LOUISVILLE, Ky.—The way Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway sees it, Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential aspirations hinge on reanimating the “Obama coalition.”
Unfortunately for Harris, that reliable bloc of blue collar voters without college degrees now largely supports former president and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, she said.
Harris is “not the next Barack Obama, she’s the next Hillary Clinton,” Conway, Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, told state lawmakers, legislative aides, and lobbyists Aug. 7 during the National Conference of State Legislators’ (NCSL) Annual Legislative Summit at the Kentucky International Convention Center in Louisville.
That’s wishful Republican thinking, countered Democrat strategist Donna Brazile, noting that since Harris assumed the top slot on the ticket after President Joe Biden left the race on July 21, the party is reinvigorated and eager to defeat Trump.
“Harris has been able to make up ground, close the gap” in polls, said Brazile, Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign manager. “Why? Because the party is coming together. We argue and fuss and fight so we can make love at night. This party is unified!”
Conway and Brazile participated in “Down to the Wire,” an hour-long debate that closed the three-day NCSL conference attended by 5,500 people, including more than 900 state lawmakers.
Friends for more than 30 years, the well-known political commentators—both appear often on Fox News—agreed during the discussion that Biden’s decision to end his campaign changed the dynamics of the election and renewed enthusiasm among Democrats.
“I’m much more sober and less sanguine than other Republicans are about it. It’s not the same race—not even close,” Conway said. “I still think it’s Donald Trump’s race to lose.”
Harris has gained percentage points in polls here and there and is “on track to win the popular vote, but the electoral map favors Trump,” she said.
“In a nation that is very polarized, it will come down to the last day and hours,” Brazile said, noting the race will be “won on the margins in six, seven battleground states.”
While Harris and her newly-named running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have fostered “irrational exuberance,” ultimately, policy platforms will—or should—determine who wins, Conway said.
“It’s a different race. The issues haven’t changed at all,” she said, identifying them as the economy, the border, energy, affordable housing, and foreign affairs, particularly in the context of national security.
“Who is the better steward of the economy for you? If it’s a debate about policy prescriptions, Trump wins. If it’s about other things, it’s a jump ball,” Conway said.
Brazile agreed those are the key issues, but said Democrats have better proposals than Republicans and voters will see that.
“This is a big moment in American history. One party is in the past. One party is going to take us into the future. We don’t want to be prisoners of the past,” she said.
Harris is going to get stronger down the last stretch before the election, Brazile predicted.
“Regardless what you think of Kamala Harris, you haven’t seen nothing yet. It’s going to be a race like nothing we expected. Expect the unexpected,” she said.
Walz ‘Is Going to Matter’
Trump’s vice presidential running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) is not going to help the GOP ticket, Brazile said, but he isn’t going to be a factor in influencing voters.“I think the vice presidential candidates do matter,” Conway countered. “I think Tim Walz is going to matter.”
And not in a good way, she said.
Not selecting Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate is “a huge missed opportunity” for Harris to win Pennsylvania, where Shapiro is popular and the election is a tossup, Conway said.
By adding the progressive Walz to the ticket, “this is where [Harris] wants to take the party” and that, she said, is further to the left “of where America is.”
Conway is not part of the Trump campaign and did not participate in Vance’s selection. She recommended Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) to the former president, she revealed.
But Vance is a good choice, she said. He’s “half his age” and from the Midwest, which was the guiding criteria in selected Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his 2016 running mate over former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Vance had “a rough tumble out of the gate,” Conway said, but he’s had “the better week of all four of them. He’s hitting his stride now.”
Voters already know “all the negative stuff” there is to know about Vance, she said. “We’re still getting to know Harris and Walz.”
“We didn’t need to learn anything about Vance,” Brazile said, other than he “had been a practicing Democrat,” wrote his book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” and then turned his back on the people he wrote about, she said, adding that he did “a U-turn and no longer supported policies to help those who live on the outskirts of hope.”
But, she said, other than not voting for them, there’s no need to “disparage” Vance, Trump, or their supporters, many of whom are neighbors and friends.
“I want to hear policy—what are you going to do for us today and tomorrow?” Brazile said, adding. “I’m not woke but don’t put me to sleep, though.”
Referring to Trump’s recent near-assassination, both said political violence is a growing concern.
“It’s a wild, mean, mendacious world out there. I don’t know what it is about politics that brings out the worst in people,” Conway said.
