OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Republican strategist and CNN guest Erin Perrine cautioned on Friday that Vice President Kamala Harris could encounter significant challenges on Election Day, as her campaign has not yet transitioned to a “get-out-the-vote” message.
Polls between Harris and former President Donald Trump have tightened over the past month, prompting political pundits to express concern about how close the race will be in November. On “Erin Burnett OutFront,” the CNN host pressed Perrine on how Trump would react to former President Barack Obama’s criticisms of him.
“Well, it is likely to bother former President Trump, and you’ll likely hear some kind of remark pushing back on what Barack Obama has said,” Perrine said.
“But then Donald Trump will go on and speak about any number of things after that. The point here for Democrats right now is they have to try and pull out every Democrat from the bench to try and be doing these get-out-the-vote events right now because they’re in such a precarious time,” he added.
Perrine emphasized that, due to Harris’ late start in the campaign, she has fallen behind in her messaging, particularly as Obama has only recently begun promoting voter turnout during an Arizona rally, just under 20 days before the election.
“Because Kamala started this campaign so late, they are doing a lot more of persuadable messaging than they should be right now when they should be doing get-out-the-vote events like here with Obama,” Perrine added.
“They must feel that they have a stronger message in Arizona if they‘re just pushing go out and vote versus in other states and other platforms where she‘s doing some more contentious interviews to try and still push a persuasion message right now.”
“We’re what? Two-and-a-half weeks from Election Day, and you‘re still trying to persuade voters right now whether or not they should vote for you? What you should be doing is persuading them to get to the polls, and this is going to be an issue for Kamala,” Perrine concluded.
Last week, Fox News host Jesse Watters said he thinks that Obama and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have “unleashed a wrecking ball” on their own party with Harris.
“The reason Kamala is the nominee is because Biden was a failure. Why can’t Kamala say ‘I learned from the mistakes he made’? Catch and release was a bad idea. Printing a gazillion dollars, I wouldn’t do that again. Instead, she just squirms and argues like a lawyer without a point,” the host said.
“Grow up. Accept the past and move forward. Instead, she just lies to us. Harris has tried to rewrite history in an implausible way to boot. But that Kamala Harris is some sort of Glock-carrying conservative who idealized John McCain and admired the statesmanship of Dick Cheney is laughable. It is insulting to those involved,” he said.
“She is alienating the left and playing the rest of us for fools. Harris appears to be in the process of defeating herself. Nancy and Barack have unleashed a wrecking ball. Biden, at least, was still kind of holding the coalition together. Kamala is poisoning it. She has lost unions, black men (and) Hispanics. You don’t easily put back political coalitions once they have been shattered,” Watters continued.
“She is not just losing voters. They are being scooped up by the opposing party. These coalitions take decades to build. If Kamala loses, this coup will have done long-lasting damage to the Democratic Party. It has destroyed their coalition and their credibility at the same time. And it is burning through billions of dollars. Writer Tom Klingenstein puts it this way: ‘The Democratic Party is the destructive party, and Kamala is the destructive leader’ … ‘This election is between one candidate who wants to destroy our country and the other who wants to save it.’ Look how much damage Biden-Harris did in just four years. She has already promised she wouldn’t change a thing. This country would not survive,” he added.
