Kamala Harris has faced many issues since Joe Biden withdrew

US Elections : After a week in which the vice president faced substantial criticism and negative polls, Kamala Harris’s honeymoon time looks to be gone for her White House candidacy.

The tsunami of support that had been absent from President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign ended on July 21 for Harris and her running partner for 2024, Tim Walz.

However, during the last seven days, Harris has encountered a number of problems that might jeopardize her 2024 candidacy.

These include accusations leveled against her and the Biden administration subsequent to the discovery of six Israeli captives dead in a tunnel in the Rafah area of southern Gaza. Harris had already informed Israel that, in the midst of its conflict with the militant Palestinian organization Hamas, it would be a “mistake” to begin a military operation in Rafah.

In reaction to Harris’s criticism of Donald Trump’s recent visit to Arlington National Cemetery, the relatives of the American soldiers who perished in the August 2021 bombing assault at Kabul airport during the pullout from Afghanistan have united in condemnation of Harris over the course of the last week.

In addition, Harris is seeing some concerning trends in the polls: Trump is narrowing the vice president’s advantage over the outgoing president, and forecasters and bookies seem to be favoring the Republican in this tight contest.

Political science professor Carl Cavalli of the University of North Georgia claimed that the contest between Harris and Trump has turned into a “classic two-month sprint to the finish line” and that there is less and less new energy for the Democratic candidate.

“No matter what, over the last week or so, the Harris momentum has stopped and possibly reversed at least somewhat,” Cavalli told media report. “They (Harris and Walz) no longer have the spotlight to themselves.”

Republican communications consultant T.J. McCormack said that any “less-than-stellar few days would constitute a bad week” for the vice president after a “stratospheric liftoff” to her campaign.

“For a coddled candidate the real world can be a terrible thing, especially when that world has several multi-front wars, murdered hostages and polling firms carving up swing states with scalpels,” McCormack told media report. “Kamala loved the big stage, now she’s in the trenches.”

September 2: Harris’s prior 5-point advantage over Trump from late August has been “steadily cut” to just under 2 percentage points, according to an ActiVote survey of 1,000 likely voters.

In other news, Trump’s odds of winning November’s election have increased over the last seven days, according to the 2024 election prediction model developed by statistician and forecaster Nate Silver.

On September 1, Silver reported that his model indicated that Trump had a 55.8% probability of receiving the necessary number of Electoral College votes to win, while Harris’s was 44%. Trump’s odds of winning the 2024 election had risen to 60.1 percent as of September 5, while Harris’ had dropped to 39.7 percent.

Despite Harris’s general lead in the national polls, the outcomes of races that are seen to be contests for victory are becoming more important.

“National polls look decent-to-good for Harris, but the probability of an Electoral College/popular vote split is up to almost 20 percent,” Silver said.

By contrast, the projection model used by 538 indicates that Harris has a 57 percent probability of winning, while Trump’s chances are 42 percent.

Over the previous seven days, the online betting firm Polymarket also raised Trump’s odds of winning over Harris. Trump is predicted by the site to have a 50% probability of winning the election, with Harris coming in at number 48, on September 1st. The app allows users to wager “yes” or “no” on the possibility of international events.

Trump was leading Harris by 4 points on 47 percent as of September 6, with a 51 percent probability.

Nonetheless, Harris has some solace in the knowledge that she has a much larger war chest than Trump as she enters the last two months of the election campaign.

In August, Harris’s campaign reported raising $361 million, while Trump’s only brought in $130 million. At the end of the previous month, the Harris campaign reported having $404 million in cash on hand, compared to $295 million for Trump’s campaign.

Sean Freeder, an associate professor of political science at the University of North Florida, hypothesized that, “barring another major unforeseen event,” Harris may have peaked in the polls at this point.

“Not absolute vote share, but at least in terms of vote share relative to Trump,” Freeder said to media report. “Until the debate on September 10, which offers one of the few clear chances to level the playing field, I wouldn’t anticipate any significant changes in the polls.

“Historically, debates have had almost little impact on the results of the presidential contest; however, this may alter if there is a significant performance disparity between the contenders. It would be necessary for one candidate to do very well and for the other to perform exceptionally badly. In the event that this happened, Freeder said, “I would anticipate that Harris would do far better than Trump.

