Making up for lost time Since taking control of the House in 2023, Republicans have focused much of their energy on investigations into President Joe Biden and his family, searching for evidence of possible wrongdoing by the White House chief in hopes of undermining his re-election prospects. Twenty months and multiple hearings later, they have produced an unreleased impeachment inquiry report, largely related to the complex financial dealings of the son and brother of a man who is no longer running for president.

The entire Republican Party, from former President Donald Trump on down, is therefore scrambling to adjust its strategy to confront Vice President Kamala Harris. And in the House, Republicans are also rushing to turn to new investigative targets with just three months to go until the election. But they are essentially starting from scratch. For the past year and a half, Republicans have spent little time investigating Harris. It wasn’t until last week that Rep. James Comer, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, announced an investigation into Harris’s involvement in immigration at the southern border. In a letter to Troy Miller, the acting director of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Rep. James Comer asked for all documents and communications between the agency and Harris related to the southern border or illegal immigration. In the letter, Mr Comer wrote that because Ms Harris "has been assigned a key role in President Biden's response to the border crisis, the American people deserve to know the full extent of her role".

The goal is clear: Comer wants to show that Harris has failed to address the southern border, which has been one of the Trump campaign’s main attacks on Harris. And, to add weight, the House of Representatives also voted in late July to symbolically censure Harris for what it said were the Biden administration’s handling of the border. The effort has not worked. But so far, the investigations have not uncovered any new information about Harris that could help the Trump campaign. And Republicans don’t have much time to figure it out, with the election just three months away and Congress on recess until September. By contrast, Republicans’ efforts to investigate the border issue show that Harris has been actively working to stem the record flow of migrants into the United States. President Biden has not given Vice President Harris a specific title or responsibility for overseeing enforcement policies at the US-Mexico border, as the Trump campaign has described. But she has played a prominent role in trying to ensure that the migration wave does not get worse. After record numbers of migrants crossing the southern border at times during the first three years of the Biden administration, the number of border crossings has now dropped to its lowest level since Biden and Harris took office. True, her initial efforts to handle her role and the administration’s policies were widely criticized as “clumsy and counterproductive,” especially when the public questioned why she did not visit the border. But Harris’s subsequent efforts to persuade international companies to invest in Central America and create jobs for would-be migrants have had some success. Instead of trying to turn away or detain migrants at the US-Mexico border, Harris successfully lobbied Japanese auto parts maker Yazaki to build a $10 million plant in a high-migration area of ​​western Guatemala. She pushed a Swiss-based coffee company to increase purchases by more than $100 million in a top coffee-growing region in Central America. Harris also lobbied leaders from dozens of companies and organizations, raising more than $5 billion in public and private funds to finance economic development in Central American countries. “$5 billion is not a lot of money, but it’s not easy to come by,” said Mark Schneider, who worked with Latin American and Caribbean countries at the US Agency for International Development under the Clinton administration. “And, most importantly, it involves job creation.” Jonathan Fantini-Porter, CEO of the Central American Partnership, a public-private partnership that Harris has a leadership role in, said the $5 billion has created 30,000 jobs and that another 60,000 jobs will be created once the Central American factories are completed. By addressing the root causes of the problem, the “general” actually scored points on border policy, thereby standing firm against attacks from Mr. Trump’s camp.

What do the polls say? As Election Day approaches, polls are more important now than when President Biden was still in the race. And, to Trump’s dismay, recent results have shown a clear increase in support for Harris. According to an Ipsos poll released on August 8, Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump by 42% to 37%. That’s a huge increase in the 59-year-old leader’s lead since the July 22-23 Reuters/Ipsos poll (when she led Trump by 3 points, 37% to 34%). Another poll, conducted by NPR, PBS News and Marist, also showed Harris leading Trump by 3 points (48% to 45%). Meanwhile, a CBS News poll conducted from July 30 to August 2 showed that Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris were tied in the top seven battleground states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada). The above data all indicate that the Democratic Party's "change of general" is reasonable. Unlike President Biden, Ms. Harris was not only not overwhelmed by Mr. Trump but also created new, "tougher" challenges for her opponent. According to the New York Times, Ms. Harris has the opportunity to win back Arab, Muslim and black voters for the Democratic Party. For Arab and Muslim voters, this comes from her more humane approach to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. As for black voters, things are progressing positively again. Black voters' support for the Democratic Party has been basically consistent since the civil rights era. In 2020, Mr. Biden won 92% of the black vote, which helped him win the race. But in a Pew Research poll in May, 18% of black voters said they were likely to vote for Mr. Trump, up from 50% in the 2020 election. After Mr. Biden withdrew and Ms. Harris stepped in, the tide turned. Last month, Win With Black Women, a network of black women leaders, held a Zoom call to support Ms. Harris. Nearly 44,000 people, mostly women, joined and raised more than $1.5 million in less than three hours. That same week, more than 53,000 black male activists joined the Win With Black Men online conference to show their support for Ms. Harris. Organizers announced that they had successfully raised more than $1.3 million for Ms. Harris' campaign in just four hours.

Representative Jim Clyburn, one of the most prominent black leaders in the Democratic Party, has also recently endorsed Harris. Clyburn has played a key role in the victories of previous presidential candidates. In 2008, as a House majority whip, he endorsed Barack Obama during the first African-American president’s successful campaign. Clyburn’s endorsement of President Biden ahead of the 2020 South Carolina Democratic primary is also credited with reviving Biden’s campaign, leading to a decisive victory. On July 22, the Congressional Black Caucus, which includes more than 60 members of the House and Senate, announced its support for Harris. A day earlier, Letitia James, the first black person to hold the position of Attorney General of New York, also said she would lead “a coalition of every black attorney general in the country” to support Vice President Kamala Harris. Notably, Letitia James’s coalition includes attorneys general from swing states like Nevada and Minnesota. All of which shows that Harris has a great opportunity to correct the mistakes that Mr. Biden made. And, that is certainly not what Mr. Trump wants at all, with only 3 months left until the election.

cand.com.vn

Source: https://cand.com.vn/hau-truong/bau-cu-tong-thong-my-2024-co-qua-it-thoi-gian-de-dang-cong-hoa-be-lai-i740412/