-"Madam Vice President, do you believe that Donald Trump is a fascist"?
-"Yes, I do. You have to believe the people who know him best and think so (...) And Trump is becoming increasingly unstable."
With that statement, raising the tone compared to previous weeks, Kamala Harris began on Wednesday night her intervention before 32 undecided voters in a CNN town hall interview, with just 13 days left until the elections. At the same time and a few hundred kilometers away, in the town of Duluth, Georgia, the former president and Republican leader, surrounded by 13,000 people inside a pavilion and many more outside, responded with the same aggressiveness and increasing disdain, calling the Democratic candidate "idiot", pointing out that she has a "very low IQ" and is "lazy, almost like a child." The final phase of the campaign has begun, and strategies, programs, and good intentions are a thing of the past.
For months, Trump's advisors and campaign managers have tried to convince him to focus his speech on his opponent's weaknesses, talking mainly about the economy, inflation, the cost of living, and how absurd it is for Harris to present herself as a champion of change when she is the number two to Joe Biden and they have been in power for almost four years. But his nature is what it is, his uncorrectable character, and even on occasions when he starts controlled, he later unleashes, peppering his speeches with insults, personal attacks, and an aggressiveness that unsettles the undecided and his own voters. Winning is not enough for him, he aspires to destroy, to crush.
Similarly, Harris's team, but especially the Democrats in each state, those who hit the streets, know the electorate, and knock on every door trying to mobilize the undecided, they know that presenting Trump as the greatest enemy of democracy is not enough. Perhaps it is necessary because it is the center of their discourse to insist that he is not fit to govern, that everything pales in comparison to that, but obviously, it is not enough. After nine years in the political spotlight, it is obvious that the whole country knows Trump and his excesses. Detractors and those who fear him are more than convinced. And those who doubt, it seems that this rhetoric and logic do not appeal to them. That's what many of the CNN guests said, expecting direct answers and not circular responses to their questions and concerns about basic needs.
"We have to stop scaring people and focus on what is important for their daily lives. If you tell a Black person that democracy is at stake, they will tell you what world you are living in, that for them, it always has been. We have to talk about education for children, how to pay bills, how to save to have an emergency fund. Having a plan like the one Harris has so that African Americans and Latinos who want to start businesses have access to the necessary capital. You won't get them to the polls with fear. The message that interests me is the one that can get them off the couch," points out Kevin Olasanoye, executive director of the Democratic Party in Georgia.
However, what may have worked before is no longer valid. There are 12 days left, the polls are incredibly tight, like never before in seven states. No one dares to make predictions, and the campaigns have moved to what could be called the conclusion phase, as in trials. After the initial presentation and witness testimonies, it's time to wrap it up.
Trump is the best at insulting, attacking, humiliating, entertaining. He easily filled a pavilion with tens of thousands of people in the area, now putting all the pressure on Harris, who on Thursday will also go to the outskirts of Atlanta, with Barack Obama as a companion and Bruce Springsteen as an entertainer, to get people out of their homes and to the polls. Tucker Carlson accompanied him, along with conservative leaders, the former independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., or the most radical congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The vice president, who was a prosecutor in California, is instead showcasing her legal style. As Politico recalls, in one of her books, she explained how in that world, it is not enough to stand up in front of the jury and say, "'You must conclude that this is an eight. The job is to show them that two plus two plus two plus two categorically leads to eight... Show the jury how to reach their conclusion. When you show people the math, you give them the tools to decide if they agree with the solution. And even if they don't agree with everything, they may find that they agree with you most of the way."
That is what she is trying to do now, with the help of Trump's former advisors, who have labeled him as a "fascist" and "the main danger to the country." Since July, the vice president wanted to distance herself from the strategy previously used by Hillary Clinton and Biden, putting the billionaire at the center. She opted to downplay him, mock him, provoke him until he loses his composure in face-to-face debates. And talk about opportunities, hope, the future, and joy. But when it comes down to it, in the final moments, she has chosen to rescue that all-or-nothing spirit that worked in 2020, trusting that the undecided voters who will decide the country's future will lean towards grand words and fears rather than the cost of gasoline. It's either us or chaos.
When asked about her economic and tax agenda, she criticized Trump for promising tax cuts to "billionaires and big corporations." When pressed on her immigration stance, the vice president criticized her rival for derailing a bipartisan border agreement. And she elaborated on Trump's references to "internal enemies" to substantiate her argument to the voters. It is also not a coincidence that next week she has chosen the esplanade in front of the Capitol in Washington for an event, to emphasize the contrast with the Republican and refresh what happened there when he incited his followers in what ended up being the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Trump, on the other hand, appears confident. In the first weeks since Harris succeeded Biden, he was disoriented, and the debate went wrong for him. Now he is more focused and almost enjoying it, with very long rallies, speeches of up to two hours, and in the mud, where he moves better than anyone, sowing doubts about the electoral process, assuming that if he loses, it is because they will steal from him and that corruption is endemic.
His speeches are increasingly aggressive, catastrophic, mentioning violence and insults ("shitty vice president", "idiot", "incapable", "rude and cruel", "just an empty vessel", "dirty people") make the headlines because that ignites the Maga masses, the Make America Great Again, who in the stadiums do not want nuances, but blood. He knows that when a not insignificant percentage of the audience wears T-shirts that say "I'm voting for the outlaw", call the vice president a "bitch," and laugh at the Capitol riot, it is not the time to beat around the bush.