Donald Trump must miss the days when he faced Joe Biden as his opponent. At every opportunity he mocked the laziness and verbal … digressions of his opponent, whom he enjoyed calling “sleepy Joe”. His aim was to appear fresher, more prosperous and active than the current president, and this tactic seemed to be paying off, as several polls gave him the lead.

An unpleasant surprise

It was precisely this situation that led fearful Democrats to pressure the president to reconsider his stance and hand over the baton to Kamala Harris. This was the worst for Trump, who had tailored his entire campaign around his three-year-older opponent. At one point he even went so far as to say that he would also request compensation for the change of candidate, which would oblige him to change lines and incur unforeseen additional expenses.

The first and most obvious problem is now that against an opponent who is 20 years his junior, the billionaire candidate looks old. The second and important thing is that his attacks on Harris don’t necessarily help him tap into pools of voters who were “outside” for him anyway. His insults to a woman and given his sinful past easily conjure up the image of an obnoxious misogynist. His attempt to argue that Harris “isn’t black” drew more laughs than doubts from black voters. After all, Harris has long since declared her origin, with an Indian mother and a Jamaican father.

The bogeyman of the extreme left

As for his warnings about the “far-left” views of Harris and her running mate Tim Walsh, they sound rather graphic, hurled rhetorically as dogma rather than evidence-based assessment. Those who believe them would vote for Trump, even if he told them the sun rises in the west. Overall his attitude is one of bewilderment towards the new duo of opponents and this seems to drive him from one jerky move to the next.

The reason is that Trump, accustomed to the simplicity of toxic speech, has not found that “Issue”, on which to focus his fire against the opponent, and this makes him look a little desperate, even in the eyes of his fanatical followers, who they are also waiting for the signal to be caught somewhere. Even the way he reacted when Tim Walsh called him “weird” was a result of this embarrassment, if not the height of it. “They are strangers. I’ve been called a lot, but I’ve never been called like that.” Here it seemed to be the voice of a wounded child’s ego, rather than a targeted response, following the recommendations of gold-paid political advisers.

Able to lose and… lose

What was imagined as Trump’s great weapon, his directness, his populism, his “dirty” language, his ability to function as a “political force” himself is turning into his disadvantage. The Republican candidate can at any time “do his own thing” and destroy carefully planned campaigns. To the original question of whether Harris can win, one can add one more. Will Trump finally manage to lose?