It’s pretty obvious Kamala Harris’s candidacy changes the 2024 presidential race more than a little, and I wrote at New York about one avenue she has for victory that might have eluded Joe Biden:
During her brief run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019, Kamala Harris was widely believed to be emulating Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign strategy. She treated South Carolina, the first primary state with a substantial Black electorate, as the site of her potential breakthrough. But she front-loaded resources into Iowa to prepare for that breakthrough by reassuring Black voters that she could win in the largely white jurisdiction. She had the added advantage of being from the large state of California, where the primary had just been moved up to Super Tuesday (March 3). For a thrilling moment, after her commanding performance in a June 2019 debate, Harris seemed on track to pull off this feat, threatening Joe Biden’s hold on South Carolina in the polls and surging in Iowa. But neither she nor Cory Booker, who also relied on the Obama precedent, could displace Biden as the favorite of Black voters or strike gold in the crowded Iowa field. Out of money and luck, Harris dropped out before voters voted.
Now Kamala Harris is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee for 2024 without having to navigate any primaries. But she still faces some key strategic decisions. Joe Biden was consistently trailing Donald Trump in the polls in no small part because he was underperforming among young and non-white voters, the very heart of the much-discussed Obama coalition. Can Harris recoup some of these potential losses without sacrificing support elsewhere in the electorate? That is a question she must address at the very beginning of her general-election campaign.
There’s a chance that Harris can inject a bit of the Obama “hope and change” magic into a Democratic ticket that had previously felt like a desperate effort to defend an unpopular administration led by a low-energy incumbent, as Ron Brownstein suggests in The Atlantic:
“Polls have shown that a significant share of Americans doubt the mental capacity of Trump, who has stumbled through his own procession of verbal flubs, memory lapses, and incomprehensible tangents during stump speeches and interviews to relatively little attention in the shadow of Biden’s difficulties. Particularly if Harris picks a younger running mate, she could top a ticket that embodies the generational change that many voters indicated they were yearning for when facing a Trump-Biden rematch …
“In the best-case scenario for this line of thinking, Harris could regain ground among the younger voters and Black and Hispanic voters who have drifted away from Biden since 2020. At the same time, she could further expand Democrats’ already solid margins among college-educated women who support abortion rights.”
Team Trump seems to believe it can offset these potential gains by depicting Harris as a “California radical” and a symbol of diversity who might alienate the older white voters with whom Biden had some residual strength. Obama overcame similar race-saturated appeals in 2008, but he had a lot of help from a financial collapse and an unpopular war presided over by the party of his opponent.
Following Obama’s path has major strategic implications in terms of the battleground map. Any significant improvement over Biden’s performance among Black, Latino, and under-30 voters might put Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina — very nearly conceded to Trump in recent weeks — back into play. But erosion of Biden’s support among older and/or non-college-educated white voters could create potholes in his narrow Rust Belt path to victory in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
These strategic choices could definitely affect Harris’s choice of a running-mate, not just in terms of potentially picking a veep from a battleground state, but as a way of amplifying the shift produced by Biden’s withdrawal. Brownstein even thinks Harris might consider following Bill Clinton’s 1992 example of doubling down on her own strengths:
“The other option that energizes many Democrats would be for Harris to take the bold, historic option of selecting another woman: Whitmer. That would be a greater gamble, but a possible model would be 1992, when Bill Clinton chose Al Gore as his running mate; Gore was, like him, a centrist Baby Boomer southerner—rather than an older D.C. hand. ‘I love Josh Shapiro and I think he would be a great VP candidate, but I would double down’ with Whitmer, [Democratci consultant Mike] Mikus told me. ‘I don’t think you have to go with a moderate white guy. I think you can be bold [with a pick] that electrifies your base.’ I heard similar views from several consultants.”
Whitmer’s expressed disinterest in the veepstakes may take that particular option off the table, but the broader point remains: Harris does not have to — and may not be able to — simply adopt Biden’s strategy and tweak it slightly. She may be able to contemplate gains in the electorate that were unimaginable for an 81-year-old white male incumbent. But the strategic opportunity to follow Obama’s path to the White House will first depend on Harris’s ability to refocus persuadable voters on Trump’s shaky record, bad character, and extremist agenda. Biden could not do that after the debate debacle of June 27. His successor must begin taking the battle to the former president right now.
