Chuck Todd: Who's the incumbent in 2024? Harris and Trump each point at the other.

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

55% : She certainly embraced the same tone and tenor when going after Trump, though with some caveats about him doing some things right.
51% : That character trait, I believe, exhausted the country in 2020 (especially with his horrendous handling of the pandemic), and it's now the focal point of the Harris' campaign's attempt to paint Trump as the incumbent of this political era -- hence the "turn the page" messaging on which Harris and running mate Tim Walz are leaning heavily.
51% : There's not much different in Harris' messaging about Trump these days as there was from Haley.
50% : Right now, I'd argue Harris has been more effective so far at pitching herself "new" and "change" compared to Trump.
48% : But if you are the type of voter for whom a president's character and behavior and overall impact on the nation's psyche means more to you than a specific policy position, then the Harris campaign is going to have an easier time convince you that Trump is the "incumbent" of this current political era.
40% : Of course, if the current Democratic nominee were a sitting governor and not a sitting vice president who cast a record number of tie-breaking votes in the U.S. Senate, this messaging of framing Trump as the incumbent would be a lot easier.
38% : Never about you."(By the way, if I told you Haley uttered that previous paragraph at some point during her primary campaign against Trump, you'd probably believe me.)
37% : It was in response to Trump saying he could "only see the black ones" referring to fellow Americans in the audience of one of his primary rallies.
32% : And since Trump wasn't the current incumbent, he got to be the default "change" candidate even if he wasn't pitching anything new.
32% : In short, the Harris campaign believes it can paint Trump as the de facto incumbent even if he's not currently sitting in the White House.
30% : It's not dissimilar to the campaign Biden ran against Trump in 2020.
25% : With Harris as his opponent, Trump is running into the same problem that cost him re-election in 2020:
21% : With Biden as his opponent, Trump was the "change" candidate since the election was turning into a choice between which presidential term you hated least.
9% : Trump has really struggled with this issue since President Joe Biden dropped out.

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