The final messages the presidential campaigns are giving to voters

As the presidential race nears a close, Laura Barrón-López and Lisa Desjardins joined Amna Nawaz and Geoff Bennett to discuss the final sprint to Election Day.
Amna Nawaz:
With more on the candidates’ final sprint to Election Day, let’s bring in Laura Barron-Lopez, who’s been covering the Harris campaign.
Geoff Bennett:
And Lisa Desjardins, who has been reporting on former President Donald Trump.
It’s great to see you both.
So, Laura, we will start with you. What has been the final message from Vice President Kamala Harris? Have you noticed a shift?
Laura Barron-Lopez:
We have noticed the shift.
In the final month, Harris was being much more explicit when she was talking about Donald Trump and what she sees as a threat to democracy that he poses, calling him unstable, looking for unchecked power. She was repeatedly quoting former Trump officials like his longest-serving Chief of Staff John Kelly, as well as the former Chiefs — chief of the — sorry — Joints Chief of Staff.
And their words, as they described him as — they described Donald Trump as fascist and as dangerous. But in her closing remarks, starting this weekend, Harris has not been naming Donald Trump specifically. She’s been trying to create more of this unity message. And that is a notable shift.
I asked Jen O’Malley Dillon, her campaign chair, about that today. And the campaign chair said that she wants to end with optimism, this theme of unifying the country, that she will be a next generation.
Amna Nawaz:
Lisa, what about the Trump campaign’s final messages here? Any big shifts?
Lisa Desjardins:
As you know, Donald Trump has very many messages, most often. But one that they like as their final message is this idea that Harris broke it, Trump will fix it.
That does a couple of things when you talk to senior campaign advisers for Trump. They say, first of all, it tries to tag Harris to the Biden administration, but it also leaves a much more vague opening, so that any remorse, any grievance that voters have, they will blame on her, whatever it is that’s broken.
And it also helps with his brand which, of course, is a get it done kind of businessman. So they like that message, she broke it, we will fix it. Something else they’re doing in ads, though, is, they’re focusing on the economy and immigration and, as Laura has been reporting, in some specific markets and online, especially anti-transgender rights commercials.
Talking to campaign advisers about what’s going on with that, they say they’re trying to make up ground that they concede they have lost with women, suburban women, over abortion and trying to see if that helps. Not clear if it will, but that’s part of their final strategy.
They do feel like they gained ground earlier this fall. They think the vice presidential debate may have been a turning point for them for momentum. They also like to point out that Harris has not had a traditional news conference, but overall, right now, they’re trying to portray Harris as someone who’s not ready to be president.
Geoff Bennett:
Laura, how has the Harris campaign been spending these final days? What are your sources telling you?
Laura Barron-Lopez:
The Harris campaign is feeling pretty good about the election right now at this point, Geoff.
They point to their expansive ground game, specifically that, in the final weekend they had volunteers knocking on hundreds of thousands of doors across the battleground states. In total, campaign officials said that the campaign has knocked on 16 million doors across the battlegrounds.
The bottom line is that Harris’ campaign and Democrats are relying big on turnout amongst women, and they’re also really hoping that they are going to be getting a bigger margin of those disenchanted Republicans than Joe Biden got in 2020, those people who voted for Nikki Haley in the primary, those Liz Cheney-type Republicans.
But when I asked Jen O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chair, today about those remaining undecided fence-sitters, she said that the campaign is still consistently seeing them in the final two weeks breaking for Harris, and she has in the past specifically noted the Madison Square Garden rally and Trump’s rhetoric in the final stretch.
Amna Nawaz:
Lisa, how is former President Trump looking at this moment? It was striking to see Vice President Harris say she feels she has the momentum and he was saying, well, this feels like ours to lose. What does this moment look like to them?
Lisa Desjardins:
Well, they have an interesting communication strategy. They have gone dark, essentially, with the press. They haven’t had a press call in the way that the Harris campaign has. One of them said, if you’re spinning, you’re not winning.
But they still weren’t giving me numbers like we have from the Harris campaign on how many door knocks. Part of that is because their get-out-the-vote and canvassing strategy all along has been unorthodox.
They have changed the playbook that the Republicans had four years ago. It was a role of the dice. They have been trying to go for low-propensity voters, but also from Trump volunteers, some of them, people who’ve never canvassed before. So it’s a question of whether those folks will get out the vote or not.
How many doors they have knocked on, we don’t know, because they’re also relying on a myriad independent groups to get out there on the abortion issue, Americans for Progress. There are many — for Prosperity.
There are many different groups doing this out. One thing that they like right now, the Republicans and the Trump campaign, is the early vote turnout. They like that rural counties have turned out, as we have reported here. They think that that is going to be a boost for them. They admit they don’t know, are those new voters or are those just voters who would have come out anyway?
But they think they feel some momentum in the early vote going their way. But any source that I trust is one who will admit it is very close. They see many paths, Trump campaign, to winning, but they also admit they don’t know.
Amna Nawaz:
All right, Lisa Desjardins, Laura Barron-Lopez on the campaign’s views before this last day of voting, good to see you both.
Thank you.
Lisa Desjardins:
Thank you.