No More Joy

Joy is over:

Polling shows Harris lost momentum in the past weeks while using the “campaign of joy.” Her new strategy appears to be the use of President Joe Biden’s 2020 and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 playbook that demonizes former President Donald Trump as unhinged, unstable, and unchecked. Politico Playbook reported the shift on Friday: You can see the change on the campaign trail, where Harris’ early emphasis on joy has given way to more direct verbal attacks on Trump, including playing video of him, AP’s Zeke Miller and Steve Karnowski report from La Crosse. You can see it on the airwaves, where a new Harris ad calls Trump “unhinged,” “unstable” and “unchecked” in a second term, NBC’s Monica Alba scooped. (Interestingly, this is all a bit of a return to Biden’s old anti-Trump messaging.) Reuters’ Jeff Mason and Nandita Bose report that the broader Harris strategy shift is an effort to play up her prosecutorial image and project strength to gain support from men and Republicans. “Unhinged is the way to describe Kamala Harris throwing open our borders to unvetted criminals putting the safety of Americans at risk,” Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to Trump, told NBC News. “Unhinged is her support for economic policy that has made life for Americans unaffordable and trade policy that favors foreign workers over America’s working men and women”

Being unhinged seems all the rage for Democrats...