When Joe Biden made the historic decision in July to step aside as the Democratic Party's 2024 nominee, Donald Trump was clearly taken off guard. Kamala Harris immediately leveraged a high-dominance leadership strategy, buttressed by positive messaging, to launch a sustained offensive that was immediately reflected in public opinion polls.
It took weeks for Trump and his surrogates to recalibrate and react — and when they did, the Trump campaign launched increasingly racist, authoritarian, sadistic and outright fascistic attacks — not just against Harris and the Democrats but against large segments of American society. In the days remaining before Nov. 5, Trump’s attacks are likely to escalate even further. In all, one could compare this election campaign to a fight inside a phone booth. Harris and Trump appear to have virtually equal odds of victory in what now appears to be one of the closest elections in American history, as well as one of the most important, the bitterest and the most highly combustible.
