Over the weekend, I chatted with Evan Roth Smith, the lead pollster for Blueprint, the Reid Hoffman-backed firm working to shape Democratic messaging aimed at precious swing voters in the 2024 battleground states. The firm had just dropped a provocative new poll looking at which G.O.P. attacks are actually working against Kamala Harris, and which ones aren’t. Calling Harris a “D.E.I. hire,” attacking her heritage and family, claiming her sudden ascent to the Democratic nomination is some sort of anti-democratic “coup”—those messages all failed to resonate with registered voters and independents. 

But Harris, the poll found, remains particularly vulnerable to claims that she was a feckless “border czar,” as Republicans have put it—a bleeding heart who would jeopardize American security as president by allowing drugs and criminals into the country. “The immigration argument is a strong initial attack, or at least the most successful initial attack, on Harris so far,” Smith told me. No surprise, the Trump campaign is tethering that message to accusations that Harris is soft on crime, with Trump himself making a splashy return to X on Monday by posting a campaign video calling Harris a “San Francisco radical” and “cop hater.”