Kamala Harris’ fate rests on this singular 'closing argument': columnist

Kamala Harris’ road to the White House could hinge on whether she balances her messaging between reassuring voters about her own credentials to lead the nation, with the risk Donald Trump “could pose to American society and democracy,” according to a well-known columnist and political analyst.

“As the voters’ verdict looms, the former prosecutor needs to press her case that Donald Trump is unfit for office,” Ronald Brownstein wrote Thursday in an op-ed for the Atlantic. He added that a growing consensus in Democratic circles suggests that the vice president is struggling to deliver “a sufficiently urgent warning about the risk Trump could pose” in a second presidential term.

But in the final weeks of the campaign – which Brownstein referred to as Harris' “closing argument” – the columnist noted that Harris appears to be “recalibrating the balance in her messaging between reassurance and risk.”

“Harris is pivoting toward a sharper message about Trump at a moment when his campaign appears to have seized the initiative in the battleground states with his withering and unrelenting attacks on her,” according to Brownstein, who serves as a senior editor at The Atlantic and a CNN senior political analyst.

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His article references a number of recent polls showing that voters’ concerns about a second Trump presidency are declining, and that may be due to their perceptions of his first term rising.

“Views about Trump’s first term are improving, pollsters in both parties say, because voters are mostly measuring him against what they like least about Biden’s presidency, primarily inflation and years of disorder on the southern border (though it has notably calmed in recent months),” according to Brownstein.

He concluded his column by writing that “nothing may be more important for Harris” in the final stretch of the razor-thin campaign “than convincing voters who are disappointed with the past four years of Biden’s tenure that returning Trump to power poses risks the country should not take.”

“As a former prosecutor, Harris more than most candidates should understand the importance of a compelling closing argument.”