Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on new polls showing Harris leading Trump in key battlegrounds

NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter join Geoff Bennett to discuss the latest political news, including fresh polling shows the Democratic ticket having an edge in three key battleground states, when Kamala Harris could unveil her platform and Donald Trump’s false claims on social media.

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Geoff Bennett: A reset in the race for president? Fresh polling shows the Democratic ticket having an edge in three key states.

Time now for our Politics Monday duo. That’s Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter, and Tamara Keith of NPR.

Hello.

Tamara Keith, National Public Radio: Hello.

Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report: Hello.

Geoff Bennett: So, Amy, Vice President Kamala Harris now leads former President Donald Trump in three crucial battleground states, according to new surveys by The New York Times and Siena College. That’s Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Walk us through the numbers, because this is still, we should say, a competitive race.

Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report: This is, and the battleground — those are the three battleground states that, if Kamala Harris were to win just those three and a single electoral vote in Nebraska, she would get to 270 electoral votes.

She could lose all those other states that we talk about in the Sun Belt like Arizona and Nevada, but still win the Electoral College with those three. I think what you’re noticing, and we have talked about this previously about where her success has come, she has consolidated the Democratic base.

A lot of folks who were sitting on the sidelines who either were not happy with Biden or were uninspired by Biden, were thinking about voting for a third-party candidate, they have now consolidated behind Harris’ candidacy.

Why that matters, of course, is that it’s now that the two sides now have both equal interest in the election, their partisan bases are equally interested, and they’re equally enthused.

The next question is, well, what about the other people in the race who still haven’t checked in? And I think that’s where we’re going to see two things going on for the next whatever, 80 number of days that we have left.

The Trump campaign and the Harris campaign fighting to define Harris will be number one, and the second will be to define what this race is about. If you’re Kamala Harris, you want this race to be about turning the page and about Donald Trump’s liabilities.

If you’re Trump, you want to make this a race about the fact that Harris is not a new face. She’s actually part of the incumbent party, the incumbent party that many voters say they’re disappointed in, in terms of handling some key issues.

Geoff Bennett: And, Tam, there are some vulnerabilities that Kamala Harris has, according to this new survey, in that voters prefer Donald Trump on two key issues. That’s immigration — excuse me — immigration and the economy.

We should say that Harris’ economic policy is expected to roll out this week. So what more should we be looking for?

Tamara Keith: Right, and Democrats broadly — so any Democrat, a generic Democrat, a ham sandwich Democrat, would probably have the same issue with the economy and immigration.

Voters have just for a long time felt that Republicans are stronger on the economy and on immigration. In terms of the economy, Harris in her stump speech has been alluding to where she is likely going with her policy rollout. And we don’t exactly know what that’s going to entail in terms of the rollout.

But she talks about, yes, prices are too high, and I’m going to bring those prices down. The way she talks about bringing prices down is by going after corporations, by junk fees, and some of the things, many of the things that in fact President Biden has been talking about, but she talks about it in a way that sort of leans more strongly on the, I know it’s rough out there.

So I think that we’re going to see that. When she was in Nevada, she announced that she supports something that former President Trump announced a couple of months ago, which is the idea of not taxing tipped wages for service workers.

Now, she is specific that it’s for service workers. Some of the criticism of Trump’s proposal had been that it also — lawyers and hedge fund people could change their income to be tips, instead of wages. In terms of Harris and this proposal, none of it’s really fleshed out. There’s still no policy section her Web site. There was one on the Biden presidential campaign Web site.

But, again, it’s like three weeks in and they are headed towards the convention. And, partially, she is in a race to just keep this momentum, these good vibes, these very excited Democrats, like just keep that going as long as she can.

Geoff Bennett: And, Amy, if Vice President Kamala Harris is now sort of shifting her focus toward policy, over the weekend, Donald Trump was still focused on crowd sizes.

He is famously obsessed with this issue of crowd sizes. And there was this, I guess we should call it a brazenly false claim, I guess there are degrees of false claims now, about Kamala Harris’ crowd size in Detroit.

Amy Walter: Yes.

Geoff Bennett: He’s suggesting that she used artificial intelligence to make the crowds appear larger. He’s saying that, in fact, the crowd did not exist.

You were there. I was there.

Tamara Keith: It definitely existed. And the second she walked off of Air Force Two, the crowd went absolutely wild.

