On Sunday, Democrats were gleefully dismissing the bleak polls that showed President Biden losing, perhaps by an Electoral College landslide, to Donald Trump. Just seven hours after the president announced he was dropping his bid for re-election, ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s chief fundraising committee, had raked in more small-donor donations than on any day since 2020, a healthy $47m. Important Democratic leaders, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, quickly followed Biden’s endorsement of Vice-President Kamala Harris, the highest-ranking woman in the US government’s history.
Amidst the palpable relief that the ailing, elderly president was relinquishing his hold on the Democratic nomination came a fresh éclat of energy—and campaign money—for endangered Democratic candidates running down ballot.
Still, beating Trump, who had just capped a successful Republican convention a week after surviving a would-be assassin’s bullet, remains a formidable challenge for Harris if, as looks likely at the time of writing, she wins the support of the 4,600 delegates who will converge in Chicago for the Democratic convention next month. There are barely more than 100 days left until the election and beating a former president with a united Maga movement behind him will be a huge challenge for Harris. She has never run at the top of a national ticket and her own 2020 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination collapsed before the first primaries against a background of staff upheaval, organisational disarray and an uneven performance by the candidate herself.
Still, Trump much preferred to face Biden, especially following Democrat’s disastrous debate performance. It is unclear whether Trump will agree to a second debate with Harris, but his Republican running mate, JD Vance, wasted no time in making clear that the Biden failures that he and Trump have been hammering on for months are wholly also Harris’s. “Joe Biden has been the worst President in my lifetime and Kamala Harris has been right there with him every step of the way,” Vance wrote. “She owns all of these failures, and she lied for nearly four years about Biden’s mental capacity—saddling the nation with a president who can’t do the job.” The National Republican Congressional Committee has produced an ad calling Harris the “enabler in chief” of the Biden administration.
Though some leading Democratic figures, such as former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (who, like Harris, began her political career in San Francisco), did not immediately endorse her, no candidates immediately emerged to challenge her for the nomination, either. Harris’s initial statement, that she would work to “earn” the Democratic nomination, made clear that she does not expect a coronation and was well received by most of the Democrats I talked to on Sunday.
What was noteworthy about the interviews I conducted on Sunday was how little Harris’s gender and race were cited as important factors in the likely contest against the Republican ticket, though she would be the first black woman to serve as president. Clearly, although Obama, a black man, won the presidency in 2008 and 2012, racism is still an ugly vein running through American life. Equally, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 bid to become the first woman to serve in the Oval Office ran aground when Trump defeated her.
Gender was already a factor in the contest, especially given the over-the-top macho tone of the Republican convention, during which Trump celebrated his close friendships with figures from the extreme fighting and professional wrestling worlds. Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, the most astute reporter covering Trump, observed on Sunday, “Harris may get under his skin in ways other candidates haven’t, moving him off message.” Though Trump has tried to moderate his party’s position on abortion, the three US Supreme Court Justices he appointed were among the ones who voted to abolish a woman’s rights to terminate her pregnancy in the 2022 Dobbs decision, overruling Roe v Wade. Harris has been an eloquent defender of abortion rights, both as vice-president and as a US senator from California. President Biden, a Catholic, always seemed reluctant to give a full-throated embrace of abortion rights, even though it has proven to be the Democrats’ most potent weapon at the ballot box over the past few years. Harris’s speeches on abortion rights have been her best received and most powerful.
Biden had also been haemorrhaging support from black voters, an important segment of the Democratic base, especially among men. Harris may prove able to attract disaffected African American voters back into the fold.
Younger voters were also deeply disenchanted with Biden. Harris is social media savvy and enjoys the following of supporters who call themselves the KHive and who rush to defend her online.
Harris’s campaign style is certainly not for everyone, especially her sometimes jarring mixture of lightness and seriousness. Her throaty laugh annoys some voters and even some of her colleagues. While her years as a San Francisco prosecutor and California attorney general have made her a lacerating and effective advocate, her campaign speeches and press interviews sometimes devolve into messy, nonsensical word salads.
President Biden made a point of including her as vice-president in most of his important decisions, but the issue portfolio she was given, especially immigration, did not produce any significant successes. She did not stem the tide of immigrants entering the United States through the southern border, and the societal problems and lawlessness produced by illegal immigration were leitmotifs of Republican convention speeches.
So far, President Biden has been frustrated in his attempts to capitalise on his record of creating jobs and passing huge government spending bills that helped the American economy bounce back from the Covid pandemic. A major challenge for Harris will be convincing American voters that she has an effective plan to fight inflation and bring down prices of staples such as groceries and gas. To get elected, she will have to do more than run against Trump and Vance and brand them as right-wing extremists; she will have to convince voters that their lives will improve under her leadership. So far, American voters seem to feel that they were better off during the four years Trump was president.
It is hard to overstate the deep pessimism that had overtaken Democrats running for office this year with Joe Biden at the top of the ticket. On Sunday, many of them felt as if they had received a reprieve and the promise of a fresh start. There was palpable optimism for the first time since Biden’s faltering debate performance, a change from the recent painful weeks when he was unable to prove his ability to carry out his duties.
Only three sitting presidents before him (George Washington, James Polk and Lyndon Johnson) failed to run for re-nomination by their party. And running for president while Biden, her political patron, is still serving out his term may yet prove to be an awkward mix for Harris. For now, however, she is singularly focused on securing the Democratic nomination next month.
Though her international experience is scant, those unfamiliar with her should watch some recent speeches, such as a strong performance at a North Carolina rally just days ago; the rapturous reception she drew when she announced her 2020 bid for president in her native city, Oakland, California and her tough, persistent questioning of Trump’s judicial nominees when she served on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
It would be a mistake for anyone to underestimate her political talent.
