Capital Review

In a close election, everything matters. Just ask Hillary Clinton about taking Wisconsin and Michigan for granted in 2016.

This election looks like another close one because some voters will enthusiastically vote for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, but many others will again be voting against the candidate they dislike most.

Based on recent polling, Trump has a base support of about 42 percent. He can likely count on those voters no matter what. Biden’s lowest numbers were similar, so Harris probably starts in the same or slightly better position depending on how long her media honeymoon lasts. Support for third-party candidates has collapsed to five percent or less.

A mere 10 percent of voters appear truly undecided. If they vote based on the Biden-Harris record of the past four years, Trump wins. But if their vote is a referendum on Trump himself, Harris wins.

For the next two months, Trump has one job if he wants to win: talk about what matters to undecided voters.

When Biden was the bumbling opposition, Trump seemed to grasp his job: simply let Biden show he wasn’t up to the job. In the June debate, Trump was disciplined and rarely interrupted and the rules curbed his worst impulses.

After Trump dodged an assassin’s bullet a couple weeks later, startled Americans — except Trump haters — showed sympathy to the former President. He vowed to recalibrate his campaign with a unity message. That lasted about 30 minutes into his convention speech when he lapsed back into his typical schtick.

Then what many of us believed was inevitable did indeed happen: Biden bowed out.

Within a week, Harris locked up enough Democrat delegates to secure the nomination. Although Harris was such a weak candidate that in 2020 she dropped out before a single vote was cast, demoralized Democrats were energized by Biden’s exit. Donors contributed more than $300 million in July alone.

Before Biden left, Trump led the RealClearPolitics polling average 47.9 percent to 44.8 percent. Over the next few weeks, Trump slipped slightly to 46.9 percent, but many anti-Trump voters consolidated around Harris, giving her a slight lead with 47.9 percent.

Trump’s task must now be to spend the next two months focused like a laser on the Biden-Harris record of failures (inflation, illegal immigration, chaos in Ukraine and the Middle East).

So far, he seems unwilling to recalibrate. Instead of talking about her record, Trump has resorted to personal attacks, like “all of a sudden … (she) became a black person” and calling her “dumb as a rock.”

If Trump wanted to sabotage his own campaign, a good place to start would be to squander the gains he’s made among black men by questioning Harris’ “blackness.” Calling her “not very intelligent” serves only to remind persuadable women of Trump’s penchant for referring to women in derogatory terms.

It’s not like Harris isn’t giving Trump plenty of legitimate targets. Her proposal for price controls on grocery stores was so ridiculous even the New York Times and Washington Post criticized it.

Trump should capitalize on the fact that the public now rates his presidency better than when it ended in 2020. He should present a positive agenda. Instead, he says he is “entitled” to personal attacks on Harris because he is “very angry.”

Trump’s anger won’t win persuadable voters. If he can’t separate that anger from his vision for the country, he will lose those voters once again.

He showed the same short-sightedness at a Georgia campaign rally when he dug up his grudge against Gov. Brian Kemp, the most popular Republican in a state Trump lost in 2020. For his part, Kemp has buried the hatchet, but Trump just won’t let go.

Four years ago in his first debate with Biden, Trump reminded voters of his worst impulses. Within two weeks, Biden’s polling lead nearly doubled. Trump never recovered and gifted Democrats control of the Senate in the process.

Even children usually learn to be on their best behavior in the weeks before a birthday or Christmas if they want the best presents on their wish list.

If he truly believes our nation’s fate rests on this election, is it unreasonable to expect the 78-year-old former President to practice self-disciple for the next two months rather than remind voters what they don’t like about him?

Mark Hillman served as Senate Majority Leader and State Treasurer.