How Harris aims to keep drawing eyeballs as the hard campaigning begins

At a leadership retreat for top aides in Wilmington last week, Jen O’Malley Dillon – the campaign chair hired by Joe Biden and retained by Kamala Harris – ticked through the battleground states and warned them: the vice president still did not have any one sure path to 270 electoral votes.

At a leadership retreat for top aides in Wilmington last week, Jen O’Malley Dillon – the campaign chair hired by Joe Biden and retained by Kamala Harris – ticked through the battleground states and warned them: the vice president still did not have any one sure path to 270 electoral votes. Pennsylvania looks rough, though very possible, by their internal numbers before the debate. North Carolina, disappointing Democrats every election for the last 15 years, is feeling better to them this time around than Arizona, which Biden narrowly won four years ago. Nevada and Georgia both seem possible, though depending on the poll, can take a lot of squinting. Michigan and Wisconsin are looking like the best of the bunch for Harris, according to the campaign’s internal numbers. As pumped as Harris aides are about her debate performance earlier this week, they don’t think it changed any of that. That makes for a lot of potential paths to victory based on the current and projected internal data, O’Malley Dillon told them last week, but multiple top aides on the Harris campaign told CNN they fear that if the election were held next Tuesday instead of eight Tuesdays from now, Trump still would be in a good position to win. After two and a half slower weeks since she closed out her convention in Chicago, a number of leading Democrats are stressing out that Harris could be in danger of losing the excitement and good vibes they need to overpower what they expect to be high and devoted turnout for Trump. But that is not the feeling in Harris campaign headquarters, where many conversations focus on the 5-6% of voters still showing up undecided in battleground states, the set opinions those voters have of Trump and the continuing interest they tend to say they have in learning more about Harris. Top aides tend to talk these days about “eyeballs” and “moments,” and however many different plays they can come up with. They will keep having Harris at big rallies, but slip smaller events in between, building out the affinity groups and leaning into targeted appeals like playing up the endorsement from former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney. Harris’ appearance with the National Association of Black Journalists next week, for example, scheduled for Philadelphia on National Voter Registration Day, was a very orchestrated choice.