Kamala Has Liftoff
Also: The vice president is a human being, actually.
1. Launch
Kamala Harris held her first campaign rally yesterday. She was in a high school field house in Milwaukee. She drew over 3,000 people. The crowd was into it.
Her first appearance on the stump as the Democratic nominee was effective and promising. Here’s what she did, at the broad strategic level:
Highlight her time as a prosecutor and tie that to Trump’s crimes.
Position her campaign as focused on middle-class, kitchen-table issues.
Frame the choice as “striding into the future” vs. “being dragged into the past.”
Here are some things she did not do:
Describe Trump as a threat to democracy.
Reference the historic nature of her campaign as a black woman.
Reach out to the left.
All in all, I would say that Harris and her team made every strategic decision correctly yesterday.
If you want to see my deep-dive dissection of the speech, it’s here.
So let’s talk about the things Harris didn’t do, because that negative space gives us an interesting window into her campaign’s thinking.
No details. You will notice that Harris’s talk had almost no details. I don’t think there was a single substantive policy proposal in it.
That’s okay. With a 100-day campaign, her job is to be as light on details as possible. She wants to be a vessel that voters fill with their own hopes and preferences. At some point she’ll need to come up with a couple of concrete proposals. But this isn’t like the 2020 campaign where every Democrat had a fully-litigated healthcare proposal, complete with CBO scoring.
No “democracy” talk. I view this election almost entirely in terms of democratic backsliding. Perhaps you do, too. But polls consistently show that “democracy” isn’t something voters care much about. To the extent Harris gestured toward democracy, it was to frame the choice as:
Do we want to live in a country of freedom, compassion, and the rule of law? Or a country of chaos, fear, and hate?
Branding Trump as “chaos” while framing her agenda as “freedom” seems more effective than talking about “saving democracy,” the way you or I might prefer.
No identity politics. Everything about Harris’s nomination is historic. She’s the first Democrat to run against an insurrectionist. The first person to be swapped into a presidential nomination at the final hour. And yes, the first black woman to (maybe) become president. But these firsts are all so heavy that she doesn’t need to talk about them.
Or let me go further, even: I suspect that not talking about the historic nature of her candidacy makes it more powerful in the minds of voters.
Her Milwaukee speech suggests that her campaign has the same view.
In sum: The transition from Biden to Harris has gone as well as anyone could have hoped.
It was a clean hand-off.
Democratic voters greeted it not with acceptance, but enthusiasm. (See the fundraising numbers.)
The delegate math is settled and the convention will be harmonious.
Harris performed well right out of the gate.
The campaign’s strategic plan is already mapped and it is sound.
How do you know everything has worked? Because the Trump campaign is trying to manage expectations that polling will show Harris ahead for the next month:
In the memo, which was shared with reporters, Fabrizio points out that the wall-to-wall media coverage of Harris that has occurred since President Joe Biden announced on Sunday he wouldn’t be running for reelection would likely result in a “Harris Honeymoon” in public polling.
“The coverage will be largely positive and will certainly energize Democrats and some other parts of their coalition at least in the short term,” Fabrizio said. “That means we will start to see public polling—particularly national public polls—where Harris is gaining on or even leading President Trump.”
Think about that: The Trump campaign is preparing to fall behind for a third of the remaining time.
The race isn’t over. But the first part of the mission—achieving liftoff for Harris—is complete. And it was successful.
2. A Person, Not a Vessel
Reading this line by Peter Hamby made the record-scratch sound in my brain:
“Kamala Harris is basking in the afterglow of suddenly becoming the de facto Democratic nominee.”
I have never met Kamala Harris. I assume that, like everyone who rises to her station, she has a healthy ego, loads of ambition, and has wanted to be president for a long time.
And yet, I can’t imagine that she has been feeling anything like an afterglow. Because anyone in her position who felt that way would be a sociopath.
Take a walk with me.
This is a little touchy-feely and outside my wheelhouse. I’m more comfortable doing the strategic assessments. But at The Bulwark we all try to get outside our comfort zones and see things from different perspectives.
If you’re not a member yet, I hope you’ll join us. You know the ancient Chinese curse about living in interesting times? Well we’re living that thing right now. And the only way to make it through interesting times, is together.
Let’s take it as given that Kamala Harris has always wanted to be president . . . some day.
On June 27th, she woke up knowing that, for her, “some day” was far over the horizon. Maybe she’d get elected in 2028. Maybe, if Biden was called home, she’d be sworn in sooner. But in the meantime, she had a job to do: She was riding shotgun on a presidential campaign.
When she went to bed on June 27th, she must have understood that there was a chance she’d be her party’s nominee within a few days.
By the following Monday, she surely knew that Biden’s position was untenable and that, when he stepped aside, she would become her party’s only viable option.
In 72 hours Kamala Harris’s world went from, “I’ve got to help Biden win—fingers crossed” to “Holy shit, I have to do this thing myself.”
If Harris was running against John McCain, or Mitt Romney, or Nikki Haley, that would be one thing. Not a lot of pressure. If she wins, good for her. If she loses, that’s bad for her career and certain of her preferred policy outcomes. But the stakes would be pretty low.
Instead Harris was drafted to run against the guy who says he wants to be a dictator. Whose policy proposal is to put millions of people in camps.
If she loses this race, no one will care about Kamala’s career—because we’ll all be trying to salvage the republic.
She surely knows this and I cannot imagine the pressure.
I don’t know about you, but I would not trade places with her for all the whiskey in Ireland.
A lot of people remain angry that Biden did not step aside sooner. I don’t think that’s quite fair.1
But there’s also the human question about Harris: I suspect she needed time to orient herself and do some deadly serious introspection about her willingness to accept this burden.
Because that’s the what the Democratic presidential nomination is in 2024.
It’s not a brass ring; a chance for fame and glory. It’s the burden of carrying the shield of the republic against an aspiring authoritarian.
It’s one thing to ask for that task after careful consideration and preparation.
It is another to have it thrust into your hands, when there is no other option, while a nation of 330 million looks on.
Here’s the bottom line: It took me three and a half weeks to decide on the last TV I bought.
At the most basic, human level, I am glad that Harris had at least that short period of time to prepare for what her country would ask of her.
I dunno. Maybe I’m being overly romantic and we should assume that all politicians are such strivers that they’re ready to jump into the big chair at a moment’s notice? I would have agreed with that for every election before 2016. But the stakes are in a different category now. And I find it hard to believe that Harris doesn’t know that.
Discuss in the comments?
3. Ol’ Satchel
Just a tiny bit of dessert today:
Looking at the calendar, he didn’t have a lot of room to maneuver because of the NATO summit, the Trump shooting, and the Republican convention.
Someone talk me out of this proposition:
Biden leaving the race at the moment he did was not too late. It was perfectly timed. In fact, it was the best possible timing. Even better, perhaps, then announcing 6 months ago that he wouldn't be running. (But probably not as good as doing so in 2022)
Lots of people are hating on Biden for leaving it too long. But I think that, potentially, baiting the GOP into selecting JD Vance, and taking the media energy out of both the GOP Convention AND the assassination attempt is kind of a master stroke. No?
Harris looks like she's having fun. I think that's contagious.