In the six weeks since Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, Donald Trump has relentlessly attacked her, branding her as a radical out of touch with ordinary voters. “She’s a Marxist. She’s a fascist,” Trump declared last week, seemingly merging ideological labels that typically contradict each other.
Trump has made accusations without evidence, claiming that Vice President Harris, whom he refers to as “Comrade Kamala,” “wants this country to go communist.” He has openly explained his strategy: “All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist.”
However, Trump’s aggressive rhetoric doesn’t seem to be resonating with voters.
An array of public opinion polls indicates that Harris’s approval rating is rising steadily, and she currently holds a narrow lead in the national popular vote. A recent Wall Street Journal poll found that 49% of voters view Harris positively, an increase of 14% since July. In contrast, 59% of voters see Trump as “too extreme” to be president, while only 46% feel the same about Harris.
So why are Trump’s attacks failing to land?
Firstly, most voters recognize that Harris has never been a Marxist. During her unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2019, she positioned herself as a progressive, yet she remained closer to the center than figures like Sen. Bernie Sanders, who openly identifies as a democratic socialist.
To confirm this perspective, I consulted leading historian of American Marxism, Paul Buhle, who found no evidence of Marxist inclinations in Harris’s history. “It’s a slur,” he wrote in an email.
Moreover, Harris has quickly worked to frame her positions as firmly within the mainstream Democratic ideology: liberal, but far removed from the definition of Marxism, which endorses government ownership of major industries. At the Democratic convention in Chicago and in her recent interview with CNN, she made clear that she has shifted away from several progressive policies she briefly supported during her 2019 campaign.
Her commitment to collaborating with “small business owners and entrepreneurs and American companies to create jobs” was a sufficiently pro-capitalist stance to elicit mild disapproval from some progressive critics.
Although she has proposed progressive initiatives, such as a federal ban on “price-gouging” by grocery stores, Trump criticized the idea as “Soviet-style price controls.” Yet this proposal received significant public support; an Economist-YouGov poll found that 60% of voters, including about half of Republicans, favored it.
Campaign strategists from both parties suggest that Trump’s attacks on Harris suffer from a fundamental inconsistency. He has alternately labeled her as more liberal than Biden and claimed she would continue the president’s policies without settling on a coherent argument.
“He hasn’t decided what his argument is,” stated Doug Sosnik, a Democratic strategist who helped President Clinton win reelection in 1996. “I think he’s tried out about eight different arguments.”
Some Republican strategists speculate that Trump is targeting the wrong demographics by energizing his base while offering little to undecided voters. “Name-calling is great for turning out your base, but it isn’t going to work for voters in the middle,” said one GOP strategist who chose to remain anonymous.
Harris is attempting to attract the strong union support that helped Biden previously, as he frequently asserts his position as the most union-friendly president in history. His groundbreaking walk on a picket line in 2023 solidified his bond with unions, especially steelworkers, who were pivotal to his victory in Pennsylvania in 2020 and remain essential for Harris in the upcoming elections.
Through her campaign, Harris stresses her commitment to protecting American workers. The choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate further solidifies this stance, as both he and his wife are union members, and his governorship has been marked by pro-worker policies.
Walz has engaged actively with labor groups since joining the ticket, addressing unions in his early campaign speeches, including his recent participation in Milwaukee’s “Laborfest.”
When speaking to the Milwaukee Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO members, Walz maintained that he and Harris stand as labor’s strongest allies, framing Trump and Vance as anti-union.
“It’s not bragging if it’s true: She was part of the most pro-union administration in American history,” he stated, while also highlighting his own background as a former union member and governor of Minnesota. He emphasized the importance of sticking up for workers, passing fair legislation, and walking the picket lines.
Having the support of union members is crucial in a campaign where building solidarity with the working class can make a difference.
