Jen O’Malley Dillon has transitioned from running the Joe Biden campaign to the Kamala Harris campaign, but her message stays the same no matter who her client is.
The veteran Democratic operative expects the “campaign will be close” and “hard fought, but Vice President Harris is in a position of strength — and she’s going to win.”
Key to that win, per Dillon, is those handful of swing states not reliably red or slam-dunk bets for the blue team, a strategy previewed Tuesday when Harris rallied in front of 3,500 supporters in Milwaukee just a few days after the four-day Republican National Convention there.
Harris will take her “message across the battlegrounds, capitalizing on the historic infrastructure the campaign has spent the last year building to reach voters where they are to ensure they understand the choice in this election. With a popular message, a strong record on the issues that matter most to swing voters, multiple pathways to 270 electoral voters, and unprecedented enthusiasm on her side, the Vice President is in a strong position to take on Donald Trump and win in 104 days,” Dillon claims.
Dillon believes Harris can improve on the Biden ticket’s performance in the last presidential cycle, “drawing the support of voters who have moved towards Democrats since the 2020 election.”
“In many cases, these voters did not vote for the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020, but came out in support of Democrats in 2022 as Donald Trump’s Republican Party grew more and more extreme. These voters supported Democrats in battleground states in 2022, and they will be critical to hold onto in 2024,” Dillon argues.
Key to this strategy: “significant favorability advantages among the key demographic groups that have moved toward Democrats since 2020.”
“Her net favorability is 19 points higher than Trump’s among white, college-educated voters, and 18 points higher than Trump’s among voters over 65,” Dillon argues, saying issues like “January 6, Donald Trump’s criminal convictions, and the Supreme Court’s immunity decision” resonate with these voters.
To close the sale, Dillon highlights the “robust campaign operation” and “deep relationships in the battlegrounds” the Harris camp inherits.
“Using both in person events and activities as well as engaging voters online, we are having conversations with voters to cut through media silos and political narratives,” she says, adding she expects 2,000 paid staffers in those swing states and 3 million doors knocked before the end of next month.
Resources will abound, based on fundraising in the last few days. Harris’ camp has brought in $126 million since Sunday, it says, with 1.4 million grassroots donors and 100,000 volunteers committed to helping out.
Recent polling from two of these battleground states (Pennsylvania and Georgia) shows a race as tight as Dillon claims it to be in her memo.
A North Star Opinion survey conducted between July 20 and 23 shows Trump up by 2 points in the Keystone State in a head-to-head battle with Harris, where Gov. Josh Shapiro looms as a potential Harris VP pick.
A Landmark Communications poll of 400 likely voters in Georgia conducted Monday, a day after President Biden renounced his re-election bid, shows Trump with 45.8% support, just 1.5% above Harris in a six-way race that includes Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (4%), independent candidate Cornel West (1.1%), Libertarian Chase Oliver and Green Party hopeful Jill Stein (0.3% each).
