Opinion | Lindsey Graham: To Beat Harris, Trump Needs to Run on His Record and Remind People of Hers

With a little more than two months to go until Election Day, it’s fair to ask if Donald Trump can win in November. The presidential race is virtually tied in all the major swing states. Last month’s Democratic National Convention was both a hate fest directed squarely at our former president and also a fawning coronation of Vice President Kamala Harris, the nominee who didn’t win a single primary in 2020 or 2024. Every day that the candidates trade insults is a good day for her because it’s one less day that she has to defend the failures of the Biden-Harris administration.

Far more worthwhile for Mr. Trump is his record of success. The road to the White House runs through a vigorous policy debate, not an exchange of barbs.

First, consider Ms. Harris’s and President Biden’s dismal record: According to a recent Harvard-Harris poll, 60 percent of voters view the economy as weak. What’s one of Ms. Harris’s big proposals? Government-led price control measures. During her time as vice president, Americans endured crushing 5 percent annualized inflation, cemented by two partisan spending bills costing trillions. She cast the tiebreaking votes on both — the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said they wouldn’t have happened without her. Ms. Harris may try to pass the blame, but she and Mr. Biden own the high prices at grocery stores and utility meters.

From the beginning, immigration was the cornerstone of Ms. Harris’s vice-presidential portfolio, yet the situation at the southern border has severely deteriorated since she took office. As The New York Times reported last year, illegal border crossings surged in 2021 and hit records in 2022 and 2023. Fentanyl and other drugs are flowing across our borders. In 2020, Ms. Harris wrote, “Trump’s border wall is a complete waste of taxpayer money and won’t make us any safer.” Now she supports a bill that includes funds to build the wall. Three and a half years ago, where was she?

Today Ms. Harris claims she won’t oppose fracking, but as a senator she cosponsored the Green New Deal — a declaration of war on fossil fuels that would deliver a deadly blow to Pennsylvania’s economy if it ever came to fruition. Her campaign says she doesn’t support single-payer health insurance, but as a senator she cosponsored a Medicare for All bill written by Bernie Sanders, the most left-wing member of the Senate. Ms. Harris has talked about being the last person in the room when Mr. Biden made the disastrous decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan, a botched withdrawal leading to the death of 13 of our brave service members and emboldening terrorists throughout the world.

Our staunch ally Israel was brutally attacked by the Iran-funded organization Hamas on Oct. 7, the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. After the attack, antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric reared their ugly heads on the political left. Yet last month, in one of her first acts as the presumptive Democratic nominee, Ms. Harris, who as the vice president is the president of the Senate, chose to skip Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint meeting of Congress — a shot in the arm to terrorist states and networks throughout the Middle East.