--- title: Harris Ally Says: This Is a Feelings-Over-Facts Election description: 'It's going to be a feeling election, not a fact election,' says a top Kamala Harris ally, which explains a recent campaign strategy shift. canonical: https://time.com/7097038/kamala-harris-donald-trump-facts-feelings/ author: Philip Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-10-24T15:37:56.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-19T07:47:46.832Z article:section: Politics og:title: A Race Where Feelings Are Trumping Facts og:description: 'It's going to be a feeling election, not a fact election,' says a top Kamala Harris ally, which explains a recent campaign strategy shift. og:url: https://time.com/7097038/kamala-harris-donald-trump-facts-feelings/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt282bac58e5017130/698a8a3de6e84a77232b8110/GettyImages-2178445157.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Democratic Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris Holds Campaign Rally In Erie, Pennsylvania og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: A Race Where Feelings Are Trumping Facts twitter:description: 'It's going to be a feeling election, not a fact election,' says a top Kamala Harris ally, which explains a recent campaign strategy shift. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt282bac58e5017130/698a8a3de6e84a77232b8110/GettyImages-2178445157.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # As Harris and Trump Fight to the Wire, Feelings Will Matter More Than Facts > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=dd81621c-1f98-4c7b-8b4c-ca184a86eefe&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Biggest Moments From the First Debate Between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump [Watch (HLS stream): The Biggest Moments From the First Debate Between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/tOI0PQNs.m3u8) (2:46)  _Published 2024-09-11. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump faced off in their first—and possibly only—debate on Tuesday night, tackling issues like abortion, immigration, the economy, and foreign policy. The debate, hosted by ABC News in Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center, was also the first time the two candidates have ever met in person, after Trump broke tradition in 2021 by skipping the inauguration of his successor._  by [Philip Elliott / Detroit](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott / Detroit Senior Correspondent Oct 24, 2024 3:37 PM UTC Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump faced off in their first—and possibly only—debate on Tuesday night, tackling issues like abortion, immigration, the economy, and foreign policy. The debate, hosted by ABC News in Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center, was also the first time the two candidates have ever met in person, after Trump broke tradition in 2021 by skipping the inauguration of his successor.  by [Philip Elliott / Detroit](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott / Detroit Senior Correspondent Oct 24, 2024 3:37 PM UTC _This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up_ [_here_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite) _to get stories like this sent to your inbox._ With almost [$2 billion](https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-sneak-peek-38744760-6c76-11ef-81e9-dbe0819e8363) in advertising in the rearview mirror, millions of doorbells rung, and a [half-million](https://www.l2-data.com/earlyreturn/) early-vote ballots requested, it all may add up to a presidential campaign season that is leaving voters unmoored from reality. It’s a disquieting notion, but one that hit me last week during a stop in a [Detroit](https://time.com/7095205/kamala-harris-lizzo-detroit/) magnet school’s gym to hear the pitch being made by Vice President Kamala Harris’ allies to first-time voters and seasoned activists. And it came from one of the most clear-eyed political veterans in the game: Randi Weingarten, the longtime head of the almost-2-million-member American Federation of Teachers. Her assessment is far from aspirational but it might be the most instructive summation of a campaign season that, even this late in the cycle, seems as unsettled as ever. “This is a trust election, not a truth election. This is about what people feel, how connected they are,” Weingarten said, sporting a blue AFT hoodie and sneakers that have traveled the country and back this cycle. “And so our job in the next few days, if you believe anything that I just said, is to go out and knock doors and connect with people and make sure people know, regardless of how we feel or what we think, we are not enemies of each other.” A truth-optional election? It would hardly be the first time one of these has been fought in this country. But with each passing cycle, the debate over what’s true becomes less about smudging the lines in the coloring book than setting it entirely ablaze. Blatant lies about migrants [hunting](https://time.com/7024456/trump-vance-haitians-charges/) down dogs and cats in Ohio, non-citizens [swaying](https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/30/politics/fact-check-trump-election-lies-2024/index.html) the election results before they’re even counted, and Kamala Harris [photoshopping](https://apnews.com/article/trump-harris-detroit-crowd-size-photo-ff54a66d8e3197c90068ba94847297cf) her crowd sizes—it’s all just a sliver of the nonsense coming from Donald Trump and his enablers and perhaps a major reason he remains on relatively solid footing. So maybe—and it pains me to entertain this idea—Weingarten is saying aloud what Democrats have been largely unable to accept: flexing on the facts is not guaranteed to win at the ballot box. The emotional component may be what decides this, not the summary of any government report or the line graph in a think tank paper. “It's going to be a feeling election, not a fact election,” Weingarten tells me. By many objective measures, the presidential race should not be as close as it is. The [economy](https://time.com/7096579/kamala-harris-economy-plan-2024/)—generally the top issue for voters in polls—is clicking along without too much noise. Americans are opening their wallets and spending, creating a [shortage](https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/jobs-report-september-unemployment-economy-dfa7c99f) for workers. Thirty-four states have posted [record-low](https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/lauhsthl.htm) unemployment during President Joe Biden’s term, with Harris as his loyal understudy. Inflation is finally [curbed](https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/lauhsthl.htm), although still a source of [worry](https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/10/22/harris-vs-trump-on-the-economy-americans-split-on-whos-better-for-inflation-jobs-and-taxes/) for some skittish voters. But as