Associated Press
Over and over, from the massive stage in the electric convention hall, the Democrats this week predicted Kamala Harris would defeat Donald Trump. They described her as a historic figure, the embodiment of hope, “the President of joy.”
But amid the extraordinary optimism, former First Lady Michelle Obama offered a sober warning: “No matter how good we feel tonight or tomorrow or the next day, this is going to be an uphill battle.”
The word of caution was quickly drowned out by the excitement that overwhelmed the standing-room-only 17,000-person arena in downtown Chicago. But as activists, operatives and party leaders leave the Democratic National Convention and fan out across America, a stark reality exists: The real test for Harris has only just begun.
More than a month after President Joe Biden stepped aside and endorsed her, Harris has barely started to outline detailed plans she would pursue as President to address the nation’s biggest challenges — immigration, crime and climate change, among them. She has yet to sit down for even one comprehensive media interview to face difficult questions about her flip-flops on policy in recent years, her leadership style and the focus on race and gender that looms over her historic candidacy.
“We can’t put our heads in the sand. She’s a Black woman. The bar is going to be higher for everything,” said John Anzalone, a pollster who has served the last three Democratic presidential nominees. “And guess what? That means, even mistakes. Mistakes are going to be magnified.”
At the same time, Harris’ allies acknowledge that she remains largely undefined in the minds of many voters, having operated in Biden’s shadow for much of the last four years. The relative anonymity offers both opportunity and risk.
“The bad thing about Vice Presidents is that nobody knows who you are. The good thing about Vice Presidents is nobody knows who you are,” said David Axelrod, who served as former President Barack Obama’s chief strategist.
Preparing for the debate
Harris now has just over two weeks to prepare for what could be her only presidential debate against Trump, a Sept. 10 showdown that could dramatically shift the direction of the race. The first presidential debate, of course, effectively forced Biden to drop out of the race.
For now, Harris’ team feels no urgency to roll out a comprehensive policy platform or sit for media interviews that might jeopardize the positive vibes that have defined her nascent campaign and produced a flood of campaign donations and a growing army of swing-state volunteers.
During a series of meetings throughout the convention week, her advisers cast her policy agenda as a continuation and expansion of Biden’s first-term achievements, particularly on economic matters, even if it may look and sound different in some cases.
Harris has notably dropped her opposition to fracking and her support for Medicare for All, which were defining features of her 2019 presidential campaign. Her aides insist her values remain the same, but she’s embraced more centrist policies out of pragmatism.
“She’s going to work to support and lead pragmatic commonsense policies that are going to directly relate to improving the lives of Americans,” said senior campaign policy adviser Brian Nelson.
Meanwhile, Harris’ allies believe it’s only a matter of time before Trump settles on an effective line of attack.
Trump’s kitchen-sink approach against Harris
In recent days, the Republican former President has adopted a kitchen-sink approach against Harris that includes attacks about her racial identity, her laugh, her record as Vice Presidents and her history as a “San Francisco liberal.”
“He’ll figure out how to get a message and land a political punch,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who delivered a prime-time convention speech this week, said of Trump. “I think what you’ve seen with her is an ability to absorb the criticism and just keep going. And that is a really, really important political trait.”
Others acknowledge that the spotlight will only burn brighter in the 74-day sprint to Election Day. And it’s far from certain that the “Harris honeymoon,” as Trump’s team has described this phase of the campaign, will last much longer.
“People ask this question: Will people vote for a Black woman? And I actually think that’s always the wrong question,” said Sarah Longwell, a fierce Trump critic as leader of Republican Voters Against Trump. “I think the question is: Will they vote for Kamala Harris, with her particular set of both skills and baggage? The biggest problem for Kamala Harris is that people view her as too progressive, and that’s going to hurt her with these swing voters.”
Shifting public views
Polling reveals that voters’ views of Harris have shifted relatively rapidly in the month since Biden stepped aside and she became the de facto nominee.
In a June AP-NORC poll, just 39% of Americans said they had a favorable opinion of Harris and 12% said they didn’t know enough to say.
After Biden stepped aside, an August AP-NORC poll found that 48% of Americans had a favorable opinion of Harris with just 6% saying they didn’t know enough to have an opinion. The latest poll also showed that 27% of adults have a “very” favorable opinion of Harris, up from 14% in June.
