James Morrow: So much for joy, Harris is hitting the panic button

If you want to know just how quietly terrified Kamala Harris and her team are about polling day just two weeks from now, consider this, writes James Morrow.

If you want to know just how quietly terrified Kamala Harris and her team are about polling day just two weeks from now, consider this pair of events.

Two days ago Democrats were roasting Donald Trump for holding a “staged” event at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s where he donned the apron, worked the French fry station, and handed out meals to customers.

A brilliant piece of political theatre to be sure but to hear the over-caffeinated Kamala Harris campaign tell it, it was a dark and shocking event.

Never before in the history of democracy, they suggested, had a photo op been staged to make a candidate look good.

Instead, vision of Trump – a natural showman – chatting to voters through a drive-thru window was whipped up and presented as yet another Republican threat to democracy.

That would be funny enough.

But note this: Barely 24 hours later, Harris herself held a town hall meeting for the cameras, with an audience of supposedly ordinary voters, and not one of them was allowed to ask a spontaneous question.

US Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris disembraks from Air Force Two . Picture: AFP

Early on in the piece a woman asked the event moderator – sometime NBC News anchor Maria Shriver – if ordinary folk in the crowd would be able to put their own questions to Harris.

“You’re not, unfortunately we have some predetermined questions,” came the moderator’s reply.

“Hopefully I’ll be able to ask some of the questions that might be in your head, I hope so,” she continued.

It was like that time on The Simpsons when Monty Burns was running for office and Lisa was forced to ask him on camera why his campaign had the momentum of a runaway freight train.

On one level, it’s the sort of thing that is expected but not surprising from the Democrats.

Harris is a notoriously weak off-the-cuff performer who all but begins her coffee order with thirty seconds on how she grew up in a middle class neighbourhood.

Time after time she has been caught short when asked simple questions like what would she do differently from the president whom she served for the past three and a half years.

Why would they risk it? For Team Harris and their pals in the media, a little hypocrisy is a small price to pay for (as they see it) saving democracy.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump hands off an order of fries after working at McDonald's. Picture: AP

But on another, it suggests how on the nose the Harris team is right now – and how despite being seemingly neck and neck, momentum has swung behind Trump in the last two weeks of the campaign.

Remember, the Harris campaign is caught in a bind.

On the one hand they need to get their candidate in front of the voters, but on the other it seems like every time she gets in front of the cameras she turns them off.

After peaking around the time of the Democrat convention, when there was all the colour and movement around Joe Biden being forced out of the race, Harris’s great joy-based campaign has been in the doldrums.

Since her early surge Trump has all but closed the gap, with less than a point separating the candidates in the respected Real Clear Politics average of major polls.

And remember that at this point in the 2020 race, which Biden won with 51.3 per cent of the popular vote, this same average had the Democrats up by nearly nine points.

Nate Silver, one of the best polling analysts in the business, just barely gives the edge to Trump, while betting markets are paying $2.40 for a Harris win and just $1.57 for her opponent.

This diabolical tug of war has led to some bizarre calls, including Harris’s move to skip the annual Al Smith dinner in New York – one of the few high profile set piece events between the conventions and election day when a candidate can get some national cut through.

According to multiple accounts, Harris – who churned through staffers as a senator and vice president – spent a good half hour berating her campaign manager for the decision.

The panicked misery of the campaign seeped through in that same town hall event, too,

Harris, who until now was best known for cackling wildly while never actually saying anything remotely funny, laid the boot into Trump for having a sense of humour.

“In many, many ways Donald Trump is an unserious man,” she fumed at the town hall.

“There are things that he says that will become the subject of skits and laughter and jokes.”

So much for joy, it seems.