Suddenly, Kamala Harris has become Democrats’ last hope to prevent a Trump restoration and a complete MAGA takeover of Washington.
It’s a prospect that excites some Democrats and terrifies others.
As vice president, Harris was always the most likely political heir to President Biden, whose retirement Sunday from his difficult reelection campaign advanced his legacy by several years.
Handing the Democratic nomination to Harris is the quickest and most expedient decision for the party, given the limited time before its nominating convention begins on August 19 and the short window until the November 5 election.
There would also have been political repercussions to consider if Biden had passed over the nation’s first Black and Asian American female vice president, a move that would have upset many voters at a time when former President Trump appears to be making significant inroads into the Democratic base.
In replacing Biden, Harris automatically inherits his cash and campaign infrastructure. This was, after all, the Biden-Harris reelection committee. This transfer of power is significant. It is impossible to imagine another Democrat building a viable political operation or raising the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to win the White House from scratch at this late stage.
But just because Harris is the logical alternative to Biden doesn’t make her a consensus choice.
Some would have preferred a kind of mini-primary between now and the convention, idealizing what would have quickly turned into a bitter contest that would have left them little time to cool off before November. An interesting parallel is 1968, when President Lyndon B. Johnson abruptly withdrew rather than seek reelection. Democrats gathered in Chicago—coincidentally, where next month’s convention is being held—where blood flowed in the streets and the challenger, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, was narrowly defeated in November.
It’s Harris, for better or worse.
Some of the concerns about her rise to the presidency are related to the perception of the American electorate and the country’s attitudes toward race and gender. To put it bluntly, a certain segment of the population will never support anyone other than a white man for president. As unfair as it may seem, Harris cannot change that.
The question, then, is how much will her entry as the Democratic nominee change the political dynamics of the presidential race? Will the increased enthusiasm in black neighborhoods in Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia offset the loss of white support in rural Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania?
Will North Carolina, with its large black population, become more competitive? Will New Hampshire and Maine, almost entirely white and largely rural states, become less so?
We won’t know for some time, but Harris’ strategists will soon have to figure out where and how best to deploy their resources, the time and energy of the vice president and her eventual running mate.
A bigger question is whether the vice president has improved as a candidate since her disappointing 2020 White House bid. Democrats certainly hope so.
“Her campaign was a disaster,” said Jim Manley, who spent decades in the Senate as a communications strategist for Democratic leaders. “She imploded in a series of angry recriminations and she made a number of strategic mistakes along the way … I just worry about what kind of campaign she would run this time around.”
The biggest problem in 2020 was the candidate herself.
The historic nature of her candidacy generated great enthusiasm. But lacking a galvanizing subject or a solid ideological base, she failed to capitalize on this enthusiasm.
As a candidate, Harris has been hesitant and wavering, shifting positions on health care and other issues and missing an obvious policy question like whether the Boston Marathon bomber should be allowed to vote from prison. (After hesitating and dithering, Harris said no.)
She dropped out of the race before a single vote was cast, her candidacy — and her policy promises — disappearing like smoke. By making Harris his running mate, Biden saved the junior senator from California from the Capitol purgatory she never really liked.
But her early years in the White House haven’t helped Harris’ political image. She was given a portfolio of tough issues, including immigration, and hasn’t gotten much visible help from Biden. Voters can expect to hear plenty from Republicans about how she’s squandered her role as “border czar.”
A series of inconsistent statements early in her term shook Harris’ confidence, leading to further missteps that further unsettled her. Voters can expect to hear plenty from Republicans about her many early gaffes and chatter.
But Harris’s performance improved over time, especially after he found a problem to build on.
The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade and stripping away the nation’s right to abortion gave Harris the role she lacked as a presidential candidate. More importantly, the fight for abortion rights put Harris in a role, prosecuting the case against Republicans, that is familiar and comfortable for the former courtroom attorney.
She is probably eager to debate Trump, the architect of the Supreme Court decision, who is unlikely to tear her down the way he did the hapless Biden. A career prosecutor facing a convicted felon is a contrast Democrats are eager to make.
Despite all this, Harris may well turn out to be a terrible candidate. Maybe 2020 wasn’t an anomaly. Maybe this is the best result Harris can get.
But after Biden’s failure in the fateful June debate, Democrats had little choice but to settle for bad options. The 81-year-old president, who is in good shape, seemed all but certain to lose to Trump, perhaps quite badly, taking down the Democratic candidates for the House and Senate with him.
Why not give it a try?
Harris may not be the ideal candidate to take on Trump. (What flesh-and-blood candidate is?) But she gives Democrats a chance to win the White House and flip the House of Representatives, something many were willing to overlook as long as Biden loomed as an anchor on their ticket.
For this reason alone, the party is in better shape than it was 24 hours ago.
