Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on new polls showing Harris leading Trump in key battlegrounds

♪♪ geoff: A reset in the race for president? Fresh bowling shows the democratic ticket having an edge in three key states. >> Hello. >> Hello. Geoff: Vice president Harris leads former president trump in three key battleground states according to surveys, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Walk us through the numbers because this is still a competitive race. >> Those are the three battleground states that if Harris were to win the one of those three in a single electoral vote in Nebraska, she would win. She could lose all the sun belt states and still win the electoral college. What you are noticing and we have talked previously about where her success has come, she has consolidated the democratic base. A lot of folks sitting on the sideline who were either not happy with Biden or were uninspired by Biden or were thinking about voting for a third-party candidate, they have now consolidated behind Harris' candidacy. Why that matters is the two sides of equal interest in the election. The parties are equally interested and enthused. What about the other people in the race who still haven't checked in? That is where we will see two things going on for the next 80 number of days we have left. The trump campaign fighting to define Harris will be number one. The second will be to define what the race is about. If you are Harris, you want the race to be about turning the page. And about Donald Trump's liabilities. If you are trump, you want to make this about the fact that Harris is not a new base, she is part of the incumbent party, the incumbent party that many voters say they are disappointed in. Geoff: There are some vulnerabilities that Harris has. Voters prefer, trump on immigration and the economy. Harris's economic policy is expected to rollout this week. What should we be expecting? >> And Democrats broadly, so any Democrat, a generic Democrat would probably have the same issue with the economy and immigration. Voters for a long time have felt Republicans are stronger on the economy and immigration. Harris in her stump speech has been alluding to where she is likely going with her policy rollout and we don' exactly know what that will entail in terms of the rollout, but she talks about prices are too high. I'm going to bring those prices down. The way she talks about bringing prices down is taking care of junk fees. She talks about it in a way that leans more strongly on the I know it is rough out there. I think we are going to see that. When she was in Nevada, she announced she supports something former president trump announced several months ago, which is the idea of not taxing tipped wages for service workers. She is specific it is for service workers. Some of the critics of trump's proposal is that it also, lawyers and hedge fund people could change their income to be tips instead of wages. In terms of Harris and this proposal, none of it is really fleshed out. There is still no policy section on her website. There was one at one of the Biden presidential campaign website, but it is three weeks in and they are headed toward the convention. Partially, she is in a race to just keep the momentum and the good vibes and the very excited Democrats, keep that going as long as she can. Geoff: Over the weekend, Donald Trump was still focused on crowd sizes. He is famously obsessed with this issue of crowd sizes and there was this brazenly false claim about Harris' crowd size in Detroit. He is suggesting she used artificial intelligence to make the crowds appear larger. He is saying that the crowd in fact did not exist. You were there. >> I was there. It definitely existed. The second she walked off air force two the crowd went absolutely wild. You know what it reminds me of? Trump rallies. Trump rallies from an earlier era when he would roll into an airport, buzz over the airport, and just have incredible excitement when he got off the plane. Geoff: Him saying something like this, doesn't it create an opportunity for Democrats to make it a referendum on Donald Trump? Before it was a referendum on Donald Trump. Critics say he is now not just dishonest, but delusional. >> Listen, we were all at the RNC together and we were told by many as the convention that this was a different more discipline Donald Trump, that even the attempt on his life had altered the way he sees the world and how he is going to operate, obviously that is not the case. When he feels like he is losing, when he feels like things are out of his control, that is when you see the lashing out in the comments on social media. It is really not surprising to watch that happen. The other thing that is happening that is frustrating trump and the campaign is Kamala Harris is getting a benefit of the doubt even though she is part of the incumbent party. People see her as different because she is not an older white guy. She walks out another stage and that is turning the page on what this election looked like a month ago. I think that is also frustrating to them because they can no longer be the outsider change candidate. She is the incumbent being able to be changed at the same time. We still have 80 plus days, you are seeing the advertising starting to rollout. It is more disciplined than trump is, but if trump doesn't stay on message, we will find out soon enough. We have a debate on September 10 to see how that works out. He makes it more about himself, that definitely helps her. Geoff: The Harris campaign, their tactics are different. As evidence of that, they posted a social media message on Donald Trump's own social media site, truth social, basically trolling him because of his obsession about crowd sizes. This is not something we have seen in this way with Democrats going on offense like this. >> It is somehow more on brand for the younger Harris to have the very same staff be much more actively into trolling them they were when Biden was the nominee. They are absolutely trolling trump. The thing about crowd size is he has always measured things by the size of his crowds and he has been able to tell things that his crowds were always bigger. During the Clinton campaign, there was never this level of an excitement for Hillary Clinton. There was never this level of excitement for Joe Biden during covid. Trump is used to running a campaign where he has the biggest crowds and he can say, I'm winning, I can see it in front of my eyes. Now, there is someone else generating crowds just as big or bigger and that is a really tough adjustment that is coming at the same time as the pull movement. We should note that the pull movement is not dramatic. This is still an incredibly close race. Incredibly close race that will be decided by a very small number of people. >> And when Harris was announced as the candidate, there were a lot of Democrats who said, I don't know how this is going to work out, the one thing I know she can do better than Joe Biden is to get underneath trump's skin and that has obviously worked out. Geoff: The campaign has sought to make them smaller. You could argue by Joe Biden talking about him as a nexus dental threat made him a bigger figure. The harris-walz campaign is trolling him and calling him weird. What are the implications of that? >> It is to keep them off talking about these things then making the case that Harris is not change. His argument would be four more years of a bad economy. Instead when you are debating about crowd sizes and who was weird and not weird, for your average voter, they just go back to their image that they have of Donald Trump and that is problematic for the trump campaign. Geoff: We will see you both next week at the democratic national convention in Chicago. Thanks so much. >> You're welcome. ♪♪