Republicans love Trump. Democrats hate Trump. Both groups’ votes are set in stone. Swing voters usually decide who to vote for based on issues. But this election they’re heading down a different road.

A lot of swing voters side with Trump on the border but, at the same time, vote for Harris. They see Trump bragging, strutting, hurling insults, dislike him and vote for Harris. Issues hardly matter. What matters: Character.

You don’t see that often. Character elections are rare. I saw one the first time back in 1984 when Jesse Helms ran against Jim Hunt for Senate.

A lot of voters agreed with Jesse on issues. But when we attacked Hunt on issues we got nowhere. The problem: Voters didn’t like Jesse’s personality. Character mattered more than issues. That left us in a hard spot. We couldn’t change who Jesse was. We were stuck.

By sheer accident, not meaning to, we did an ad that dinged Hunt’s character. It aired, our pollster Arthur Finkelstein walked into my office, laid a poll on the table, looked from me to Tom Ellis.

“It’s time you learned something new. You’ve been running the same old liberal versus conservative ads for years. But this election’s not about issues – it’s about character – only one thing you said in that ad worked – the line about character.”

When we dinged Hunt’s character, voters saw him as a flip-flopper. And Jesse gained 10 points in the polls.

Since Biden’s gotten out of the race swing voters have been moving to Harris, not because they disagree with Trump on issues – Trump’s stands haven’t changed. But because they’ve seen enough of Trump hurling insults, bragging, strutting. Trump’s problem is his personality.

And Harris knows that’s going to be a hard problem for Trump to fix. He is who he is. And he can’t wave a magic wand and make the problem go away.