Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are entering the last 100 days of one of the fastest-moving and least predictable campaign seasons in memory, after a historic month upended the 2024 presidential race.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are entering the last 100 days of one of the fastest-moving and least predictable campaign seasons in memory, after a historic month upended the 2024 presidential race.
The ground has shifted under both political parties since June 27, when President Joe Biden’s poor performance in his debate with Trump threw the Democratic Party into chaos and prompted Trump’s team to eye an expanded electoral map.
The race was rattled yet again after the former president survived an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. Just days later, he chose Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate and rallied the Republican Party at its convention in Milwaukee.
Then, a week ago, Biden announced his exit from the race – and pointed to Harris, his vice president, as his successor. Within 36 hours, Harris had rallied the party behind her candidacy, locking down enough support from Democratic National Convention delegates to become the party’s presumptive nominee.
Then she hit the ground running, holding events with voters in the swing state of Wisconsin on Tuesday, a Black sorority on Wednesday and teachers on Thursday. Friday morning, she touted the endorsements of Barack and Michelle Obama.
Trump has responded to Harris’ apparent momentum with a series of personal attacks. At recent campaign stops, he has referred to her as “evil,” mocked her laugh and the pronunciation of her name, and said that “the American dream is dead” if Harris wins in November. The vice president responded at a Saturday fundraiser that the attacks by Trump and his running mate were “plain weird.”
Polls are only beginning to capture the new state of play in a race that now has no clear leader.
A Democratic vice presidential pick and convention, as well as potential debates between Harris and Trump and between their running mates, could further shake up the 2024 contest in the 100 days between now and Election Day, November 5.
Trump escalates attacks on Harris
The issues and lines of attack that are animating both campaigns are increasingly coming into view.
Trump’s campaign has focused on inflation, border security and crime – and the former president is arguing that Harris bears just as much blame as Biden on those issues and that she is more liberal than her boss.
However, Trump has also escalated his attacks on Harris, criticizing her in deeply personal terms at campaign events Friday and Saturday.
At a conservative Christian gathering in Florida on Friday, he said that Harris had been “a bum three weeks ago” before her ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket and dubbed her “the most incompetent, unpopular and far-left vice president in American history.” He also said he “couldn’t care less” about mispronouncing her first name.
Then, at a Saturday night rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, Trump called Harris “evil” over her handling of the border and said that if “a crazy liberal like Kamala Harris gets in, the American dream is dead.”
He also mocked his Democratic opponent’s laugh, claiming that the media was trying to portray Harris as a “Margaret Thatcher,” referring to the late British prime minister, but that “it’s not gonna happen,” because “Margaret Thatcher didn’t laugh like that.”
A Harris spokeswoman responded to Trump’s Minnesota speech by slamming the GOP nominee as a “bitter, unhinged, 78-year-old convicted felon.”
On Friday, Trump said protesters who sprayed pro-Hamas graffiti in Washington on Wednesday were Harris supporters, even though the vice president condemned their actions. He criticized her for skipping Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress, without noting that Harris met privately with Netanyahu and that his own running mate also didn’t attend the speech. And Trump said that Harris “doesn’t like Jewish people. She doesn’t like Israel. That’s the way it is, and that’s the way it’s always gonna be.” Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, is Jewish.
Trump, who continues to peddle falsehoods and raise fears about election fraud, also drew heat on social media for telling the Florida audience that if he wins in November, they won’t have to vote again.
“You won’t have to do it anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you, Christians. I’m a Christian. … You gotta get out and vote,” the former president said. “In four years, you won’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.”
Harris, at a Western Massachusetts fundraiser on Saturday, said that the former president was pushing “wild lies” about her record and that the attacks by Trump and Vance were “plain weird.”
“I mean, that’s the box you put that in, right?” Harris told supporters.
In campaign events since emerging as the presumptive Democratic nominee, Harris is taking on Trump over abortion rights and casting him as a threat to freedom.
“We are seeing a full-on agenda that is now about restricting rights, and one of the most fundamental rights, the right to make decisions about your own body,” she said at the Massachusetts fundraiser. “If there are those who dare to take the freedom to make such a fundamental decision for an individual, which is about one’s own body, what other freedoms could be on the table for the taking?”
Harris has also been pointing to the former president’s legal troubles. In remarks to campaign staffers Monday – her first time delivering a brief version of her new stump speech – she recalled her time as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, saying that she “took on perpetrators of all kinds.
