In his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump was always playing offense. Every press conference and rally — even the unflattering news stories — kept him at the center of the election.
This time, he’s playing defense, and he’s losing.
Since kicking off her campaign just five weeks ago, Harris has hogged the headlines, dominated Google search traffic, raked in donations and signed up volunteers in droves. Even her political convention got better ratings, which has to hurt.
Meanwhile, her team is keeping Trump on the back foot on everything from his pick for running mate to plans for a debate.
On the debate, Trump has played his cards terribly, posting bizarre ramblings on social media in the middle of the night and hemming and hawing over the details.
In response, the Harris campaign team went straight to Trump’s most vulnerable weakness, his masculinity. In a social media post questioning Trump’s commitment to debating, team Harris asked “Are you scared @realdonaldtrump?” This was followed by a chicken emoji and clucking sounds.
Behind the scenes, the Harris campaign is working overtime to turn up the heat on its rival. It would be easy to dismiss this as a fun campaign stunt, but look a little deeper and it becomes apparent that this is part of the Harris/Walz campaign strategy. While the Democratic convention kept the messaging full of joy, behind the scenes, the Harris campaign is working overtime to turn up the heat on its rival. This is all in sharp contrast to the Trump campaign, where the main focus seems to be keeping its candidate on message, trying to get a notoriously unfocused man to stick to the issues and show an ounce of discipline. Trump is floundering, throwing out ugly nicknames as he tries to figure out how to attack Harris. For her part, Harris is not taking the bait and it’s driving Trump up the wall. As Trump tries to rerun his 2016 campaign, Team Harris is writing a new playbook for 2024.
Susan Del Percio is a Republican strategist and a political analyst for MS NOW. 
