In American politics today, even the most confident pundits are hesitant in making predictions. Reliable polls put Trump and Harris in an extremely close race, with just a few thousand voters in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, or Arizona likely to sway the election one way or the other. Who will win in November? Only time will tell.
Nonetheless, only a fool would deny that Kamala Harris is in trouble.
How much trouble?
The clearest answer comes from Polymarket, a digital prediction platform allowing bets on virtually anything, with over $2 billion in activity and notable supporters like Elon Musk and renowned advisors like statistician Nate Silver. Weeks before the Democratic Party officially replaced Biden with his vice president, Polymarket projected this outcome. And until October 4, it estimated Harris and Trump had nearly equal chances of victory.
But from that date onward, Harris began to nosedive while Trump soared. As of this writing, Trump leads with a 60 percent likelihood, with the gap only widening. What explains this extreme change? The answer is both clear and painfu to Harrisl: She started giving interviews..
Hollywood comfort zone
For those not following the details, here's a brief history of the candidate and her media appearances. Harris announced her candidacy on July 21, the day Biden, under pressure from his party, declared he would not run again. On August 5, she became the official Democratic nominee after a virtual vote, a process that covered up the fact that no real voters cast ballots for her.
Despite her position as vice president, Harris declared a media blackout. While Trump was giving interviews and holding press conferences nearly daily, Harris avoided any interviews or unscripted encounters with voters. Finally, on August 29, nearly a month into a three-month campaign, she agreed to an interview with CNN's Dana Bash, but only if her running mate, Tim Walz, was by her side and the interview wasn't live.
Initially, this silence strategy worked. New York Magazine, a favorite among affluent, liberal readers, ran a special cover celebrating "Kamelot"—a wordplay combining "Kamala" and the mythical "Camelot" of JFK's era. Other media outlets joined in, praising Harris as a courageous, brilliant, and accomplished woman.
Ironically, this only intensified the Republican message: if Harris was so capable and brilliant during her four years with Joe Biden, Republicans said, she shouldn't fear public interviews. Growing pressure from voters finally led Harris to agree to do so.
She started small, appearing on local shows like "Afternoon Vibes with Ms. Jessica," a Black radio host in North Carolina who usually covers topics like rapper Cardi B's avocado dip recipe. This choice of reaching only Black or Hispanic hosts in small media markets did little to appease voters, so Harris ramped up her efforts. In mid-September, she recruited celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, and Chris Rock for a "showcase" that felt more like a campaign commercial than actual journalism.
Harris's appearance with Winfrey highlighted one of her main weaknesses: despite decades in high-level positions, including vice president, she struggles to answer even simple questions. When asked about her flagship economic plan, Harris proposed giving $5,000 to anyone wanting to start a small business. Winfrey, a business mogul herself, replied that no one could start a business with such a tiny sum.
Oprah didn't press further, but the viewers at home saw something else—and they kept seeing it every time Harris spoke.
Blame Trump
Even Harris's strongest supporters couldn't ignore that she struggled to provide clear answers, even to friendly interviewers. Take immigration, a key issue this year: under Biden's administration, about 8 million undocumented immigrants have crossed the border, with 1.7 million untraceable. Of those under federal supervision, 662,566 have criminal records, including 435,719 convicted felons and 13,099 convicted murderers.
Even Democratic voters want to know why the Biden administration allowed such lapses in border control. What would Harris, the self-proclaimed "border czar," do differently? Her answer: blame Donald Trump.
This answer satisfied no one. Even former President Bill Clinton criticized Biden's immigration policies in a speech supporting Harris, referencing the murder of Laken Riley, a Georgia student, by an undocumented Venezuelan immigrant. Trump's campaign immediately released an ad featuring Clinton's words followed by the closing tagline: "I'm Donald Trump, and I approve this message."
Realizing she had to address questions candidly, Harris chose the respected 60 Minutes for an interview. Yet viewers quickly realized that Harris's responses had been heavily edited to make her sound coherent.
For instance, when asked about Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu pursuing policies contrary to Biden's administration, her answer was another word salad: "The work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region."
This response only aired after unedited footage leaked. In the broadcasted version, her answer was edited to, "We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end."
Copy-paste disaster
If Harris's campaign could salvage the situation, another issue arose immediately. Conservative journalist Chris Rufo published research finding substantial plagiarism in Harris's book, Tough on Crime, with entire passages copied from Wikipedia.
The New York Times downplayed this, calling it a "conservative attack on a few paragraphs," but plagiarism expert Jonathan Bailey later clarified that the Times had only provided him a fraction of Rufo's findings, and his deeper review suggested even more severe problems.
How will Harris's journey to the White House end?
It's difficult to say. Voters might still choose her, especially those whose dislike of Trump has been stoked for years by media portraying him as a dictator in the making. Only this week, The Atlantic published an article suggesting Trump takes inspiration from not just Mussolini but Hitler and Stalin as well.
Or, the substantial efforts Democrats are making to challenge US election norms may bear fruit. Last week, Biden's Attorney General Merrick Garland sued Virginia for removing ineligible non-citizens from its voter rolls. Virginia's Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, asked the federal government to clarify how following election law warranted a lawsuit. The Wall Street Journal noted that Garland's move seemed to encourage illegal immigrants to vote for a candidate struggling to win legal voters' support.
Harris might also lose, and decisively so—not due to racism, sexism, or any other easy scapegoats, but simply because her party, without consulting voters, chose an unaccomplished candidate whose rise depended on political correctness. Time will tell—ten days, to be exact.
