Pathetic Kamala dodges questions like the plague – now her campaign has stalled! But, asks ANDREW NEIL, does Trump have what it takes to expose her at Tuesday’s crucial debate

Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign has stalled, the momentum that sprung from her coronation in Chicago last month gone.

Her popularity may be long gone and her much-praised ‘vibe’ may be just a memory, whatever it was.

She’s still in a stronger position than her boss, Joe Biden, who struggled against Trump before being forcibly ousted by the Democratic Party bigwigs. But she’s already lost momentum after a stellar start to her presidential bid. She’s certainly not backing down from her challenger, and may even back off a bit.

However you look at it, the race for the White House in 2024 is still a close one.

The latest national polls give Harris a two- to three-point lead over Trump, which is within the usual margin of error for polls. Trump could lose the popular vote and still win the presidency, as he did in 2016. More importantly, polls in the key battleground states are even tighter, which is why both parties still have everything on the line.

According to the latest national polls, Harris has a two- to three-point lead over Trump, which is within the usual margin of error for polls.

The latest CNN poll gives Trump a five-point lead in Arizona, Harris a six-point lead in Wisconsin and a five-point lead in Michigan. In both states, Harris is significantly ahead of Biden.

But in Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania it’s close, with barely a single point difference. In Pennsylvania, perhaps the most crucial swing state of all, it’s even-stevens with both candidates at 47 percent.

Harris’ best hope is that Trump will continue his meandering, unfocused, petty campaign based on pathetic personal insults rather than attacking her paltry record and policy flip-flops. There is little to suggest that Harris knows how to get her show back on the road without Trump’s help. Team Harris has hermetically sealed her off from all unscripted human interaction.

Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, are hardly running a textbook campaign. It’s remarkably subpar. But at least they’ve given more than 30 interviews between them, which allows for some measure of control over where they stand.

Harris survived last week’s hyper-controlled CNN interview without any major gaffes, though she has hardly established herself as a woman of substance. Her campaign managers have no intention of taking any more risks. They are keeping her out of harm’s way by avoiding media attention and unscripted interactions like the plague.

This is taken to ridiculous lengths. As she walked from her limo to Air Force Two on Monday, she ostentatiously stuck her headphones in both ears, held the phone in her hand, and pretended to listen intently.

This is a well-known trick to avoid media inquiries, by hinting “can’t talk, I have an important call.” The problem is, Harris isn’t very good at it. She was clearly cosplaying (badly) and someone needs to tell her that you don’t have to hold the phone to your ear when you’re using earbuds. Harris is beloved in Hollywood, but in this performance she’s not an Oscar winner.

It’s all rather pathetic for someone running to be leader of the free world. But you can understand her team’s concerns. There’s something disturbingly false and shallow about her.

On Wednesday, she went off-script at a rally in New Hampshire to condemn the latest shooting, this time at a Georgia high school. You could almost hear the hearts of Team Harris beating. With good reason, because her improvisation about the tragic killing of four began with her riff: “I love Gen Z. I just love Gen Z.”

Bizarre. Democrats like to paint Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, as weird. I get that. But I think you could put Harris in the same category.

I suspect Harris will have as much trouble getting her campaign back on track as Trump did. She’s running a Potemkin village of a presidential campaign: look behind the facade and there’s nothing there. Her website still hasn’t been burdened with anything as vulgar as policy. It’s a pop-up campaign that’s lost its novelty and is already looking worn around the edges. Pop-ups, after all, aren’t built to last.

Tim Walz, her running mate, also turned out not to be the asset she had hoped for: the simple, folksy, no-nonsense Western dad chosen to counter Trump’s attacks that she was a San Francisco radical.

Turns out that down-home Tim, in reality the leftist governor of a leftist state (Minnesota), is too often a stranger to the truth for someone who lives a heartbeat away from the White House. Or, as my old mother would have said, he’s a liar.

He lied while running for Congress in 2006 about his 1995 arrest for drunk and reckless driving, caught driving under the influence in his home state of Nebraska for 96 mph in a 55 mph zone. It was all a misunderstanding, he claimed. In 2018, he was forced to admit it was all true.

He lied again when he claimed that he had his two children through IVF treatments, which he said Vance wanted to ban. His wife had to explain that she had not used IVF. And Vance (or Trump) does not want to ban IVF either.

He lied for the third time when he claimed he had carried weapons “in time of war,” when despite all his time in the Army National Guard, he had never deployed to a war zone.

And at least he was economical with the truth by taking credit as a football coach for turning a team from losers to state champions. Turns out he was a volunteer assistant coach, not the head coach.

Walz has become synonymous with spreading self-serving half-truths.

Some of his extended family in Nebraska have made a point of saying they’re voting for Trump. To be fair, they’re only loosely connected to him. Even more damaging, his brother said he wasn’t “the type of character” you want in the White House. And brothers can cause serious problems for prominent candidates. Just ask Jimmy Carter.

Tim Walz, her running mate, also turned out not to be the asset she had hoped for: the simple, folksy, no-nonsense Western father who was chosen to counter Trump’s attacks.

Moreover, Walz seems as determined as Harris to avoid the proper media attention. When asked at a trade show in Minnesota about the killing of six hostages, including an American, in Gaza, he turned and fled. It was not the time to exalt his vice presidential credentials.

The campaign is reportedly refusing to subject him to major on-air interrogations on the grounds that “he may not fully understand where Harris stands on every issue.” Which I guess is fair enough. Harris isn’t.

Both Harris and Trump are currently focused on their base battles. Both are campaigning to maximize turnout among their cult followers. Neither is doing much to reach out to moderates and independents outside their base who are still deciding how to vote. Who will do it first and actually win in November.

This is what makes next Tuesday’s Trump v Harris debate in Philadelphia so crucial. It was rightly said that the first party to drop its gerontocratic candidate would seize the initiative. The Democrats did just that, and that’s why they’re back in the race.

The outcome could now ultimately be determined by which candidate can appeal beyond his constituency.

I doubt we will ever see another debate as decisive as the one in late June that demolished Biden’s hopes of running again. But the winner on Tuesday night will be the one who reaches beyond his true believers. The stakes could not be higher.