Politico’s Jonathan Martin Hammers Harris for ‘Preaching to the Converted’ Instead of Swing Voters: ‘Rhetoric’ For the ‘The Lincoln Project’

(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Politico’s Jonathan Martin slammed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris for continuing to campaign for the votes of those already supporting her instead of swing voters in a column on Tuesday, writing that her rhetoric is better suited for fans of The Lincoln Project than those who remain persuadable.

In particular, Martin took issue with Harris’s performance at an she attended beside former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney on Monday.

“The event was explicitly aimed at those moderates and onetime Republicans who remain up for grabs, and may decide the election, but the rhetoric seemed better suited for those in the audience wearing ‘The Lincoln Project’ and ‘LA’ t-shirts,” observed Martin about Cheney and Harris’s remarks in the suburbs of Milwaukee.

“The political odd couple criticized former President Donald Trump’s lack of decency, his disregard for the Constitution and rule of law, and asked those in attendance to imagine him without guardrails,” he continued. “Those are all profoundly serious issues and are part of the reason why the race, in an otherwise turbulent year for Democrats, remains competitive. But reams of voting results and research indicate those issues long ago pushed so many people away from Trump’s GOP. They are not what animates that small number of people who remain undecided in the second-to-last week of October.”

According to Martin, it was “backward-looking and Trump-focused… all about yesterday and him rather than tomorrow and her.”

When asked explicitly to make her pitch to disenchanted Republicans, Harris talked about Americans’ “lived experience,” her love of her country, and respect for the Constitution, and “invoked her service on the Senate Intelligence Committee.”

Martin was unimpressed:

Harris said nothing specific about how she’d govern, mentioned no looming issue on which she’d work with Republicans and offered no reassurances about leading the country from the political center.

And, of course, there was no critique of her own party or even an expression of sympathy or understanding about why voting for a liberal could be difficult for a longtime conservative.

He concluded by submitting that “if she says nothing to contradict” the far-left portrait Trump is painting of her, “voters will believe it. No matter how much she says Donald Trump is a bad man.”

Swing state polls have swung toward Trump in recent days, leading one senior Harris campaign official to tell NBC News that they are concerned “Michigan or Wisconsin will fall.” Still, most pundits still believe — and polls still indicate — the presidential race is a dead heat going into its final days.