Anyone who has watched the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz campaign for the last two weeks can see that the biggest challenge of 2024 will be distinguishing fact from fantasy. The Harris-Walz team’s initial speeches and ads show they have big problems with the American people.

Just a few months ago, Vice President Harris was widely considered incompetent, inarticulate, and unelectable. The propaganda press’ overwhelmingly positive, adoring early coverage has turned her into the shining star of the “politics of joy” (complete with an iconic cover of Time). However, the Democrats know that under all the happy talk there is a grim reality: The American people reject most of what Ms. Harris represents.

Most Americans think our country is on the wrong track. Americans suffer every day from the 20 percent price increases that the Joe Biden-Harris administration created. They remember that the press’s iconic political princess spent the last three-and-a-half years in an administration she can’t defend.

Most Americans (roughly 80 percent) are upset about the Biden-Harris administration’s failures on the border.

Most Americans oppose government-imposed transgender policies — including letting transgender females compete in women’s sports, putting tampons in middle school boys’ restrooms, and leveraging the law to hide what their children are doing from their parents.

Americans know that the Biden-Harris collapse in Afghanistan resulted in slain Americans and betrayed allies.

Most Americans want lower taxes and less government spending. The Biden-Harris administration is clearly on record favoring higher taxes and more spending.

In response to this repudiation by the American people, the Harris-Walz team has decided on a daring campaign of fantasy replacing reality.

You don’t like higher taxes? Ms. Harris just adopted President Trump’s proposal to eliminate the tax on tips. We are now supposed to forget the thousands of new Internal Revenue Service agents the Biden-Harris administration hired to go after precisely the working Americans Ms. Harris claims she will help.

Are you bothered by the still-open border and the millions of illegal immigrants crossing over it? The Harris-Walz team has visited a border control point and created a great photo opportunity. It might seem late, but Ms. Harris hopes you will forget she was once described as the “Border Tsar.” She hopes to erase three-and-a-half years of failure with a three-and-a-half month fantasy campaign filled with photo ops, placating words, and strong promises.

Americans worry about crime, riots, and neighborhoods that might be burned down. In 2020, Mr. Walz demonstrably failed to respond effectively as Minneapolis burned for four days. At the same time, Ms. Harris encouraged people to give money to a Minnesota group that was bailing out the rioters and putting them back on the street. 

While Mr. Walz could not decide to bring in the National Guard, his wife said on a KSTP interview: “I could smell the burning tires, and that was a very real thing. And I kept the windows open as long as I could because I felt like that was such a touchstone of what was happening.”

It reminds me of Robert Duvall’s line in “Apocalypse Now” — “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” Of course, Mr. Duvall’s line was intended as satire. Let’s also not forget: When Mr. Walz finally decided to act, he shared law enforcement plans to contain the chaos with his daughter, who then used social media to warn the rioters.

The real Mr. Walz could never have been popularly nominated, so the left has frantically created a fantasy Mr. Walz — and attacked every criticism of his record as inappropriate and unfair.

The heart of the Harris-Walz strategic dilemma is simple: If the American people remember who they really are, what they really believe, and what their actual records have been, Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz will collapse like Michael Dukakis and George McGovern.

The only hope for the Harris-Walz ticket is to create a fantasy campaign, invent a fantasy history of their pasts, and make a series of fantasy centrist promises (which they will never implement).

The key for Mr. Trump, Senator Vance, and the Republicans is simple: Slow the campaign down to a calm, steady focus on facts.

Prime Minister Thatcher once asserted, “first you win the argument, then you win the vote.”

Republicans don’t need to exaggerate. They don’t need to use harsh language. In fact, the more they sound like an attack campaign, the harder they make it for rational people to vote Republican.

The Harris-Walz fantasy campaign will only be defeated by the calm, steady repetition of facts. The American people will ultimately be attracted to truth and reject fantasy. This is the heart of the 2024 presidential campaign.