlegrounds could hand the White House back to the Democratic Party in 2020.
“She made a mistake with private health care,” this Republican operative conceded, referring to Harris’s serial flip-flops on Medicare for All and whether her plans for overhauling health care would lead to the abolition of private insurance. “But she doesn’t come across as a nutjob.”….
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Not everyone buys the idea that Harris is the next Obama, superficial similarities aside. “She’s overrated,” says a Republican grandee who still has battle scars from run-ins with the 44th president. “Obama had authenticity. She doesn’t.” Another Republican strategist who doesn’t buy the the hype called Harris “terrible” and “a disaster.”
But some dialed-in Republicans described Harris as a serious threat. “I have long been most concerned about Harris. I think she has an appeal to the Scottsdale soccer mom who is a registered Republican. Between her appeal and Trump’s women problems, she has probably already won those voters,”….
Note….
IF Joe Biden gets the nomination?
My vote IS for Kamala Harris for the Democratic VP spot….
image…Axios
In the long run her debate “performance” isn’t that important.We have already seen that her standout performance last time earned only a temporary bounce .
No, what’s really important is how she performs in Iowa and New Hampshire,a breakthrough in either of those contests may give her momentum heading into S.C.
Biden leads among Black voters in SC;however, if Harris(or Booker but his breakthrough in either Iowa or NH appears highly unlikely)were to show real vote getting power?Then, the attraction of another Black President could elevate her tremendously and quickly as a major obstacle to Biden here.
Booker is in the single digits…
He isn’t going anywhere
His time as Mayor of Newark wasn’t good…
i suspect Harris will be questioned about her time as DA, AG and of course her time with Willie Brown….
We ALL have the good bad and ugly….