With August in the rear-view mirror, Dave McCormick admits he never really made much of “brat summer,” the amorphous Gen Z meme that no one can exactly define but that Vice President Kamala Harris has adopted while in pursuit of younger voters.
A catch-all term for “cool” that is also sort of kitsch, “brat” is one of the vibes that Harris has cultivated amidst a slow policy rollout to capture the imagination of voters and catapult herself in front of former President Donald Trump in the polls.
The term is trendy, meme-able, and, according to the Republican running for Senate in Pennsylvania, “not serious” at a moment when inflation lingers, the cost of living creeps ever higher, and the southern border remains porous. McCormick said of his pitch to voters during an interview with RealClearPolitics, “People are thirsting for a serious discussion about the future of the country.”
Plenty of Republicans say they want to focus on policy, not vibes, complaining that Democrats have gotten an early pass on substance from the moment Harris replaced President Biden as the nominee. Many have struggled all summer to reframe the conversation.
But while the GOP has lost ground nationally this summer, McCormick is gaining ground in Pennsylvania.
He tied incumbent Sen. Bob Casey in a recent CNN/SSRS poll at 46% and pulled within three points of the Democrat, who leads by just 48% to 45% in the RealClearPolitics Average, after trailing in some polls by as much as double digits earlier this year.
Things are not as encouraging atop the ticket for Republicans. Harris has not only made up the ground that Biden lost to Trump in the critical swing state, but she is now tied with him in Pennsylvania. Nineteen electoral college votes, and possibly the White House, hang in the balance there. It is quite the turnaround.
Trump had successfully defended a slim lead for seven straight months. Biden never surpassed the Republican a single time in the RCP Average. Harris pulled ahead of him in just two weeks as Trump slowly switched gears to attack his new rival. The nicknames tell the story. None of the early ones stuck.
“Laffin Kamala” gave way to “Lyin’ Kamala” and finally “Crazy Kamala” throughout the summer as Republicans griped that the “Harris Honeymoon” wouldn’t end. When he wasn’t talking about Biden’s exit, Trump struggled to define Harris. For his part, McCormick did it in less than three days.
“This is what voters down ballot will be seeing in every Senate race from [Nevada] to [Pennsylvania] until November,” a Republican operative texted RCP less than 72 hours after the Biden switch for Harris. It was a link to a 90-second McCormick ad that was about to drop online. The Republican doesn’t say a single word in the spot. Instead, the GOP campaign cut an ad to give Harris and Casey the spotlight.
“Kamala Harris is inspiring and very capable. The more people get to know her, they’re going to be particularly impressed by her ability,” Casey says at the beginning of the ad before a supercut follows of the vice president offering some of her most progressive policy prescriptions like ending the Senate filibuster, banning fracking, decriminalizing illegal immigration, and mandating gun buyback programs.
“There were no Republican voiceovers, no dark lights or ominous language,” McCormick said of the ad. “It was just her in her own words, saying what she believes. And then it was Senator Casey saying, she’s ready to be president today.”
The quotes from Harris were from her failed 2020 campaign for the Democratic nomination. The goal was guilt by association: Tying Casey to Harris, who was once rated the most liberal member of the Senate.
A spokeswoman for the Casey campaign responded by saying that “McCormick is grasping at straws” before noting that the senator has voted against fracking bans already and supported the bipartisan Senate border bill, which Harris pledges to sign into law if elected. The spokeswoman added that “Casey is actually delivering for the Commonwealth by holding greedy corporations accountable, lowering costs, and supporting our veterans and seniors.”
The incumbent certainly hasn’t held the Democratic nominee at arm’s length. In Pittsburgh earlier this week, Casey told a crowd that Harris “has proven” she is ready not just to be “our commander in chief” but is “ready in these next 60 plus days to take on Donald Trump and win.”
Republicans are still thrilled with the McCormick blueprint. Trump delegate Christian Ziegler called it “one of the most brutal and effective ads I’ve seen in a while” before suggesting that the advertisement should be played “every moment from now until November.” That strategy did not materialize immediately, at least on the national stage. Before Trump dubbed his opponent “Comrade Kamala,” her campaign quietly disavowed her more liberal positions in written statements to the press.
During a CNN interview at the end of the summer, Harris finally disavowed her previous calls to ban fracking and decriminalize border crossings, stressing, however, that “my values have not changed.”
McCormick doesn’t make much of those denials, of course. He again defined the race during the RCP interview by asking if voters “are willing to take the risk that she actually believes in all the radical stuff she once said she believed in.” His opponent, he added, “has been a sure vote for the policies of Kamala Harris.” He said he will leave it to other Republicans to run their own races, but at least for him, McCormick said, running a tape of vintage Harris “is the playbook in Pennsylvania.”
Other Republicans wish Trump would have copied and pasted the McCormick attack earlier. “The Trump team got caught flat-footed. That’s a fact,” a Republican operative close to that campaign told RCP. “They lacked the ability to message properly, or to get in front of this, or to get the president on message in a reasonable timeframe. Weeks went by before the ship could be righted again.”
Trump and Harris will meet for the first time on a debate stage next week in Philadelphia, and the former president previewed what the current vice president is likely to encounter. “Communism is the past. Freedom is the future,” Trump told the Economic Club of New York Thursday while hitting his opponent for embracing price controls. “It is time to send ‘Comrade Kamala Harris’ back home to California.”
McCormick and Casey, for their part, have already agreed to a debate next month in a state that is seen as key not only to Republican chances of retaking the Senate but also to winning back the White House.
“Pennsylvania is going to be super close,” McCormick predicted. “I suspect it’ll be super close for President Trump. I think he will win, but it is going to be a close race, and I think he knows it. That’s why he is spending so much time here.”
Defining the opposition will be key for Republicans in the state and nationally.
“I’m pretty confident that when people see who Kamala Harris is, President Trump will prevail,” McCormick said of the contrast. “And I’m hoping that if I continue to run a strong campaign, and they see how weak and liberal Bob Casey is, that I will prevail.”
Thus ends “brat summer” for McCormick. The confusing term defies definition. The poll numbers do not. He is the candidate who has surged to a tie in Pennsylvania and likely represents the best chance Republicans have to retake the Senate.
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