Harris Gains Ground, Trump Resets

Eighty-four days remain in the race for the White House as things heat up between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Up to early this year many voters almost universally did not want two old men at the top of their presidential tickets. Well, their wish was granted after President Biden did poorly in his first and only presidential debate with Mr. Trump last June. The debate left many Democrats panicked and eventually prominent Democrats voiced their concerns that Mr. Biden would lose to the former president. From Nancy Pelosi to Barack Obama, the president chose to step aside, making history as the second U.S. president since 1968 to refuse a second term. The first time this happened was when Lyndon Johnson went before the nation after failing to win the New Hampshire primary to declare he would no longer be a candidate for the presidency. At the time that he addressed the country, chaos, violence, and carnage was being waged on America's streets as the war in Vietnam had no end in sight. 

Immediately after Biden stepped aside, he endorsed his vice president, and many prominent Democrats began to rapidly fall in line. As they fell in line, then came the dollars by the millions. Vice President Harris has out raised Trump substantially to the point of $310 million. After she announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, another $24 million poured in through their Democratic fundraising platform, ActBlue. Since then, Trump's leads in key swing states have begun to disappear.

According to RealClearPolling.com, Harris is tied with Trump at 47 percent. She leads in Wisconsin by less than 1 percent and Pennsylvania and Michigan both by 4 percent. All of which are in the margin of error, which indicates this race is still wide open, and the Democratic National Convention doesn't begin until next week, when Democrats are hoping for a post-convention boost even more in the polls. But it is not all good news for the vice president. Mr. Biden's disapproval ratings, according to the latest Rasmussen poll, are at 56 percent. President Biden is her boss and Trump has attempted in recent weeks since her nomination to tie her to what he claims are the failed policies of the Biden administration, from the border to crime to the state of the nation's economy. Only 34 percent of Americans said in that same poll that the country was heading in the right direction while nearly two-thirds did not. Trump still leads, albeit small, in states like Georgia and North Carolina, but all these polls unanimously show a tight race in a sharply divided country. 

Trump, however, has struggled to combat how to campaign against the first black female nominee of a major party, but he rejoined "X", formerly known as "Twitter", earlier today, hoping to make a dent in Harris' momentum. Within the first five hours of posting his first campaign ad returning to the social media platform, it earned itself 422,000 likes and 128,000 reposts. One ad asked, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?". After weeks of questions being asked of his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance's past statements about women and families Trump's momentum stemmed. 

Will things change for Mr. Trump or will Ms. Harris succeed in denying the former president another term in the White House? A term many Democrats fear would be a threat to democracy itself. The race is now a tossup. 

Only time will tell.