One week from Election Day: Harris and Trump make their closing arguments

An earlier version of this article was first published in the On the Trail 2024 newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox on Tuesday and Friday mornings here.
One more week, friends. I’m in Washington today, where Vice President Kamala Harris is set to deliver a speech on the National Mall. More below on what she — and former President Donald Trump — are saying in their closing pitch to voters.
The closing arguments
As of Monday morning, over 40 million Americans had already cast their votes. Over the next seven days, the campaigns will make their best pitch to the 100 million or so remaining U.S. voters.
In many election cycles, that final message would come in a head-to-head debate. The two candidates met for a debate in Philadelphia in September, but it was the last time they’d share a stage: Harris ignored the Trump campaign’s requests to participate in a Fox News-hosted debate, and Trump did the same on a CNN-moderated debate.
Now, the candidates are taking to rallies, media interviews and press conferences to make their last-minute pitch to voters. A look at Harris’ and Trump’s closing arguments over the past weekend:
Trump asks: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” It’s the line Trump used to open his speech at Madison Square Garden Sunday, and it’s the contrast Trump wants to paint in voters’ minds. Under Trump, he argues, the economy was stronger and prices were lower; wars did not threaten global security; and America’s streets were safer.
The Trump line gets at the heart of one of Harris’ weaknesses: her inability to effectively separate herself from the Biden administration. A majority of voters think the country is on the wrong track, per our latest polling, yet Harris has not given a clear answer when asked if she would have done anything differently than Biden as president. Trump’s goal is to show Harris and Biden as one-and-the-same, and to effectively pit the records of the Biden-Harris and Trump administrations against each other.
But the comparison only goes so far: the economy under Biden avoided a major post-pandemic recession, despite grim predictions from economists at the beginning of his presidency. Trump’s argument also ignores the reality that the final months of his presidency were some of the worst months of the pandemic, when COVID-related deaths were spiking, unemployment was at record levels, and general uncertainty was high.
Harris counters by focusing “on the future.” “We’re not going back,” she repeats at rallies and in speeches, attempting to position herself as a challenger, not an incumbent. “Make no mistake, this campaign is not just about us versus Donald Trump,” she said in Atlanta on Friday. “Truly, this campaign is about two very different visions for our nation: one focused on the future, and one focused on the past.”
That forward-looking message attempts to separate her from the baggage of the Biden administration, but she simultaneously takes credit for the administration’s wins. On Monday, she was in Michigan, touting the CHIPS and Science Act’s investment in semiconductor manufacturing; in Atlanta on Friday, she slammed Trump for his plans to “gut (the Biden-Harris administration’s) investments in clean energy jobs,“ she said. “We are not going back, because ours is a fight for the future.”
Trump’s response? “Kamala is very low IQ.” Trump’s response to Harris’ attacks has been to criticize her intelligence. “No one respects her. No one trusts her. No one takes her seriously,” Trump said during his Sunday rally. “Everyone knows she is a very low IQ individual.” During his appearance on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast Saturday, Trump added she should take an IQ test: “They say it’s unconstitutional, but I think Kamala should have a test because there’s something missing. There’s something wrong with her.”
Later Saturday night, when Trump arrived for a rally in Michigan, he continued the riff. “She’s a stupid person,” he said.
Harris questions Trump’s fitness. He is “increasingly unhinged and unstable,” she says. Once the campaign of joy and vibes, Harris is now preaching a more negative message: that Trump would pose a danger to the country if elected. She’s latched onto warnings from some of Trump’s former allies, like former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, who said Trump meets the definition of a “fascist.” Within a day, the Harris campaign rolled out TV ads featuring Kelly’s words; in a CNN town Hall last week, Harris said she agreed and explicitly called Trump a “fascist.”
“I believe Donald Trump is a danger to the well-being and security of the United States of America,” she added.
In a rally in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Saturday, Harris added shat she believes Trump to be an “unserious man,” but the “consequences of him being president ever again are brutally serious,” she said.
On policy, Trump is closing on immigration. It was the central theme of his rally at Madison Square Garden, and it’s the main theme of his campaign’s new advertising. He suggested that illegal immigration is to blame for voters’ economic frustrations, and he promised to end the “immigrant invasion” by promoting a mass deportation program. “I will rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered, and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail,” he said. “We’re going to kick them the hell out of our country as fast as possible.”
Harris’ closing policy pitch? Abortion. Just like it has been for much of her campaign, Harris is banking on a closing argument related to abortion. Over the past week, her campaign has pushed out four ads telling the stories of individuals affected by state-level abortion legislation.
In each of Harris’ speeches in recent days, she’s spoken directly to the issue. “You who now know fewer rights than your mothers and grandmothers understand the importance of the right of a woman to make decisions about her own body,” she said in Philadelphia on Sunday. In Michigan on Saturday, she again vowed that when “Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom nationwide,” she would “proudly” sign it into law, if elected.
There would not be religious exemptions in that bill, she said in an NBC interview last week. “I don’t think we should be making concessions when we’re talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body,” she said.
Trump’s much-awaited rally at Madison Square Garden occurred Sunday night — but drew headlines for all the wrong reasons. A comedian made crude sex jokes about Latinos, poked fun at Blacks and Jews, and called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage”; Tucker Carlson described Harris as “Samoan, Malaysian, low-IQ”; and a childhood friend of Trump deemed Harris “the devil” and “the Antichrist.” When Trump took the stage, he declared his party “the party of inclusion.” Trump rally speakers lob racist insults, call Puerto Rico ‘island of garbage’ (Hannah Knowles and Isaac Arnsdorf, The Washington Post)
A Pennsylvania Christian college is the perfect place to speak to three key voting blocs: swing-state voters, religious voters and Gen Z. Aside from the occasional Trump or Harris fans, it seems many are unenthused by both options. Unlike the generation above them, who are overwhelmingly liberal, the Democrats have now “squandered a huge advantage among young voters.” But that doesn’t mean they automatically flock to Trump and the Republicans. A microcosm of things to come, for both this generation and religious voters? Gen Z Christians Aren’t Sold on Trump or Harris (Harvest Prude, Christianity Today)
Is Biden a liability for Harris? Last week, he suggested Trump should be locked up, before clarifying he was only speaking “politically”; the gaffe provided an easy attack from the Trump campaign. As Election Day approaches, Harris aides fear Biden can “only hurt” Harris, the more he’s on the trail. Harris Campaign Distances Itself From Biden in the Crucial Final Days (Katie Rogers and Michael D. Shear, The New York Times)
See you on the trail.
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