Harris and Trump seek to address key weaknesses at the border and on abortion

As the countdown to Election Day approaches, Vice President Harris and former President Trump are trying to address their biggest electoral vulnerabilities.

For Harris, the issue of immigration is an area where polls show Trump has a clear advantage – and where President Biden’s record paints an unfavorable picture for many voters.

For Trump, the issue is abortion. Harris has a correspondingly large lead here – and Republicans and conservatives have suffered several electoral setbacks on this issue since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

According to the New York Times, Harris is expected to visit the southern border on Friday as she seeks to toughen her political tone on the issue.

The vice president’s willingness to use tougher rhetoric on the border has drawn muted criticism from progressive groups, but center-left voices insist it is the right course.

“Harsh words about the border anger progressive interest groups, but very few progressive voters,” Jim Kessler, vice president of policy at Third Way, told this column.

Kessler argued that it was imperative that Harris “move to the center on the border, on crime, on a pro-growth stance on the economy – and I feel like she’s done all of that.”

There is no doubt that Harris is vulnerable on the border – not least because she played a leading role on the issue in the early stages of the Biden administration.

In a national NBC News poll released Sunday, Trump led Harris by 21 percentage points when registered voters were asked which candidate was better at “secure the border and control immigration.”

Harris has already moved away from some of her more progressive positions in the past. During her fight for the Democratic nomination in 2020, she raised her hand at a debate to signal that she supported decriminalizing unauthorized border crossings. Now she says she believes there should be “consequences” for such border crossings.

Harris also tried to present a tougher image in her television ads and speeches.

A Harris ad begins with a speaker intoning: “Kamala Harris has spent years fighting violent crime. As a prosecutor in a border state, she took on drug cartels and locked up gang members for smuggling guns and drugs across the border.”

The ad promised that if elected, she would “hire thousands of additional border agents and crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking.”

Trump is now pursuing an idiosyncratic approach to the abortion issue.

The former president is proud of his role in nominating the three conservative Supreme Court justices who played a crucial role in overturning Roe v. Wade.

But Trump is reluctant to address the issue of a nationwide ban on abortion – and also the question of whether he would veto such a ban if he were president and Congress voted on it.

During his debate with Harris on September 10 in Philadelphia, Trump appeared to rule out signing a federal abortion ban.

When Harris assured that he would sign such a measure, Trump responded: “I am not signing a ban and there is no reason to sign a ban.”

However, when asked by moderator Linsey Davis whether he would block such a ban with a veto, Trump avoided a direct answer, saying that such a situation could not arise because such a measure would not receive enough votes in Congress.

When Davis pressed on a statement by the former president’s vice presidential colleague, Senator JD Vance (R-Ohio), that Trump would veto such a ban, Trump replied, “Well, to be honest, I haven’t talked to JD about it.”

In electoral terms, the abortion issue for Trump is the mirror image of the immigration issue for Harris. According to an NBC News poll, Trump was 21 points behind when asked who could “handle the abortion issue better.”

Trump has in the past attributed the Republicans’ disappointing performance in the 2022 midterm elections to the abortion issue.

Meanwhile, Democrats hope that the issue could mobilize voters and give them a decisive election victory.

In recent days, Trump has sparked renewed controversy by saying that he himself would “not think about abortion anymore” if he were back in the Oval Office.

Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer called the claim “ridiculous” on CNN’s “State of the Union” and accused Trump of being “just crazy.”

“This guy just doesn’t understand what the average woman in this country goes through in her life. How could he? He hasn’t lived a normal life,” Whitmer said.

Harris, for her part, sought to keep the abortion issue in the spotlight this week, saying in an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio on Monday that she supports eliminating the filibuster tactic in the Senate to codify the protections of the Roe v. Wade law.

“I’ve been very clear,” Harris said. “I think we should do away with the filibuster tactic for Roe and get to the point where 51 votes are enough to actually put back into law the protection of reproductive freedom and the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own bodies without the government telling them what to do.”

However, Republican strategist Brad Blakeman claimed that Trump was handling the abortion issue “perfectly” and was merely stating facts, emphasizing that the issue is now largely decided at the state level.

“American voters are not seeing a complete repeal of Roe v. Wade,” Blakeman said. “What they are seeing is each state taking its own view on abortion.”

The Memo is a column by Niall Stanage.

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