Over the six weeks since Kamala Harris succeeded President Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee, Donald Trump has charged relentlessly that she’s a radical whose views are out of step with voters.

“She’s a Marxist. She’s a fascist,” the former president declared last week, weirdly combining labels that normally contradict each other.

Trump claimed, without a shred of evidence, that Vice President Harris, whom he has dubbed “Comrade Kamala,” “wants this country to go communist.”

Trump has openly explained his strategy to reporters: “All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist.”

But his wild punches aren’t landing.

A barrage of public opinion polls shows that Harris has risen steadily in voters’ eyes and holds a narrow lead in the national popular vote. A Wall Street Journal poll released last week found that the vice president is viewed positively by 49% of voters, a gain of 14% since July.

The same poll found that 59% of voters consider Trump “too extreme” to be president, but only 46% consider Harris too extreme. (That number, 46%, roughly matches already committed Trump voters’ share of the electorate.)

So why is Trump’s free-swinging rhetoric failing?

For one thing, Harris isn’t — and never has been — a Marxist, and most voters appear to recognize that.

In her abortive presidential campaign in 2019, she cast herself as a progressive — but she was still closer to the center than candidates like independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who (unlike Harris) describes himself as a democratic socialist.

To be doubly certain, I consulted a leading historian of American Marxism, Paul Buhle, a retired lecturer at Brown University. He said he had looked into Harris’ history and found no evidence of Marxist leanings. “It’s a slur,” he wrote in an email.

For another thing, Harris has moved quickly and effectively to define her positions as squarely within the mainstream of current Democratic thinking: liberal, but a long way from anything resembling Marxism, which calls for government ownership of major industries.

At the Democratic convention in Chicago, and in her interview with CNN last week, Harris made it clear that she has abandoned several of the progressive policies she briefly adopted in the heat of her campaign in 2019.

Her convention-speech promise that she would work with “small business owners and entrepreneurs and American companies to create jobs” was pro-capitalist enough to draw mild yelps from a few progressive critics.

She has made some arguably progressive campaign proposals, including a federal ban on “price-gouging” by grocery stores; Trump denounced the idea as “Soviet-style price controls.” But it turned out to be broadly popular: An Economist-YouGov poll last month found that 60% of voters like the idea, including about half of Republicans.

Campaign strategists from both parties say Trump’s attacks on Harris suffer from another flaw: They’re scattershot and unfocused. In addition to calling her both a communist and fascist, Trump has argued both that Harris is more liberal than Biden and that she would continue the president’s policies.

“He hasn’t settled on what his argument is,” said Doug Sosnik, a Democratic strategist who helped President Clinton win reelection in 1996. “I think he’s tried out about eight different arguments.”

Several Republican strategists say they think Trump is aiming at the wrong target — firing up enthusiasm among voters who already support him, but offering little to undecided voters.

“Name-calling is great for turning out your base, but it isn’t going to work for voters in the middle,” said a GOP strategist who asked not to be identified as he critiqued his party’s nominee. “People already know her record. They want to know how the candidates are going to make the economy grow. … Every time he’s calling her a name, he’s not talking about the economy.”

“Harris is succeeding in casting herself as a change agent,” said Alex Conant, a former advisor to Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. “In 2016, one of the reasons Trump won was that he claimed the mantle as the change candidate. He said he would ‘drain the swamp,’ and that appealed to independent voters. But I can’t remember the last time I heard him use that phrase.”

The strategists say Harris still has vulnerabilities that Trump could exploit more consistently than he has.

They said a more effective campaign would tie her more closely to Biden’s economic record, since most voters hold the president responsible for high prices and think Trump could do a better job.

“Trump needs to make the election a referendum on the Biden-Harris record,” Conant said.

And they said some voters have doubts about Harris’ ability to lead in a crisis, a measure on which Trump outscores her in surveys.

Trump’s television commercials, designed by the professionals who run his campaign, already focus on those themes. Instead of white-hot charges like “Marxist,” they use a more traditional — and more accurate — label: “San Francisco liberal.”

But in public appearances, Trump has been unable to stick to that more disciplined message.

While Harris continues improving her image among undecided voters who may choose the next president, Trump’s rally speeches are exercises in self-indulgence.

The name-calling and wild punches aren’t helping him win more votes. But Trump wants to be Trump, free from the discipline his aides have sought vainly to impose. He just keeps swinging away.

The Senate race in Michigan has emerged as a much bigger Republican pickup opportunity than originally imagined as former Rep. Mike Rogers recently tied his Democrat opponent with a key group, according to a new poll. 

Michigan Republican strategist Jason Cabel Roe was not initially expecting the Republican traction that Rogers is now seeing in the state due to Michigan’s recent history of electing primarily Democrat senators. 

