Inside the Democrat implosion as Kamala’s team is gripped by fear and ‘vibes’ drain away: ‘Nobody should be even slightly optimistic right now’

Democrats spend another week wondering whether Kamala Harris has let her momentum in the 2024 race slip away completely.

A killer’s string of bad PR for the Harris campaign this week included continued declines in the polls, a widely panned CNN town hall, Donald Trump beating her to the punch with Joe Rogan and even fellow Democrats decrying her rhetoric .

Harris now trails Trump in the polling average in every single swing state Real clear politics.

Fear now grips Harris’ campaign as the vibes fade away.

One Democratic strategist admitted to The Hill: “Yes, it’s close, but are things going our way? No. And no one wants to admit that openly. Can we still win? Maybe. Should anyone be even slightly optimistic at this point? No.’

While some noted that Harris is taking risks by teaming up with Liz Cheney and holding rallies in red Texas in the final weeks of the campaign, another strategist said bluntly:If this is a vibe electionthe current atmosphere is not great.’

Team Harris was clearly hoping to make a profit from its exclusive town hall with CNN’s Anderson Cooper in the swing state of Pennsylvania, which was held in lieu of a debate in which Trump declined to participate.

But it was Harris’s inability to provide clear answers on both domestic and foreign policy, and characteristically meandering responses throughout the 90-minute session, that even left-wing CNN panelists grilled her afterward.

Veteran Democratic strategist David Axelrod, who helped elect Barack Obama and served as one of his top advisers, summed up Harris’ performance as “Word Salad City.”

Van Jones, another prominent talking head on CNN who also worked in the Obama administration, echoed Axelrod’s main point.

“The word salad gets on my nerves,” he said bluntly on air after the town hall wrapped.

“I think some dodges aren’t necessary.”

And CNN’s Dana Bash said of Harris afterward that “if her goal was to close the deal, they’re not sure she did it.”

Some of Harris’s answers even angered fellow Democrats, such as when she agreed with Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, who this week repeated his claim that the former president wanted to rule as a fascist.

“Yes, I do,” she responded, echoing Joe Biden’s take on the matter. ‘Yes, I do. And I also believe that the people who know him best in this area can be trusted.’

New York Mayor Eric Adams sharply criticized her at a press conference on Saturday for that response.

“I have had these comments thrown at me from a number of political leaders in the city; my answer is ‘No,’ he said.

Adams criticized comparisons of Trump to Adolf Hitler and asked Harris to tone it down.

‘I know what Hitler did, and I know what a fascist regime looks like. “I think, as I have called for again and again, that at the level of conversation we can all lower the temperature,” he added.

Liberals have become even more despondent after it emerged that Trump’s interview with Joe Rogan racked up a whopping 17 million YouTube views in less than 24 hours.

The three-hour meeting covered a wide range of topics, including UFOs, the John F. Kennedy assassination files, the border and healthy food in the US.

As soon as the episode was released just after 10pm Eastern time on Friday evening, the ratings skyrocketed by 300,000 in the first 30 minutes.

By comparison, Kamala Harris’ appearance on the Call her Daddy podcast with Alex Cooper has only received 685,000 views in the two weeks since it went live.

The vice president was also scheduled to be interviewed by Rogan but had to withdraw due to “scheduling conflicts,” a spokesperson said.

However, since details about Trump’s ratings emerged, many liberals have been urging Harris to sit down with the popular podcast host.

Ultimately, it may be the polls and Trump’s hold on several key swing states that push Harris.

She trails Trump in the polling averages in every purple state: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia.

Biden was able to capture all of these except North Carolina in 2020, while the loss of the three Midwestern states spelled the end of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, pushing Trump to the White House.

Senator John Fetterman warned in an interview with the New York Times that Trump’s message is as strong as ever in Pennsylvania.

‘It’s amazing. I did an event in Indiana County – very, very red. And there was this superstore with Trump stuff, and it was a hundred feet long, and there were dozens of T-shirts and hats and bumper stickers and all kinds of, I mean, it’s like, Where did all this come from? “It’s something that has taken on a life of its own,” he said.

Fetterman praised Harris’ campaign but was wary of Trump’s special relationship with his purple state and the appeal of adding Elon Musk’s support, saying that in some ways the Tesla CEO is “a bigger star is then Trump’.

“It’s just… it’s real. And now Musk is joining him. I mean, for a lot of people that’s Tony Stark. That’s the richest man in the world. And he’s clearly, and undeniably, a brilliant man, and he says, Hey, that’s my man for president. That’s really going to matter.’

A Poll from Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania shows that among likely voters, Trump has a 50 to 49 percent lead over Harris, but among all registered voters, the vice president still has a 48 percent to 44 percent lead.

In a separate poll from Emerson College, also from the Keystone State, Trump has a one-point lead among voters, indicating how tight the race really is in Pennsylvania.

The poll puts the ex-president at 49 percent and the vice president at 48 percent. Another three percent of voters had another choice or were undecided.

Democrats like Jim Manley, who helped run the powerful political machine of the late Nevada Senator Harry Reid, are outraged by the way things were handled because they still see this as a winnable election.

“It’s damn frustrating that it’s getting so close, given how extreme and unhinged Trump’s rhetoric has become in recent weeks,” he said.

Now that Beyonce and Michelle Obama have hosted campaign events for Harris this weekend, he hopes they are part of a strategy to get the vice president over the line.

“I hope and trust that they have a plan,” Manley added.