A noted GOP political strategist and Fox News contributor pointed out during a Tuesday segment that Vice President Kamala Harris is nowhere close to polling as well as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden against former President Donald Trump. Karl Rove cautioned that the optimism surrounding Harris’s campaign might be misplaced after pointing out she is currently polling worse than Biden did at this point in 2020 and Clinton did in 2016.
Rove’s remarks followed anchor Bret Baier’s repeat of one Democratic strategist’s warning that Harris’s current strategy of falling silent on policy and avoiding the media is “borne of conceit and foolhardiness.” He asked: “What do you make of that?” Rove responded: “She [Harris] needs to be more specific. Let’s not be critical of her by saying she has to have a Democrat Congress and a Democrat Senate in order to get these things done. Because the same can be said for Donald Trump; he has to have a Republican Senate and a Republican House to get everything done. But people want to know where you’re coming from, and they want to know enough about the specifics to get their hands around it.”
“But the other point about polling, I want to, if possible, let’s talk about that a little bit, because I think let’s put this in perspective. On this day in 2020, Joe Biden was up 7.1% above Donald Trump in the RealClearPolitics average,” Rove continued. “And at this point in 2016, Hillary Clinton was up 6.3. And as you remember, the election came down to a handful of votes in a handful of states. And today, in the RealClearPolitics average, Harris is up over Trump by 1.5 in the RCP average and 3.5 in the 538.com.”
“So this, you know, she’s ahead in both averages, but she’s nowhere near ahead by the numbers that both Biden and Clinton were in,” he continued. “And as we know, Clinton lost and Biden won by 42,000 votes in three states. To complicate it further, these are national numbers we’re talking about, and we’ve got a number of polls, 8 to 10 polls that make up these averages, but how is she doing and how is he doing in the battleground states, the 6 or 7 battleground states? We have nowhere near, we have a few polls in several states, but we certainly don’t have 6 or 7 or 8 polls that would give us an average and therefore give us a better idea of where they actually are.”
Former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard offered her views on why she thinks Harris is likely “afraid” to debate Trump during an interview on conservative radio host David Webb’s program on Tuesday. “Given what we’ve seen so far and this debate over the debate, what’s your take?” Webb asked to kick off the segment.
“First of all, the fact that there is a debate over the debate is very telling in and of itself. You know, Donald Trump’s campaign and Kamala Harris’s campaign, they agreed to this debate on September 10th, to the same rules that applied during Trump Biden debate on CNN that we already saw,” Gabbard, a U.S. Army veteran and former Hawaii congresswoman who endorsed Trump last week, began.
“Now all of a sudden, we’re just two weeks out from, just under two weeks out from this debate that they already agreed to and Kamala Harris is trying to change the rules. She wants it to be a debate where they allow the mics to be live the entire time, where she can bring her notes in to the debate with her, and where they will be seated for the entire debate,” Gabbard continued. “President Trump’s position has been pretty clear where he says, hey, look, we already agreed to the terms of this debate. We should stick with those terms, which is the same rules that he debated Joe Biden under.
“These debates are an opportunity for voters to be able to look at and listen to these candidates running for president and compare and contrast their record, their positions and their capability,” Gabbard added. “You know, the problem with Kamala Harris is not – her wanting to bring notes into this debate reinforces what we already know to be true, which is she absolutely struggles if she is not using a script, if she is not using a teleprompter.
“And in this case, apparently, if she doesn’t have notes in front of her, telling her what her position is supposed to be, what her answer should be on different issues. They’re making this request in the last hours here, the last days before this debate, really reveals more of her weakness and her vulnerability. And quite frankly, if this debate still happens, where President Trump has an opportunity to challenge her on her record because she has quite a significant record on all of the important issues of the day. And let her respond,” she said. “What voters will very likely see is how unprepared she is and how she struggles without having her pollsters telling her what she is supposed to say.”
Disclaimer: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.