The sharp shift raises the possibility that public opinion could change again as voters learn more.
It also raises the possibility that Harris’ momentum has less to do with her candidacy than a sense of relief among Democrats that Biden stepped aside. Shortly before he left the race, an AP-NORC poll found that nearly two-thirds of Democrats said they didn’t want Biden to run again, and about half said they’d be dissatisfied if he was the nominee.
Young Democrats of America President Quentin Wathum-Ocama said his enthusiasm is based on a combination of relief that Biden stepped aside and excitement about Harris. Given her relatively low profile over the last four years, he conceded that even he does not know much about her governing plans.
As a public school teacher, he said he’d like to hear more about her education policy, for example.
“Do people know her? People are aware of her,” Wathum-Ocama said. “I can be excited, but I still want more.”
He may be waiting a while.
A policy-lite campaign?
Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, which has endorsed Harris, is a self-described policy geek. But she said that past Democratic efforts to outline detailed policy agendas failed to garner much traction with voters. She and various other Harris allies this week insisted that what matters most are the candidate’s values.
The party’s 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton, for example, produced more than two dozen policy papers exceeding 50,000 words with hundreds of detailed footnotes. Trump had virtually no detailed agenda that year. And Clinton lost.
“We used to do 10-point plans, they weren’t even satisfied with five-point plans,” Weingarten said. “I think that that’s not where Americans are.”
Harris so far has released only a taste of the plans she would pursue as President. Convention delegates did not update the party’s formal platform to reflect her wishes. In some cases, the document still references “Biden’s second term.”
But some details have begun to come out.
Last week, Harris outlined a plan for her first 100 days to send Congress proposed federal limits on price increases for food producers and grocers. She also pledged to make permanent a $3,600 per child tax credit approved through 2025 for eligible families, while offering a new $6,000 tax credit for those with newborn children.
And she’s calling for the construction of 3 million new housing units over four years, along with expanding a Biden administration plan providing $25,000 in potential down payment assistance to help some renters buy a home.
Additionally, Harris wants to speed up a Biden administration effort that allowed Medicare and other federal programs to negotiate with drugmakers to lower the cost of prescription medications, aiming to cut the price tags of some of the most expensive and most commonly used drugs by roughly 40% to 80% starting in 2026.
Trump’s campaign has been focusing on the lack of specifics from Harris’ campaign and her refusal to sit for media interviews. They’re also paying close attention to her momentum.
At Trump’s rally in Asheboro, North Carolina, this week, 69-year-old assistant plant manager Jerry Zimmerman broke into a smile when asked about the Republican nominee’s prospects for November. But he also predicted it would be “a lot harder” to defeat Harris than Biden.
He said it’s possible that she wins.
“If they can prove that everything went fair, I’ll be cool with it,” Zimmerman said of a potential Harris victory. “I think a lot of people will be cool with the outcome.”
There’s little time to change course
Meanwhile, the compressed election timeline gives both candidates little time to dramatically change course.
Early voting begins in Pennsylvania, arguably the nation’s most important swing state, on Sept. 16. By the end of September, voting will be underway in North Carolina, Minnesota and Illinois. The final votes will be cast on Election Day, Nov. 5.
Television ad space has already been booked as well.
Between Friday and Election Day, Republicans will spend more than $120 million on television advertising in the presidential contest, according to data compiled by the media tracker AdImpact. Much of the investment will focus on attacking Harris.
Democrats, for now, are on pace to spend more than twice that amount through Election Day, however. Harris and her allies have reserved more than $270 million in television ads in the 73 days from Friday through Nov. 5.
Still, Michelle Obama predicted it could be a rocky road to Election Day. Warning that Harris’ team is sure to make mistakes, she encouraged Democrats to remain focused on the work needed to defeat Trump.
“The minute something goes wrong, the minute a lie takes hold, folks, we cannot start wringing our hands,” the former First Lady said in her prime-time convention address this week. “We cannot get a Goldilocks complex about whether everything is just right. And we cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala, instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected.”
___
Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
25 comments
rbruce
August 23, 2024 at 9:39 am
The crowd was large because they thought Beyonce was going to perform.
