Harris vs. Trump: America's mood-swing election

Former President Trump sees fear as the primary motivator — fear of illegal immigration, crime, inflation, a declining America. He believes swing voters will embrace his darker view and demand protection, even if they don't love his style.

• Vice President Harris sees hope (or conflict exhaustion) as the primary motivator — hope to move beyond Trump and fighting, hope in a rising/rebounding America. She believes voters are tired of doom-and-gloom.

The big picture: Both strategies have proven effective in elections over the past two decades. But misreading the national mood can kill a campaign.

• Harris' strategy smacks of Barack Obama's election theory. Obama is privately advising Harris and his top political mind, David Plouffe, was brought aboard to expand her team beyond Biden holdovers.
• Obama famously wrapped his campaigns around hope and change. It worked. This helps explain why Harris has dropped President Biden's central obsession with threats to democracy for more hopeful, future-focused messaging — including a new rallying cry: "We're not going back."

Trump's strategy — and his vision of a dystopian future under Democratic rule — has been consistent since he rode a wave of populist anger to the White House in 2016.

• In 2020, voters grew tired of the daily chaos wrought by Trump's presidency and COVID, and bet on Biden to guide the country back to normalcy.
• Four years later, Gallup's tracking poll shows just 18% of Americans are satisfied with the direction of the country — offering fertile ground for Trump to revive and refine his politics of grievance.
• "The world has gone to sh*t in the last 2 weeks," the Trump campaign blared in a fundraising email this week. "The stock market is CRASHING Unemployment is RISING! Wars in the Middle East are spiraling OUT OF CONTROL!"

What they're saying: "There's a large segment of America that does acknowledge things are tough out there," veteran GOP pollster Frank Luntz told Axios. "But they're tired of getting yelled at, and they're tired of gloom and doom. And they want hope rather than blame."

• "Trump is not a good news bear candidate — he's a bad news bear candidate," Luntz added. "He's going to be negative no matter what. But you have to be credible in your attacks."

Zoom in: Watch Harris' early events with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and you'll see — and hear — their shared obsession with seeming and sounding joyous, bullish, fun-loving.

• "The one thing I will not forgive [Republicans] for is they try to steal the joy from this country," Walz declared at a rally in Detroit. "But you know what? Our next president brings the joy. She emanates the joy."

The other side: Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Trump's running-mate, captured the GOP's frustrations with the "joyful warrior" narrative when asked this week: "What makes you happy?"

• "I smile at a lot of things — including bogus questions from the media, man," Vance responded to a reporter in Michigan.
• "I think most people in our country, they can be happy-go-lucky sometimes and enjoy things sometimes — and turn on the news and recognize what's going on in this country is a disgrace."

Between the lines: Harris is benefiting enormously from being a fresh face that many voters — at least so far — don't blame for the perceived failures of the Biden administration.

• "She has been able to remake herself in a way that I've never seen in American politics before," Luntz marveled.
• "People think the system is broken, they think the government is broken, they think the border is broken, they think the economy is broken. That all works in [Trump's] favor. But what they don't think is that Harris is responsible for that."