On Monday, Donald J. Trump sent out an urgent campaign memo. ‘Joe Biden just dropped out of the race, and now, his replacement has just been announced,’ it said. ‘It’s me!’
How typically Donald. If Trump were worried about the sudden replacement of Biden with Kamala Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket, he’d never show it. He’s already busy pointing towards polls that suggest ‘Lyin’ Kamala’ is the least popular vice president in history. He’s calling her ‘Dumb as a rock’ and emphasising her abysmal performance as Biden’s ‘border tsar’. Trump’s campaign staff, meanwhile, are insisting that they knew all along Harris would at some point be the Democratic nominee and their attack lines are well-rehearsed.
Behind closed doors, Team Trump will not be quite so sanguine. Biden’s withdrawal has stripped the Republican party of its most powerful argument: that the Democratic Commander-in-Chief is far too decrepit to be given another four years in office. Harris is 19 years younger than Trump and we now see Democrats portraying Trump as the feeble old codger in the race.
The truth is, for three weeks after that now infamous debate which proved just how weak Biden had become, almost nothing went right for the Democrats. The unstoppable force of the Justice Department’s legal campaign against Trump ran into the immovable object of the Supreme Court. Trump was already ahead in the polls in all battleground states when an assassin’s bullet burst through his ear in Butler, Pennsylvania. His defiant reaction to being shot made him look heroic. Then came a triumphant Republican Convention in Milwaukee and serious analysts started talking about a possible Trump landslide.
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