Harris has suffered this week in more ways than simply the polls. Gold Star families also put the vice president under great scrutiny just after the third anniversary of the suicide attack that claimed the lives of thirteen American soldiers during Biden’s-supervised withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Prior to Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery, Harris had denounced the former president’s campaign crew for allegedly engaging in a confrontation with cemetery employees who were attempting to stop them from recording.

“Politics has no place there,” Harris said in a statement. “This is a man who is unable to comprehend anything other than service to himself.”

Trump responded by posting many videos showing Gold Star families criticizing Harris and holding the Biden administration accountable for the military personnel’ deaths in Afghanistan.

In a video he released on social media, Jim McCollum, the father of Lance Corporal Rylee McCollum, stated: “Your recent words on Trump’s visit to Arlington are nothing but lies and treachery.

“How do you sleep at night knowing it was you—this administration, you and Biden, you being the last one in the room—[who] are responsible for the death of our 13 kids?”

Corporal Hunter Lopez’s father, Herman Lopez, said that in the three years after the assault on the Kabul airport, his family had “not seen any support” from Harris.

“As a Gold Star father, I know that you have not supported us, I know that you have not supported other Gold Star families,” Lopez stated. “Your support has not been shown, therefore please cease posting remarks of this kind. Your remarks are meaningless and hollow.

Examining Israeli Hostages

Following the discovery of six hostage’s remains in a tunnel under Rafah, including American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Harris and the Biden administration were again subjected to tough questioning this week. Last month, Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, the parents of Goldberg-Polin, gave speeches at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The findings came after Israel was forewarned by Biden and Harris not to invade Rafah in the Gaza Strip. An Israeli invasion would be a “red line” for the United States, according to Biden in March.

That same month, Harris told ABC News that Israel would be making a “huge mistake” if it launched a military campaign in Rafah.

“We’re looking at about 1.5 million people in Rafah who were there because they were told to go there, most of them,” Harris added. “And so we’ve been very clear that it would be a mistake to move into Rafah with any type of military operation.”

Harris said that although Israel has previously claimed to be holding captives in Rafah, she was not “ruling out” the possibility of negative outcomes in the event of a military operation.

Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, was among those who denounced Harris and Biden upon the discovery of the dead captives.

It is important to remember that these captives were found in the tunnels under Rafah. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris used a weapons embargo to attempt to prevent Israel from joining at that point for months, Cotton said on NBC’s Meet The Press.

“It was even stated by Kamala Harris that Israel should not enter Rafah because she had’studied the maps.'” Instead of pressuring Israel to temper its reaction, the Biden-Harris administration ought to have allowed Israel to prevail right away, Cotton said. “For 11 months, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have put more pressure on Israel than they’ve put on Hamas and Iran and Iran’s other terror proxies.”

In recent days, Harris has also come under increased scrutiny, with allegations surfacing that she avoided speaking to reporters gathered outside Air Force Two on September 2 by putting on plug-in earbuds.

“Though she wasn’t a senator for very long, she was an expert at the “Can’t speak, on a phone” routine,” NBC News White House reporter Mike Memoli said on X, the previous Twitter platform.

McDonald’s Differenc

In addition, Trump has revived allegations that Harris fabricated his employment history at McDonald’s, refuting many times that the vice president had summer jobs at the Golden Arches in the 1980s while attending Howard University in between semesters.

“Comrade Kamala Harris made up her McDonald’s employment story. They consider her to be ‘crazy,’ even though she never worked there,” Trump tweeted on Truth Social Sunday.

Kamala claimed to work at McDonald’s, although she never was. False!”

Harris has previously discussed his time spent working at the fast-food establishment, saying, “I did the ice cream and the french fries.” She introduced herself on X last weekend, calling herself “a daughter of Oakland, California, who was raised by a working mother and had a summer job at McDonald’s.”

Cavalli said that when it comes to possible voter scrutiny, Trump and Harris are almost on par with each other with two months till the election in November.

Both candidates will have to respond to events as they occur. “They both have to deal with the fallout from their mistakes,” Cavalli told Newsweek.

“Yes, Harris still has the opportunity to close the gap and win, but she is no longer in the driver’s seat. Trump is able to behave similarly and must take the same considerations.”