A Day without MAGA
August 23, 2024 at 9:45 am
Insane in the membrane,insane in the brain, crazy insane,worm ate my brain,got no brain, insane in the membrane, insane in the Republican brain
Day 32
August 23, 2024 at 10:51 am
Ha! Ha! And probably true.
Dan
August 23, 2024 at 12:34 pm
I fell asleep. She didnt perform?
Dont Say FLA
August 23, 2024 at 1:28 pm
Every night? All of Trump’s convention crowds were smaller than the smallest crowd Harris drew.
Ron Ogden
August 23, 2024 at 10:20 am
“. . .More than a month after President Joe Biden stepped aside and endorsed her. . .”
No, he was forced out against his will and against the will of 14 million American Democratic voters in the biggest, clearest refutation of the principles of democracy that you can ever hope to see outside of Venezuela. This was simple, raw power politics from simple, raw politicians and no amount of canned “Kumbaya” from Harris will make it any different.
JD
August 23, 2024 at 10:39 am
You are screaming a far right propaganda point that’s simply not true. Stop spreading it like a disease.
1. “He was forced out against his will”: Presidential successions or decisions not to run for re-election are complex and can involve many factors. Without specific evidence, it’s wrong to claim someone was definitively “forced out.”
2. “Against the will of 14 million American Democratic voters”: This assumes all voters who previously supported a candidate would continue to do so indefinitely. Voter preferences can change over time and the obvious enthusiasm for her has the far right in a panic.
3. “Biggest, clearest refutation of the principles of democracy”: Democratic processes include mechanisms for leadership changes. A president choosing not to run again or endorsing another candidate is part of the democratic process, not a refutation of it. So stop with the bold lie. Or are you ignorant of the process? If the later, stop commenting on it.
4. Comparison to Venezuela: This is a hyperbolic comparison. Venezuela’s political situation involves systemic issues that are not comparable to standard political transitions in established democracies. So stop the doom and gloom.
5. “Simple, raw power politics”: While political maneuvering is part of any system, characterizing all political decisions this way oversimplifies.
6. Dismissing reconciliation efforts as “canned ‘Kumbaya'”: This diminishes the importance of unity efforts in political transitions, unlike the far right’s 2020 debacle, again without evidence.
Simmer Down.
Dont Say FLA
August 23, 2024 at 1:27 pm
If Turnip Truck somehow wins in November, how long you and he gonna keep arguing that about the election being stolen from Joe Biden? LOL @ You, Foo’
Tom
August 23, 2024 at 2:56 pm
I see that the excuses are already be ‘test driven’ to see what will stick when they lose. At the moment, seems like it will be close but hopefully, the momentum will carry and it will be a landslide to save us from listening to all his BS again. Maybe, just maybe, after that the right will realize that trump is a losing bet and America is not as far right as they’d like to believe.
Ocean Joe
August 23, 2024 at 7:43 pm
Possibly 13,999,999, but not 14, cause I voted for Biden in the primary and couldnt wait for him to be gone. No complaints.
Glad you are so upset about Democrats’ primary votes. Say, where were you on January 6 when Fat Donald tried to nullify millions of American votes in the 2020 general election.
While he was at the border yesterday he admitted ‘we came up a little bit short.’ When Trump himself concedes he lost, isn’t about time you and all the other folks he conned do the same?
Day 32
August 23, 2024 at 11:01 am
So maybe soon we will get to see the unveiling of the new and improved Ka Mana. All of her controversial positions have now been erased. She won’t refer to her last 3.5 years as VP. She certainly will not talk about the border and the inflationary policies enacted by her and fully engaged Joe.
Sing it Eminem:
Will the real Kammy Harris please stand up. Please stand up. Pleas stand up!
Yrral
August 23, 2024 at 11:13 am
You blaming someone that have nothing to do with with economic plight,the government do not tell you how to spend your money,if you mismanaged it your own damn fault
Day 32
August 23, 2024 at 12:05 pm
I manage my money fine. It’s the government that can’t balance a checkbook.
cassandra was right
August 23, 2024 at 12:19 pm
“…the government that can’t balance a checkbook.”
What does this mean?
