In a memo released Sunday, Kamala Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told supporters that Vice President Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are "the clear underdogs" in the race for the White House.

Starting this weekend through Election Day, the Harris campaign will be splashing waves of advertising across digital and television platforms, beginning with a $370 million ad buy. That ad buy included space during the fourth quarter of the marquee game of college football’s first week back, top-ranked Georgia against No. 14 Clemson.

What You Need To Know

  • The Harris campaign will be splashing waves of advertising across digital and television platforms, beginning with a $370 million ad buy kicking off on Labor Day weekend, to continue their "underdog" fight

  • The campaign’s goal is to reach undecided voters — people who may not like Trump, but haven’t seen enough to draw them to voting for Harris — and ensure that they "hear relentlessly" about Harris and her "vision for the country"

  • Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and their surrogates, are seeking to define the ticket to voters who aren't well exposed to the candidates

  • The campaign will also seek to build a "voter protection program," including poll and count observers, as well as hotlines to help ensure that voters can vote

"Donald Trump has a motivated base of support, with more support and higher favorability than he has had at any point since 2020," O’Malley Dillon said. "In 2020, the election came down to about 40,000 votes across the battleground states. This November, we anticipate margins to be similarly razor-thin."

Their key, she said, is to reach undecided voters — people who may not like Trump, but haven’t seen enough to draw them to voting for Harris. Those people, she said, need to "hear relentlessly" about Harris and her "vision for the country."

That vision is the focus of the Harris campaign: "popular" and "pragmatic" policies that are "focused on solutions," per O’Malley Dillon, compared to the "extreme" positions espoused by Trump (and the ones they're attempting to tie to him from Project 2025, the right-wing Heritage Foundation-drafted policy platform the ex-president has tried to disavow, even though members of his administration were part of its creation).

Reproductive rights and abortion are a key column of the Harris campaign — one which she apparently leads by 17 points, per an Aug. 29 Quinnipac University poll. The campaign memo also notes Harris has smaller favorability leads on crime, the economy, democracy, gun violence and health care. 

O’Malley Dillon also noted a poll showing that nearly three out of five likely voters in battleground states are opposed to Project 2025, with greater opposition from Black voters.

But as much as Trump has denied his association with the project (despite his ties to the project’s authors), the Democrats have doubled-down on tying him with the 900-plus-page plan, establishing a connection in nearly every single public event (see, for instance, speakers throughout the Democratic National Convention referring to sections of Project 2025 and tying it to Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance).

Meanwhile, the Democratic campaign is going to seek to "define" Harris and Walz, both of whom haven’t had the benefit of dominating the public consciousness for large portions of the past decade.

"On Labor Day alone, the Vice President will travel to Detroit, Michigan and then join President Biden in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, while Governor Walz and First Lady Gwen Walz will spend their Labor Day in Milwaukee, Wisconsin," O’Malley Dillon wrote. "The Harris-Walz campaign also plans to send key surrogates including Governor JB Pritzker, Mitch Landrieu, and Tom Perez, and others to top battlegrounds including North Carolina, Nevada, and Georgia."

The campaign will also seek to build a "voter protection program," including poll and count observers, as well as voter hotlines for help.

Democrats have taken issue with voters being removed from voter rolls, in efforts staffed by volunteers and funded by people like Trump supporter and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. 

"Make no mistake: the next 65 days will be very hard. This race will remain incredibly close, and the voters who will decide this election will require an extraordinary amount of work to win over," O’Malley Dillon wrote. "But we have the candidate, message, and operation that brings Americans together to chart a new way forward, so we can once again defeat Donald Trump."