The memo: Harris, Trump seek to fix key weaknesses on border and abortion

Vice President Harris and former President Trump are trying to address their biggest electoral vulnerabilities as the clock ticks toward Election Day.

For Harris, immigration is the issue. Polls show Trump with a significant lead there, while many voters look askance at President Biden’s record.

For Trump, abortion is the issue, where Harris holds a correspondingly large lead — and where Republicans and conservatives have suffered a series of setbacks at the ballot box since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

Harris is expected to visit the southern border on Friday as she looks to harden her political tone on the issue, according to The New York Times.

The vice president’s willingness to adopt a more strident rhetoric at the border has drawn some muted criticism from progressive groups. But center-left voices argue it’s the right course.

“Tough talk across the border irritates progressive advocacy groups but few progressive voters,” Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at Third Way, told this column.

Kessler argued that it was critical for Harris to “move to the center on the border, on crime, on pro-growth economics — and I think she’s done all of those things.”

There’s no doubting Harris’ vulnerability when it comes to the border, not least because she played a leading role on the issue in the early stages of the Biden administration.

In an NBC News national poll released Sunday, Trump held a 21-point lead over Harris when registered voters were asked which candidate would be better at “securing the border and controlling immigration.”

Harris has already backed away from some of the more progressive positions she has held in the past. During her bid for the 2020 Democratic nomination, she raised her hand during a debate to indicate she supported decriminalizing unauthorized border crossings. Now she says she believes there should be “consequences” for such border crossings.

Harris also tries to create a tougher image in her TV ads and speeches.

One Harris ad opens with a narrator saying, “Kamala Harris spent years fighting violent crime. As a prosecutor in a border state, she took on drug cartels and jailed gang members for smuggling guns and drugs across the border.”

The ad promised that if elected, she would “hire thousands of additional border agents and crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking.”

Trump, meanwhile, has taken an idiosyncratic path on abortion.

The former president is proud of his role in nominating the three conservative justices to the Supreme Court who played a pivotal role in overturning Roe v. Wade.

But Trump is cautious on the topic of a federal ban on abortion — and on whether he would veto such a ban if he were president and it passed Congress.

During his debate with Harris on September 10 in Philadelphia, Trump appeared to rule out signing a federal ban on abortion.

After Harris stated that he would sign such a measure, Trump responded, “I will not sign a ban and there is no reason to sign a ban.”

But when asked by moderator Linsey Davis whether he would veto such a ban, Trump dodged a direct answer, saying the situation would not arise because such a measure would not get enough votes in Congress.

When pressed further by Davis about a claim by the former president’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), that Trump would veto such a ban, Trump replied, “Well, I haven’t discussed it with JD, to be honest with you.”

Electorally, the abortion issue for Trump is the mirror image of immigration for Harris. The NBC News poll showed Trump trailing by 21 points on the question of who would be better at “handling the abortion issue.”

Trump has in the past attributed the Republican Party’s disappointing performance in the 2022 midterm elections to the abortion issue.

Meanwhile, Democrats are hoping the issue will motivate voters and swing the close election in their favor.

In recent days, Trump has stirred up fresh controversy by suggesting that if he were back in the White House, women would “no longer think about abortion.”

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) told CNN’s “State of the Union” that the claim was “ridiculous” and accused Trump of being “just crazy.”

“This man just doesn’t understand what the average woman has to deal with in her life in this country, and how could he? He hasn’t lived a normal life,” Whitmer said.

Harris tried to focus attention on abortion this week. In an interview Monday, she told Wisconsin Public Radio that she supports abolishing the Senate filibuster to enshrine the protections of Roe v. Wade.

“I’ve been very clear,” Harris said. “I think we need to abolish the filibuster for Roe and get to the point where it takes 51 votes to put back into law the protection of reproductive freedom and the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own bodies without their government telling them what to do.”

However, GOP strategist Brad Blakeman claimed that Trump handled the abortion issue “perfectly” and that he was merely stating facts in emphasizing that the issue is now largely decided at the state level.

“American voters don’t see a wholesale reversal of Roe v. Wade,” Blakeman said. “What they see is each state choosing its own path on abortion.”

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.