TIME’s Alana Semuels smartly notes in a new [piece](https://time.com/7096021/economy-swing-states/), this is a big country and the spoils have never been evenly distributed. In that, Weingarten might be spotting what a lot of us had missed by thinking like a [normie](https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/rnc-normie-trump-illegals/) who looks at Column A and Column B and adds ‘em up. It’s a mixed bag when it comes to the amorphous question of trust. Take the latest [survey](https://apnews.com/article/harris-economy-issues-polls-trump-voters-e5c5e76e7d235cc6032e70aeeb5cd560) from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. Trump has opened up a huge edge with voters who say they trust him over Harris on immigration. But she has the upperhand when it comes to questions about abortion, election integrity, climate change, taxes, and natural disasters. They essentially split on the economy and day-to-day costs, crime, and the Middle East. Trump has a slight leg-up on tariffs. (Few, surprisingly, are still talking about how he’s a convicted felon due to be sentenced in November.) Phrased differently in the latest New York _Times_/ Siena College [poll](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/13/us/elections/times-siena-poll-likely-electorate-crosstabs.html), Harris has a double-digit head start on Trump on whether voters find her “honest and trustworthy.” That survey of likely voters finds Harris is the more credible candidate by a 48%-37% margin. Look a little deeper, and you see partisanship alone is not a deciding factor. Harris wins that question with 9% support of Republicans and 45% of independents. Whereas 94% of Democrats side with their nominee on trustworthiness, just 75% of Republicans can do the same for theirs. That, right there, might be where Weingarten’s gut and all the opinion research find the sweet spot. As the Detroit rally broke up and students headed back to their classrooms where Diana Ross, Lily Tomlin, and Della Reese studied years earlier, I caught Weingarten’s attention between selfies. (Yes, union presidents have groupies, too.) She left little room for hedging in our follow-up conversation; this was her 85th stop since Labor Day on the AFT bus tour to help Democrats up and down the ballot, and Weingarten had a pretty clear understanding of the universe of voters still in play. “Think about what Trump and these extremists have done in terms of schooling,” she says, pointing to efforts in some states to ban books and erase history. “They are scared of a generation that is about critical thinking and problem solving, about resilience and relationships. They want the chaos.” But as Weingarten moved to get back on the bus and head to other stops around Michigan over the next few days, she insisted Democrats could still turn the tables on Trump and his allies if the candidates could shift ever-so-slightly away from the high road and tap into not-so-latent skepticism about Trump’s capacity to lead the country without a constant stream of lies. “Americans are good people. If people think about their hopes, not their fears, we win in a heartbeat,” she said. “But it is really the level of sowing fear and creating this demagoguery, it's both scary, but it is a great opportunity.” An opportunity that, with each passing day as more votes are banked, is not one that is long for Democrats unwilling to trade in their footnotes for full-on emotional plays. It’s why the specter of a second Trump term has recently become much more central to Democrats’ messaging and the feel-good, get-stuff-done agenda is much less urgent. Voters might not feel like they know Harris, but many will base their vote on whether they think they can trust her more than Trump. _Make sense of what matters in Washington._ [_Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite)_._ ## Transcript [00:02] Coma Harris. So good debate. [00:05] You have fun. [00:06] Thank you. [00:06] She's going to my philosophy now. [00:08] In fact, I was going to send her a mega hat. [00:10] She's gone to my philosophy. [00:12] But if she ever got elected, she'd change it, [00:14] and it will be the end of our country. She's a marxist. [00:19] What you're going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called [00:23] Project 2025 that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected again. [00:29] Have nothing to do with Project 2025. That's out there. [00:34] I haven't read it. I don't want to read it purposely. [00:36] I'm not going to read it. This was a group of people that got together. [00:39] They came up with some ideas. [00:41] I guess some good, some bad. [00:42] They have abortion in the ninth month. [00:45] They even have, and you can look at the governor of West Virginia, [00:48] the previous governor of West Virginia, [00:50] not the current governors doing an excellent job. [00:53] But the governor before, he said, [00:55] the baby will be born, [00:57] and we will decide what to do with the baby. [00:59] In other words, we'll execute the baby. [01:01] Is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born. [01:05] One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree. [01:11] The government and Donald Trump certainly should not [01:14] be telling a woman what to do with her body. [01:18] In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, [01:21] the people that came in, they're eating the cats. [01:24] They're eating They're eating the pets of the people that live there. [01:29] ABCDs did reach out to the city manager there. [01:32] He told us there been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, [01:36] injured, or abused by individuals [01:38] within the immigrant community. I've seen people on television. [01:41] Let me just say here. Well, I think this is so rich, [01:44] coming from someone who has been prosecuted. [01:47] For national security crimes, economic crimes, [01:52] election interference has been found liable for sexual assault, [01:58] and his next big court appearance is in November at his own criminal sentencing. [02:03] I'm going to actually do something really unusual, [02:06] and I'm going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump's rallies, [02:09] 'cause it's a really interesting thing to watch. [02:11] You will see during the course of his rallies, [02:14] he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lector. [02:17] He will talk about windmills cause cancer. [02:20] And what you will also notice is that people start leaving [02:23] his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. [02:27] And I will tell you, the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you. [02:30] I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me. [02:36] They talk about democracy. [02:38] I'm a threat to democracy. [02:39] They're the threat to democracy. [02:42] I was a fake Russia, Russia, Russia investigation. [02:44] We do a lot. 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