Beating Trump Won't Be Easy, But Kamala Harris Gives Democrats a Chance
The new Democratic ticket holds large assets that the concerns about Biden’s age had obscured. Harris can use them, while also promising change.
Rarely in any realm does a gigantic wave of negative energy flip to positive in an instant. But it happened at 1:46 p.m. ET last Sunday.
The moment President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the 2024 race on social media, savage internal Democratic warfare stopped. A closed spigot of donor dollars opened back up. Biden transformed himself, in the estimation of his party, from selfish, doddering hanger-on to courageous national hero.
He left Republicans as the party with the incoherent oldest-ever presidential nominee. And he made his heretofore underwhelming vice president America’s best hope for safeguarding democracy from Donald Trump and his MAGA movement.
Kamala Harris’ calm, confident opening riff at campaign headquarters — “Hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type” — inspired a surge of new confidence that she can do it.
"We’ll stop Donald Trump’s extreme abortion bans because we trust women to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do,” Harris told a Wisconsin rally on Tuesday, wielding the single most powerful Democratic issue. Underscoring the promise of generational change, she declared, "The baton is in our hands."
Democrats, their burden lifted, are thrilled; Republicans, their strategy upended, are worried.
But that doesn’t suddenly make the new Democratic ticket favored to win. Trump has narrowly led, nationally and in decisive battlegrounds, for months. Republicans have already begun unloading a barrage of attacks and smears that will target everything from Harris’ record in government to her dating history to the way she laughs.
Harris’ Path
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland aptly likened Biden to a star pitcher with a tired arm. At least for now, Harris remains the great-on-paper prospect who hasn’t proven the ability to win major league games.
Her ex-prosecutor’s resume yielded little in the 2020 Democratic primary campaign. Her identity as a Black woman in a party reliant on female and minority voters attracted few of them. She struggled to make decisions and demonstrate core convictions.
As vice president, she has drawn largely negative reviews. She sometimes appears publicly awkward. She cannot claim a singular accomplishment and she remained outside Biden’s inner circle.
Yet that matches reviews for nearly every vice president, including Biden. He, too, bombed in his first two Democratic primary campaigns.
Harris inherits Biden’s campaign infrastructure but maybe not his electoral strategy. Scranton Joe measured his shortest path to victory as holding the Midwest battlegrounds of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania that have fewer of the traditionally Democratic young and non-white voters reluctant to support him this year. Harris might conclude her potential to regain those defectors (while losing some of Biden’s support from whites) make Sunbelt targets – Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina – more promising.
In an era of narrow margins, that lends immense importance to her choice of a running mate. She holds politically proven options for multiple swing states, including Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
The new Democratic ticket holds large assets that the concerns about Biden’s age had obscured. As a quasi-incumbent, Harris can use them while at the same time promising change.
Crime is down. Job growth is up. Inflation has fallen enough that the Federal Reserve may soon cut interest rates. Wages for low-income workers have risen fast enough to narrow the gap between rich and poor. The U.S. boasts the world’s strongest economy, notwithstanding carping from critics in both parties.
American troops are not fighting in major conflicts abroad. Illegal crossings at the southern border – a special concern for Harris given her focus on that issue early in the administration – have declined. Republican lawmakers admit Trump killed strong, bipartisan border security legislation for purely political reasons.
A Chance
That it took torturous public dissent to reach this moment shouldn’t surprise anyone. And it wasn’t because of any earlier “conspiracy of silence” by leading Democrats to foreclose major primary challenges to Biden.
The president himself foreclosed major challenges by his own decision to seek re-election. Serious rivals knew they couldn’t beat the incumbent and none dared to try.
Biden dreamed of the presidency for 50 years and amassed extraordinary accomplishments once he won it. In an interview at the White House last fall, I asked him why he was the only Democrat who could protect democracy from Trump.
“I'm not the only Democrat that can protect it,” the president replied. “I just happen to be the Democrat who I think is best positioned...”
The human vices of pride and vanity surely colored that assessment. No one wins the White House without an outsized ego. But his faltering late-June debate and resulting intra-party furor extinguished any hope of achieving Biden’s paramount objective: shifting attention away from himself.
The surest contemporary majority is the one that opposes the radicalism of Trump and his MAGA movement, which includes blocking access to abortion and negating elections Republicans lose. The 2018, 2020, and 2022 results made that clear.
There’s no assurance Harris can summon that majority. But she gives Democrats a chance.
If you are not signed up to receive The Stakes, subscribe now and select my newsletter.
I've heard many times that Harris is/was not popular amongst the establishment, which makes me like her more. She, like many Vice Presidents before, was effectively stifled and put on a shelf. This leaves her true abilities as a leader hidden and makes me excited to hear what she now has to say.