GOP operatives have agreed that the Michigan race’s status has come as a welcome surprise. 

“It seems like Michigan may be a little bit more competitive than Ohio,” a senior Republican strategist told Fox News Digital, remarking that races in West Virginia, Montana and Ohio have been traditionally understood as the best Republican opportunities this cycle. 

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“What I’ve seen shows that Michigan is extremely competitive,” he explained. 

The seat is currently occupied by outgoing Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.

In a new AARP-commissioned Michigan poll, Rogers is tied with Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., among voters over 50 years old, 46%-46%. With all voters, the race remains tight, with Slotkin slightly ahead, 47% to 44%. 

Bob Ward, a partner with the bipartisan polling team Fabrizio Ward, said it is “definitely a battleground Senate race.”

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Rogers is endorsed by former President Trump. (REUTERS/Jeenah Moon)

Slotkin led Rogers by just one point among registered voters, 42% to 41%, in a separate poll from the New York Times and Siena College in early August. 

Rogers has demonstrated his race as one of the closest this cycle so far and operatives have pointed to several reasons.

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Slotkin is currently a House representative. (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

Cabel Roe cited the Michigan race as evidence of the importance of candidate quality when it comes to winning elections. He said Rogers, a former congressman and chair of the House Intel committee, is a better prospect than some of the other Republicans running in tight Senate races across the country. 

Further, he noted the fact that Rogers isn’t taking on an incumbent like many of the other Republicans. Because of this, Slotkin faces many of the same challenges in her campaign for the Senate seat that Rogers does. 

One aspect that Cabel Roe said may have been overlooked in considering the competitiveness of Michigan is the relatively large Muslim constituency and their disapproval of the Biden-Harris administration’s actions in the war in Gaza between Israel and terrorist group Hamas. 

HARRIS CAMPAIGN MANAGER IGNORES PRESS CONFERENCE QUESTION AS VP HITS 33 DAYS WITHOUT ONE

Anti-Israel protesters disrupt Vice President Harris during her campaign rally at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport in Romulus, Mich., on Aug. 7, 2024. (Adam J. Dewey/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Cabel Roe doesn’t expect disaffected Muslim voters to turn to Republicans but said they could choose not to vote at all, hurting Democrats. 

Last month, nonpartisan political handicapper the Cook Political Report shifted the Michigan Senate race from “Lean Democratic” to “Toss Up,” reflecting the election’s competitive nature. Also in the category are Senate races in Montana and Ohio. 

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

CNN’s much-anticipated sit-down interview with the 2024 Democratic presidential ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz averaged 6.3 million viewers Thursday, according to data from Nielsen.

The audience size was slightly larger than that of a typical town hall or formal interview of a presidential or vice presidential candidate.

Harris had not done an in-depth chat with a journalist since President Biden ended his reelection campaign and endorsed the vice president on July 21.

The matter became a frequent talking point for pundits and the Republican opposition after what was widely considered a strong nominating convention last week in Chicago.

Fox News pulled 6.1 million viewers on July 15 when Sean Hannity conducted the first interview with former President Trump’s vice presidential running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).

The candidates on the Republican ticket appeared together on the July 22 edition of “Jesse Watters Tonight” after their party’s convention, drawing 4.3 million viewers.

When Harris and President Biden sat down with ABC News after the Democratic National Convention in August 2020, 5.1 million viewers watched.

Trump is a frequent presence on Fox News and other conservative outlets, making his appearance less of an event. The last time Trump was interviewed on CNN — in a much-maligned town hall staged on May 10, 2023 — 3.3 million viewers watched.

The hourlong CNN special with Harris and Walz contained about 17 minutes of actual conversation (the ratings measured the program from 9 p.m. to 9:50 p.m. Eastern versus a full hour for comparable interviews). The candidates were taped earlier in the day while campaigning through Georgia, an important swing state in the election.

Harris answered questions from CNN anchor Dana Bash — who co-moderated the pivotal presidential debate between Trump and Biden — on a number of shifts in her policy positions since her short-lived presidential campaign in 2020. Harris also offered details on her telephone conversation with Biden the day he withdrew from the race and gave her his endorsement.

Reaction to the speech predictably broke down along partisan lines.

Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as White House communications director for Trump and is now an outspoken critic of the former president, said on X that Harris “did well. She is going to win.”

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro posted, “Wow is she awful.”

Trump is set to appear in an hourlong town hall with Hannity on Wednesday. Both Trump and Harris are committed to meet Sept. 10 for their only scheduled debate in Philadelphia, moderated by ABC News anchor David Muir and Linsey Davis.