Harris campaigning in red parts of Georgia is not only genius—it’s freaking Trump out!

The Harris/Walz Bus just ran over Trump's 2024 campaign

Vice President Kamala Harris and Coach Tim Walz embarking on a campaign bus tour is typically not something expected to garner a huge chunk of press coverage. Nor is the type of campaign event that should cause Donald Trump to freak out. But in this case the two-day Harris bus tour in Georgia that began Wednesday and culminates Thursday with a rally in Savannah is doing both. In fact, I’d say the Harris/Walz bus tour not only ran over Trump’s 2024 campaign—they backed up over it and drove over it again! (Figuratively, that is.)

Why do I say that? Simple, Harris is not going to the Blue parts of Georgia like Democratic presidential candidates typically do in a battleground state. Instead, they are heading to the dark red parts of the state in southeast Georgia.  As a result of the uniqueness of the tour, Harris is attracting a massive amount of national and local media in this battleground state, building energy among her supporters and increasing the chances she will take this state come November.

Let’s take a step back to look at how Georgia became a battleground state. Given the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry the Peach State was Bill Clinton in 1992, Democratic presidential candidates typically did not campaign in Georgia since it was seen as solidly red. (In 2016, Trump won Georgia by five points over Hillary Clinton.)

But changing demographics in the state—together with activists like Stacey Abrams building a statewide Democratic infrastructure—changed all that. In the 2020 election cycle, polls showed Biden and Trump just about tied. That’s why one of Biden’s final 2020 rallies was in in Warm Springs, Georgia. And it paid off, with Biden winning Georgia by 11,779 votes or .2%.

Flash forward to now and the Harris campaign sees that recent polls show Georgia is very much in play. (In fact, a new Fox News poll released Wednesday shows Harris with a two point lead in Georgia.)  This is why her first big rally in July as our candidate was in in Atlanta where 10,000 plus people packed an arena. There, Harris declared, “I am very clear: The path to the White House runs right through this state!”

And as NBC News notes, “Harris is a better demographic fit than Biden for Georgia,” given it has the highest proportion of Black voters of any presidential battleground. Its electorate is also younger than those of almost all the other presidential battlegrounds—which polls also show favor Harris. In addition, Georgia also has a fast-growing Asian American population, which leans Democratic.

That takes us to the current bus tour heading through rural areas of Georgia. Does Harris/Walz ticket actually think they can flip ruby red counties? No.

What they are doing—as their principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks told Politico—is following the strategy used when he ran Sen. Raphael Warnock’s 2022 re-election campaign. As Fulks explained, the strategy was not only to win big in the Atlanta metro, but to work hard to lose by less in other parts of the state. Fulks shared that he had been frustrated for years that Democrats had been “ceding” voters to Republicans — including Black voters who constitute about a quarter of Georgia’s rural population.  

Fulks—who is from a rural part of Georgia himself—stated, “You have to really stave down margins and go places even when you don't think you can win it outright.” Adding, “You know you're going to lose that county, but just showing up there can sometimes be the difference between 5 to 10 percentage points, or sometimes just putting an office there.”

Did that strategy work for Sen. Warnock in 2022? You bet it did. While Biden only won Georgia by .2% in 2020, Warnock won re-election by nearly 3% in 2022.

It’s not often we see Democrats embracing a creative approach to campaigning like this. And it’s not because other Democrats from rural areas have not been advocating this very approach. Numerous guests on my radio show—especially former West Virginia State Sen. Richard Ojeda—had been begging Democrats to embrace this strategy.  But since it worked in Georgia in 2022, Harris and her team are following it now.

And so far the tour is going amazing! On Wednesday, the media was filled with stories of Harris and Walz meeting with locals in rural Georgia. For example, their first stop on Wednesday was to a marching band rehearsal at Liberty County High School where Harris—noting she had played in school bands—told the students: “Sometimes you hit the note, sometimes you don’t, right? But all that practice makes for beautiful music, and that is a metaphor — that is symbolic — for everything that you all will do in your life.”

Harris and Walz meeting students on bus tour

That was followed by heading to Sandfly Bar-B-Q in Savannah, where Harris and Walz were greeted by the restaurant's owner, employees and local patrons. There, Walz told those gathered, “Our politics can be hopeful.” As NPR reported, one lonely Trump supporter stood outside the restaurant holding a Trump flag.

Georgia State Senator Derek Mallow, a Democrat who represents the Savannah area, put the tour this way to a local Georgia media outlet, “Having the campaign come to Savannah is a testament that Vice President Harris is reaching out to everybody, up and down 95 and I-16, east to west.”

This is one of the big benefits of this type of campaign strategy: Local papers in Georgia that don’t usually see big name political figures come to their area of the state, are covering the bus tour in great detail. The value of that type of free press—known as “earned media”—is obvious.

It’s also inspiring for Democrats in the area as well as Harris campaign volunteers and the almost 50 full-time staff across seven offices in southern Georgia.

All of this is causing Trump and his campaign to panic. They thought Georgia was in the bag given Trump was leading Biden on average of 5 to 6 points. But in the past few weeks since Harris has risen in the polls, the Trump campaign and the biggest Trump-aligned super PAC spent four times as much on TV ads in Georgia than in the entire rest of the 2024 race. And Trump—after (again) trashing Georgia’s GOP Gov Brian Kemp last month—just reached out days ago to make peace with Kemp because he needs Georgia.

On Wednesday—as Harris was making headlines with the bus tour—Trump’s desperation was showing as he shared on social media a vile, sexist attack on Harris that claimed she was only successful because of performing oral sex. I hate to even mention it but it’s an important reminder of how vile Trump is. And later Wednesday, Trump also trashed Fox News for the new poll showing Harris  leading Georgia.

But let’s get back to the positive vibes! Harris and her campaign are taking the fight to Trump in the reddest parts of Georgia. We won’t know until the votes are counted if the strategy worked, but right now it’s doing the job of building momentum, attracting a ton of free press and freaking Trump out. I’d call this a big win for Team Harris!

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