Day 32
August 23, 2024 at 12:55 pm
You and I balance our checkbook. The Federal Government spends money well beyond its means. That’s why there is such a large deficit in this country.
Dont Say FLA
August 23, 2024 at 1:25 pm
Checkbooks are where checks come from and where people record what they wrote on a check.
A check how still elderlies pay for stuff, holding up the checkout line at the Winn Dixies.
People used to have to “balance” their checkbooks regularly which was a manual mathematically based search and rescue process where you tried to find your own mistakes in what you wrote down and summed trying to keep a running total for your bank account, lol.
cassandra was right
August 23, 2024 at 4:40 pm
“You and I balance our checkbook. The Federal Government spends money well beyond its means.”
Balancing a checkbook is just making sure you and the bank are in agreement. Many people do that so they can pay their: home mortgage, car loan, vacation loan, student loan, medical debt, emergency loan, credit card balance….
See what I’m saying?
Often this is the only way to get ‘nice things’——even necessities. Until corporate taxes return closer to Eisenhower rates the government will probably have to keep doing it. Trump’s corporate tax cuts made things worse.
Vote for Kamala to help the wealthy regain their dignity by paying their fair share!
cassandra was right
August 23, 2024 at 8:42 pm
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
“You and I balance our checkbook. The Federal Government spends money well beyond its means.”
Balancing a checkbook is just making sure you and the bank are in agreement. Many people do that so they can pay their: home mortgage, car loan, vacation loan, student loan, medical debt, emergency loan, credit card balance….
See what I’m saying?
Often this is the only way to get ‘nice things’——even necessities. Until corporate taxes return closer to Eisenhower rates the government will probably have to keep doing it. Trump’s corporate tax cuts made things worse.
Vote for Kamala to help the wealthy regain their dignity by paying their fair share!
cassandra was right
August 23, 2024 at 9:05 pm
People have mortgages, car loans, medical payment plans, vacation loans, student debt, credit card balances, etc. The government needs to have the same flexibility. Libertarians complain that taxes are theft. The real theft is the wealthy stealing from the rest of us by not paying their fair share of taxes.
Rick Whitaker
August 26, 2024 at 5:58 pm
CASSANDRA WAS RIGHT, what’s wrong with these maga nuts? they give it all to the rich, and then cry about being broke or close to it. the masters have a hard time getting rich without the serfs. your post was right on.
ScienceBLVR
August 23, 2024 at 11:36 am
I thought Woodstock was something.. What a show the DNC put on. And in the heart of middle America, just doesn’t get much better than this.
Next stop, Chi-town, Harris put the Trumpee down, Let it roll..right on to the Whitehouse.
Republicans Hate America
August 23, 2024 at 12:18 pm
It was nice of Ann Coulter to show us all how the typical Republican acts and behaves when she made fun of disabled child on Twitter.
After all they’ve shown us, you can’t be a decent human being and a Republican anymore. It’s literally impossible. Anybody who supports this kind of behavior is swine. Human filth. Trash that belong in hell. And they will be going there. 😈
Dont Say FLA
August 23, 2024 at 1:21 pm
The difference between the Dem and the MAGA acceptance speeches was as different as day and night.
VP Harris’ acceptance speech was full of forward-looking optimism plus her policy plans and plans for governance. That sure was a contrast from Turnip Truck’s same old “woe is me because woe would be you” nonsense.
Turnip Truck only complained and reheated his same old campaign promises, once again. He promises the same old promises that he never fulfilled although he already got 4 years to, at the very least, try fulfilling them.
He already had 4 years but did nothing more than whining and complaining the whole time and then stamping his feet and throwing a 4 year tantrum ever since the voters voted his losing rear end out of the office it NEVER should have sat in.
Turnip Truck is such a loser. OMFG. Loooooooooooser
Michael K
August 23, 2024 at 7:09 pm
The question is not who will vote for a Black woman. The question is who will vote for a Twice impeached convicted felon, insurrectionist, Election denier and pathological liar who cozies up to dictators?
There is no moral equivalence.
Tom
August 24, 2024 at 7:52 am
Regardless of his many other deficiencies, the way he disparages military service and service members and their families should disqualify him from running to become CIC – I can’t even fathom how someone who has served or knows someone who has served would vote for him.
Comments are closed.