Chethana Janith, Jadetimes Staff
C. Janith is a Jadetimes news reporter covering science and geopolitics.
Two months ago, Kamala Harris was celebrated as the Democratic presidential nominee during an enthusiastic national convention in Chicago.
To the thousands of party supporters, she was viewed as the answer to an electoral challenge, stepping in for the 81-year-old incumbent who many doubted could secure another victory against Donald Trump.
However, even then, some senior party strategists expressed concern that Democrats might be overly optimistic about her chances of winning. Now, as election day nears and worries escalate, those early doubts seem to have been justified.
Harris undoubtedly experienced a surge in momentum, along with a swift and notable rise in the polls, outpacing former President Joe Biden, who had fallen significantly behind Trump. However, it seems much of her support came from loyal Democratic voters who were uneasy about Biden’s age and leadership capacity.
To secure a win, Harris will need to draw in voters beyond the core Democratic base, while maintaining the delicate coalition that helped Biden clinch victory in 2020.
A significant concern for Democrats is that Trump has made gains in critical “blue wall” states - Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, which are key to Harris’s clearest path to victory. He has also gained support among Black and Latino voters.
While the race remains a close contest in these pivotal swing states, the polling numbers fall within the margin of error, meaning the results could easily go either way.
In recent days, Harris's approach to her Republican opponent, Trump, has taken on a sharper tone. At the convention, she dismissed him with humor, referring to him as an "unserious man" and "weird." Now, her rhetoric has intensified, labeling him as "fascist" and "increasingly unstable."
Her original campaign theme of bringing “joy” has shifted, now warning of what she describes as the serious risks of a second Trump term.
Current polling indicates Harris is likely to win the popular vote, yet this alone isn’t sufficient. To secure the presidency, she must carry key battleground states and claim victory in the electoral college.
During my recent travels through these states, it has been evident that many voters remain hesitant about Harris, a candidate they feel they still don’t fully know.
‘I won’t forgive the Democrats’
Harris has a very particular problem in Michigan, which has the highest concentration of Arab-American voters in the US.
Biden won the state in 2020 by just over 150,000 votes, but his administration’s inability to rein in Israel’s attacks in Gaza and Lebanon has deeply hurt the party’s standing among the 300,000 Arab-Americans living here.
Harris, Biden's vice-president, is being held equally responsible.
In the Haraz coffee shop in Dearborn, a Middle Eastern-style café serving Turkish coffee and pomegranate juice, I met a group of lifelong Democrats who normally would be out campaigning.
I expected to hear some of them say they couldn’t vote for Harris, and would be sitting out the vote. But Samraa Luqman, who describes herself as further left than most Democrats, said she is not only voting Trump but is actively encouraging others to do so.
“I believe there has to be accountability for all the lives lost,” she told me. “I do not forgive the Democrats for it, and I will not be scared into voting for them.”
Chadi Abdulrazek said he could never have imagined voting for Trump a year ago, but now Samraa may persuade him.
“If I do want to punish the Democrats, specifically this administration, then I might have to consider that," he said. ”Every time I say that, I feel like I have to go and throw up. But also I think about my family, my people, in Palestine and in Lebanon”
Harris has spoken about her anger over the suffering in Gaza and Lebanon, but these voters want her to say she will refuse to supply weapons to Israel if they are used in strikes that kill civilians.
In Michigan, the working-class and union vote could prove pivotal, too. Jean Ducheman, a United Auto Workers union official in the city of Lansing, Michigan, is more optimistic about Harris.
When I spoke to him in July, he wanted Biden to step aside because of his age. But he also had deep reservations about Harris. Now he says he is convinced she is the best choice and that she is winning over some of his undecided colleagues.
Mr Ducheman believes that campaigning extensively in Michigan has made a real difference.
“She came and spoke to us and that’s really appreciated,” he said, despite the fact that some unions have chosen not to endorse Harris.
Here’s a rephrased version:
The Grand Prize
The most important swing state is Pennsylvania because it has the largest number of votes in the all-important electoral college. With polls deadlocked, both sides have poured hundreds of millions into advertising here to reach undecided voters.
On every visit, I've found voters care the most about the economy. And it’s an area where Trump seems to enjoy a significant advantage: No matter how much Democrats point to rosy job numbers or economic growth, people simply felt better off four years ago before record-high inflation cut into monthly budgets.
At a national hunting and fishing event in Bald Eagle National Park, I met Gene Wool, one of those hard-to-find undecideds.
He said he was reluctant to vote for Trump because of what he described as the “scandals surrounding him”.
But Mr Wool is sure that when Trump was in office, food and petrol prices were lower.
“Most of my friends are probably going to vote for Trump,” he says, adding that he thinks Pennsylvania will swing that way, too.
Harris is focusing on women in the Pennsylvania suburbs - especially those who may usually vote Republican but are turned off byTrump’s rhetoric and behaviour.
Recent Harris events where she has appeared with moderate Republicans like former congresswoman Liz Cheney are aimed at persuading this group that it's preferable to vote Democratic even if you don’t agree with Harris’s policies – just to keep Trump out of the White House.
Could Abortion Be the Deciding Factor?
Harris holds a very strong lead among female voters across the nation in an election with the country's biggest ever gender divide.
She has not campaigned on the historic nature of her candidacy, almost never mentioning that if elected she would be the first female president. But she does stress her support for women’s reproductive rights.
Trump boasts of appointing the Supreme Court justices who ended the nation's right to an abortion, in place for over 50 years. But he knows that the very strict abortion bans some states introduced afterwards are deeply unpopular with a lot of voters, forcing him to walk a careful line.
Early one evening in Phoenix, Arizona, recently, I joined some volunteers in a trendy downtown bar having a “postcard party”. They were writing personal messages about why they believe in abortion rights to be sent to Arizona voters. Many are not usually politically active.
In Arizona, one of the two battleground states in America’s west, there is a proposition on the ballot to decide whether to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution – effectively overturning the current law that forbids terminating a pregnancy after 15 weeks.
The hope for Democrats is that women in the ten states with such abortion ballot measures are driven to the polls by that issue, and while there, cast a presidential vote for Harris.
Nicole Nye told me it was the first time she had become involved in a political campaign, and she has already recruited a voter - her 62-year-old mother who had never voted before.
“I said to her [that] I’m very concerned about my rights. She was fortunate enough to grow up in a time when those rights had been secured for her ...It’s concerning that that’s up in the air for me."
Arizona polls suggest voters are likely to support the proposition by a wide margin, but that may not translate into votes for Harris. As many as one in five people say they plan to vote to guarantee abortion rights in Arizona, but at the same time cast a ballot for Trump.
Neither Harris nor Trump know who will be the next president of the United States. Nor do any of the pollsters or political pundits.
But it appears Harris has not been able to sustain the excitement and optimism she generated when she first became a presidential candidate. She now has to slog it out, fighting for every vote, to stand a chance of breaking what the last woman to run for US president, Hillary Clinton, called “the highest, hardest glass ceiling”.