And you know what it reminds me of? Trump rallies. Trump rallies from an earlier era, when he would roll into an airport, buzz over the airport and just have incredible excitement when he got off the plane.

Geoff Bennett: But him saying something like this, doesn’t it create an opportunity for Democrats to make this race more of a referendum on Donald Trump?

Amy Walter: Absolutely.

Geoff Bennett: Whereas, before, it was a referendum, to a certain degree, on Joe Biden, his age, his fitness, all of that.

Amy Walter: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Geoff Bennett: Because you have critics of Donald Trump who are saying he’s now not just dishonest; he’s delusional.

Amy Walter: Yes.

Well, listen, we were at the — we were all at the RNC together. And we were told by many in the — at the convention that this was a different Donald Trump, that this was a more disciplined Donald Trump, that even the attempt on his life had altered the way he sees the world and how he’s going to operate.

Obviously, that is not the case. It is the same Donald Trump. When he feels like he is losing, when he feels things are out of his control, that’s when you see the lashing out. That’s when you see that these sort of comments on social media.

So it’s — it is really not surprising to watch that happen. The other thing that’s happening that I think is really frustrating both to Trump and to the campaign is, Kamala Harris is getting a benefit of the doubt. Even though she is part of the incumbent party, people see her as different, because, let’s face it, she is different.

She’s not an older white guy, right? So she just walks out on the stage, that’s a turning the page from what this election looked like just a month ago. And I think that is also frustrating to them, because they can no longer be the outsider change candidate.

And she’s the incumbent being able to be change at the same time. Now, look, we still have 80-plus days. You’re seeing the advertising starting to roll out. It is more disciplined than Trump is. But you’re right. If Trump doesn’t stay on message — we’re going to find out soon enough. We have a debate on September 10 to see how that works out.

But he makes it more about himself, that definitely helps her.

Geoff Bennett: And, Tam, the Harris’ campaign — the Harris campaign, their tactics are different.

As evidence of that, they posted a social media message on Donald Trump’s own social media site, TRUTH Social, basically trolling him because of his obsession about crowd sizes. This is not something that we have seen, at least in this way, with Democrats going on offense like this.

Tamara Keith: It is somehow more on brand for the younger Harris to have the very same staff be much more actively into trolling than they were when Biden was the nominee.

And they are absolutely trolling Trump. And the thing about crowd size is, he has always measured himself by the size of his crowds. And he’s always been able to tell himself that he was winning based on the size of his crowds, because his crowds were always bigger.

During the Clinton campaign, there was never this level of excitement for a Democrat, for Hillary Clinton. There was never this level of excitement for Joe Biden during COVID. And so Trump is used to running a campaign where he has the biggest crowds and he can look at those crowds and say, I am winning. I can see it in front of my eyes.

And now there is someone else who is generating crowds just as big or bigger. And that is a really tough adjustment that is coming at the same time as the poll movement.

Now, we should also note, though, that the poll movement is not dramatic. Like, this is still an incredibly close race, an incredibly close race that will be decided in a very small number of states by a very small number of people.

Amy Walter: Yes.

And when Harris was announced as the candidate, there were a lot of Democrats who said, look, I don’t know how this is going to work out. The one thing I know she can do better than Joe Biden is to get underneath Trump’s skin. And that has obviously worked out.

Geoff Bennett: And the campaign has sought to make him smaller.

Amy Walter: Yes.

Geoff Bennett: You could argue that Joe Biden, by talking about Donald Trump as an existential threat, in many ways, sort of elevated him and made him a bigger figure.

The Harris/Walz campaign is saying that he’s weird. They’re laughing at him. They’re trolling him on his own social media site. I mean, what are the implications of that from a political standpoint?

Amy Walter: Well, it is to keep him off talking about these things, rather than making the case that, look, Kamala Harris is not change, she is more of the same. It is four more years of — his argument would be four more years of a bad economy, four more years of open borders.

Instead, when you’re debating about crowd sizes and who’s weird and who’s not weird, well, then that, for your average voter, they just go back to their image that they have of Donald Trump. And that is problematic for the Trump campaign.

Geoff Bennett: We will see you both in Chicago next week at the Democratic National Convention.

Amy Walter: Absolutely.

Tamara Keith: Yes.

Geoff Bennett: Amy Walter and Tamara Keith, thanks so much.

Amy Walter: You’re welcome.

Tamara Keith: You’re welcome.