the overarching message that kamla Harris is trying to project is making Donald Trump smaller Rising above it Donald Trump is an unserious man but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious and mostly showing herself as the future and that Donald Trump is the past we are not going back we are not going back at the Democratic National Convention this messaging approach has been widely accepted and applauded Democrats in speeches and in slickly produced videos have emphasized Freedom reproductive freedom freedom to get ahead economically but they have also talked about another message about Donald Trump that is he is a fraud congresswoman Alexandria oasia Cortez described Trump as a two bit Union Buster Donald Trump would sell this country for a dollar if it meant lining his own pockets and greasing the palms of his Wall Street friends President Obama described him as essentially an elderly billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he wrode down his golden escalator N9 years ago they have tried to deliver a message that kamla Harris and Tim Walts are actually the ticket that cares about the working class we need an economy that works for all of us not just the billionaire class one of the lessons that KL Harris took from the Hillary Clinton campaign of 2016 is not to engage Donald Trump's attacks constantly when Hillary Clinton was running for president he was making provocations to try to get her to react he trafficked in misogynistic statements he trafficked in racist statements she responded to them her supporters responded to them all of that spread the attacks that he was making that turned out to be something Democrats decided they did not want to replicate in 2024 and so far they've been pretty successful the Trump campaign has been bluntly all over the map in terms of of how it's trying to attack kamla Harris he has made a series of clearly race baiting social media posts he has questioned whether or not she's actually black I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black he has called her not smart he has said she's not competent he has attacked her in all manner of ways that has been something that she has simply brushed aside we are charting a new way forward the Harris campaign is going to try for as long as possible to keep using this approach toward Donald Trump making him stale making him a thing of the past making him something that voters ought to get Beyond whether that is going to be sustainable for the long term of this race remains to be seen she benefits from the fact that this is a very compressed time frame