Kamala Harris’s Campaign Thinks She Can Win on the Economy. Here’s How.

For many months, it has been an undisputed and durable fact of the 2024 race that former President Donald J. Trump held a strong political advantage on the most pressing issue to the most voters: the economy.

That may be a tall order now less than six weeks out from the election, but some of the vice president’s top strategists have been pushing the notion that Harris will not only effectively erase the GOP’s longtime advantage on the economy but begin to outpace Republicans’ message there by November 3.

“It is central but it is also doable,” said David Plouffe, a Harris campaign senior adviser who ran Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.

Indeed, to support this, Mr. Plouffe and other advisers from Harris point out that the about-turn has already begun.

They cite a number of uplifting polls for the public that indicate that Mr. Trump’s once commanding margin is losing steam on the important question of who people trusted most on the issue of economy. At the same time, there are economic conditions that are favorable to her including record high in stock market, falling gas prices and a recent cut in interest rates by the Federal Reserve after a four year break.

In the ‘swing’ states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Mr. Trump’s margin on the economy’s management was just two to four percentage points in the last series of Quinnipiac University surveys. And while polls have not always been in lockstep on the size of the margin separating Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris, a comparison of several polls including Fox News, CBS and Suffolk University/USA Today reveals that the Democrat has been steadily chipping away at Mr. Trump’s lead among the electorate on the issue of the economy.

Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster, threw cold water on the Harris team talk of winning outright on the economy saying that was “a little far fetched” and “bluster”. But he said that she accumulated real and significant victories on the issue.

In June Mr. Ruffini national monthly tracking poll found Mr. Trump plus 11% compared to President Biden on the question of who would make economy work better. It was at a one point difference in late August to Ms. Harris and she was one percent ahead in September.

“What they needed to do is get the economy to a draw, and arguably they’ve done that already,” said Mr. Ruffini. “It is no longer this speciality Trump advantage.”

The shift occurs as Ms. Harris and her liberal supporters pour at least $50 million into ads that attempt to shape perception on her economic agenda as middle-class friendly. The ads floated a list of Harris policy priorities that polls indicate Americans want — ending Grocer-gate, reducing rent and relief from taxes. The ’strategy,’ according to her erstwhile advisers, is to give her an air of being sensitive to issues that affect the workers who will determine the election’s outcome.

And while she is not exactly keeping her distance from Mr. Biden, she is attempting to sought out her own unique niche.

The most recent one was made in Ms. Harris’s speech on Wednesday, at the The Economic Club of Pittsburgh where she defined the choice between two ways economically as a “choice between two fundamentally different visions.” It was refreshing when she called her style ‘pragmatic’ and ‘practical.’ She spoke of her middle-class, middle-American roots and, at one point, dismissed a allusion to Mr. Trump’s outsized legacy — literally — with laughter.

“For Donald Trump, our economy must work in such way as best suited to the owners of tall towers,” she said. “not the people who actually construct it, not the people who install electricity and not the janitors.”

So, Mr. Trump’s team dismissed the idea that the voter was beginning to trust the Democrats after nearly a year of discontent over inflation under Mr. Biden. To drive the message home the Trump campaign has been airing ads that features side by side images of Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris with her saying at the end “Bidenomics is working.”

“If the White House were some random business on main street USA she would be out on the sidewalk early in the morning with a razor blade trying to remove her name from the door,” said Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign spokesman. The columnist expressed confidence, saying She has no part to play in this mess, acknowledging it is a wreck.