A lot of Democrats told Politico that they are scared that Harris’s approach of being too cautious and afraid of taking risks could hurt her campaign in the last 30 days. People think that her unwillingness to do more in-depth talks and her lack of marketing could hurt her a lot in the last few weeks of the race.
An ex-Obama advisor told the outlet, “There are times when you just have to barnstorm these battlegrounds. These are decathlons, which means there are 12 events. You have to do all of them because people want to test you.”
“It’s the hardest oral test in the world for the hardest job. Part of that is just how random it is—town halls, all kinds of questions, not just friendly ones. All of those things, including OTRs where you do real work with people, are important,” Axelrod said. “And I would do them too if I were her.”
“Democrats agreed that Harris is doing better than Biden and that the excitement about her campaign has made the party’s cash lead bigger. The key states in the Sun Belt are also back in the game. However, it’s making them more upset that Harris’s campaign is acting like she’s trying to hold on to a lead while saying she’s the underdog.”
A POLITICO review of Harris’ travel shows that since the Democratic National Convention, she has spent more than a third of the days getting briefings from staff and holding internal meetings, with no public events planned. This is in line with the plan for Harris’ travel to pick up in October. That doesn’t include days when she had known official side business, like when she met with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the president of the United Arab Emirates, at the White House in late September, when she met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week, or when she got briefings at FEMA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., earlier this week.