DAVID MARCUS: Sorry Kamala, voters aren't buying your Trump Hail Mary
Kamala Harris might not like Catholic charity dinners, but she knows how to throw a Hail Mary, and her latest, that Donald Trump is exhausted or senile is landing incomplete with a thud among voters.
It has been about a week now that Harris’ campaign, which basically everyone has finally admitted is badly losing steam, started claiming Trump is in mental decline, and it's no accident that it coincided with the moment when Democrats started outright panicking over her chances.
During most of that week, I was in Virginia and North Carolina talking mostly to Democratic voters, and while many gave me reasons why they wouldn't vote for Trump, not one suggested he was exhausted or senile. Not a single person.
Even with the lapdog leftist news media barking this lie alongside Harris, nobody is buying it.
I’m sorry, an anonymously sourced Politico story saying Trump is ducking interviews because he is tired is not going to cut it when voters have seen Trump take questions over and over while Harris refuses to do any press conferences.
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On Friday night, ABC, NBC, and CBS news all led with this thin gruel, while the New Republic cheered in a headline that "Trump’s alarming mental decline has finally become a big media story." No significant new reporting was offered, these outlets just echoed the desperate canard from Politico and the Harris camp.
Here’s a tip from behind the scenes in journalism: A big clue that a news outlet is misleading you is when, instead of covering the actual story, they cover that the story is being covered. "We don’t have any real evidence," these outlets are saying, "but all our journalist buddies are talking about it a lot!"
You know who is not talking about it at all? Voters.
This is because voters are not stupid and they have seen with their own eyes that Trump has done more interviews, rallies, press conferences, gaggles, and impromptu appearances than Harris since the conventions.
Oh, and by the way, that was after being literally shot in the face, and standing, fist in the air, yelling "fight, fish, fight,: with blood streaming down his cheek. That doesn’t exactly scream, "tired, old man."
A general rule of advertising that transcends politics is that it is very hard to make people care about something they don’t already care about, and this is why Harris’ attempt to manufacture deep concern about Trump’s mental fitness is failing so badly.
Harris isn’t tapping into worries that already do exist here, such as January 6th, or abortion rights, or healthcare; those are things I hear Democrats talk about, rather, she and the media have launched a laughable top-down effort to make these voters think Trump is losing it. It's a failing endeavor.
This past week, Gallup announced that for the third straight year, trust in the news media has declined. At this point, 70% of Americans do not trust the Fourth Estate. Is it any wonder, when they are engaging in this kind of nonsense?
To make matters worse for the pushers of this ignominious lie about Trump’s fitness, we all remember that just 6 months ago these were the same people, almost to a person, insisting to voters that President Joe Biden was "sharp as a tack," and "running circles around his Millennial staff."
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Do they really think we have all forgotten that? Were they lying then, or are they lying now? Or is lying in an effort to hurt Trump so natural to them that they don’t even know the difference?
It is now completely clear that Kamala Harris as a candidate brings absolutely nothing positive to the table. Her whole campaign has come down to "I’m not Donald Trump, and I'm not Joe Biden!"
Well, I’m not Donald Trump or Joe Biden, either. It doesn’t mean I should be president of the United States.
Lacking such a positive case, all the campaign has left is to attack Trump as unfit. It hasn’t worked in regard to his policies as he has erased the sugar-high, joy-induced lead Harris enjoyed two months ago, so that only leaves personal attacks.
This attack is failing badly; many things come to mind when one thinks of Donald Trump. Senile and exhausted are not among them, and no matter how many chattering class talking heads insist they should be, that isn’t going to change in the next 16 days.
Legendary Notre Dame football coach Frank Leahy was once asked if the Blessed Mother roots for the Fighting Irish. He said she roots for teams that can block and tackle. Harris can do neither, and it's why this final, desperate heave of the pigskin is not going to work.