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OPINION
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris launched her campaign for president in late August this year with a soaring speech before the Democratic faithful in Chicago, she will end it with a dark and desperate speech at the White House Ellipse — the same spot that President Donald J. Trump delivered his speech on Jan. 6, 2021
We know something about that speech on Jan. 6, one of us organized that speech (Amy) and one of us handled the press that day (Chris).
The irony isn’t lost on either of us that a campaign that once promised to "turn the page" on division and anger is now so desperate to embrace it that she is going full Kabuki theater with this speech at the Ellipse.
How did we get here?
On Aug. 23 of this year, Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic nomination for president — after the unceremonious shuffling off of U.S. President Joe Biden — with a speech where she promised that her campaign would be different:
"And with this election, and — and with this election, our nation — our nation, with this election, has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism and divisive battles of the past, a chance to chart a new way forward.
"Not as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans."
She didn’t just promise to move past the bitterness, cynicism, and divisive battles of the past, as she launched her campaign of "Joy!" she told Americans:
"I promise to be a president for all Americans. You can always trust me to put country above party and self. To hold sacred America’s fundamental principles, from the rule of law, to free and fair elections, to the peaceful transfer of power.
"I will be a president who unites us around our highest aspirations. A president who leads and listens; who is realistic, practical and has common sense; and always fights for the American people."
It's been said that a month in politics can be a lifetime, but even by those standards the dark and desperate turn the Harris campaign has made, with less than 14 days to go, is truly something to behold.
Yes, the joy is gone.
The candidate who will unite us is also gone.
Instead, the bitterness, cynicism, and division she promised to leave behind is now her closing argument to the nation.
As the "Kamala Honeymoon" ended and as the opinion polls began to turn against her, Vice President Harris has struggled to make a coherent case to the American people about how her policies would make life better.
Harris spent months hiding from the media and hiding from Americans.
She ran an almost policy-free campaign for as long as she could, and when she was finally forced to articulate her policy positions, she amazingly staked out policy positions that were a complete 180 from almost every single policy position she had staked out in her time in the U.S. Senate and in her campaign for president in 2020.
Instead of explaining these changes to the American people, she simply pretended that the flip-flops had never occurred. When pressed on her changes in a CNN interview with Dana Bash, Harris simply said:
"I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed," she said.
As the summer faded away to fall, Harris watched her once surging campaign flatline.
Americans wanted more than empty rhetoric they wanted explanations.
Explanations about how Harris’ policies would improve their lives, about why Harris had so quickly abandoned so many of her previous positions and — maybe most importantly —they wanted to know why Harris had failed as vice president to do any of the things she was now promising to do as president.
Harris couldn’t answer any of those questions, so with time running short and her campaign in freefall, Harris decided to abandon all of the lofty promises from the launch of her campaign and instead embraced the single most divisive, nasty and deceitful campaign in modern American history.
Harris’s campaign now openly compares former President Trump to Hitler, they ridicule and attack his supporters as Nazis, and she personally told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that she believes Trump is a "Fascist."
She has trotted out bitter former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney — who once referred to Harris as a "radical liberal" who "sounds like Karl Marx" — to aid in her efforts to demonize Trump as a "threat to democracy."
The desperation is obvious — what isn’t so clear is how this will help her close the gap with President Trump, especially in the swing states where the RealClearPolitics.com average shows Trump leading in all seven.
Americans are hungry for a president who can rein in inflation, a president who can grow our economy, a president who can make our streets safe again, a president who can strengthen the American family and a president who can bring peace to a very dangerous world.
President Trump has a record of doing all of those things during his four years in office.
Vice President Harris had an opportunity to make her case on how and why she would do better than President Trump on those key issues.
She failed to do so and so now she is left with no choice but to end her campaign the same way so many failed campaigns do — with bitterness, division and attacks.
Amy Kremer is the Republican National Committeewoman for Georgia and the Chair of Women for America First. Christopher Barron is a conservative strategist and the President of Right Turn Strategies.
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