Norm?
Norman?
Norman Rogers?
*Warning – Possible Troll Alert*
I think more people need to get off their lazy behinds and really look for a job. The Toledo Blade (Ohio) on Sundays has over 4 full pages of jobs, with more than 1 entirely in the medical field. Of course these jobs take an education and some hard work to get which many people don’t want to do. Why do so many people think they should get paid a great wage for doing nothing? Socialism didn’t work in the Soviet Union and it won’t work here. Our country was based on you get what you work for, not making others give you something you don’t deserve. I have gotten my first raise in 10 years so something must be starting to get fixed from 8 years of depression in jobs.
This just out, from Citizens for Tax Justice, an outstanding nonprofit group that has been monitoring the tax code for progressivity for decades now:
DO FAT CATS PAY LOWER TAX RATES THAN WORKERS?
A May 8 analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, released today by Citizens for Tax Justice, shows that the federal tax code has
become so skewed in favor of investors over workers that personal taxes on earnings are now two-and-a-half times greater than personal taxes on
investment income.
The analysis shows that total federal personal taxes paid on wages now average 23.4 percent, while federal personal taxes on investment income now average only 9.6 percent.
The press release is available on CTJ’s website at
http://www.ctj.org/pdf/earnpr.pdf .
The full ITEP analysis can be found at http://www.itepnet.org/earnan.pdf .
(end of CTJ communication)
Edwards in his two Americas speech worked in this theme about this Administration favoring wealth over work in its tax and other economic policies. Most Americans, based on polling results, already know that this Administration favors the wealthy in its tax policies. And that seems not (yet, anyway) to have coincided with the sort of hue and cry one would have hoped for in light of such an outrageous reality.
I liked Edwards’ frame on this. It is a relatively easy to explain values-based statement which seems to resonate better with a broader portion of the public than others I’ve seen used to get at the same point. It is harder to attack with the class warfare line and lends itself better to putting a human face on this issue.
Frank, it is possible to determine the approximate “value” of the “jobs” being created if you take a look at the full report put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tl4.htm.
When you look at the numbers being offered, what you will find is that of those 288K net new “jobs”, 60.1K are in Temporary Help Services and Business Support Services (shorter version: temp jobs) and another 29.8K are in Services to Building and Dwellings (groundskeepers in other words). You will find another 36K in Accomodations and Food Services (about 80% in Food Services and Drinking Places) and another 16.8K in Ambulatory Health Care Services (home health aides in other words). So, just add up these numbers (142.7K total) to see that about 50% of the new positions are in immediately identifiable minimum wage jobs. I haven’t even teased out the other minimum wage jobs contained in the list yet but they can be identified (what percentage of Nursng and Residential Care Facilities positions aren’t minimum wage in your estimation, for example?).
I’ll let you draw your own conclusion about how sustainable Dubya’s growth projections are. Take a look at the BLS report for more detail.
ALERT: John Zogby has placed an article on his website in which he predicts, based on current polling numbers and history, that John Kerry will win the election. His arguments are quite similar to those espoused on this website…
Where are all these new jobs? I am highly educated and skilled, and I’ve been out of work for a year. It’s been ages since I’ve even had an interview.
Is there any way to tell if the new jobs are actually lower paying sector jobs? I smell a rat.
The problem with the Repub/CNBC line about how the economy is improving is that it is based on aggregate statistics. As the public rightly perceives, things aren’t getting be4tter for ordinary people. The tax cuts, while nice sounding in the aggregate, went mostly to 1-2% of the population. New jobs, ok, but no one is saying how much they pay. If they are at Wal-Mart, it isn’t good enough. Corporate profits may be up, but they aren’t being spread around. The public understands that gasoline is going up, interest rates are going up, inflation is going up, wages aren’t going up, and good jobs are still disappearing. As someone upthread said, Bush’s economic policies are succeeding, but the result is bad for 98% of the population.
In my field, information technology, over 900K jobs have been lost since 2001, and since January, 15K have been added.
This is supposed to cheer people up?
Democrats need to understand that, on the economy, Bush has not “failed.” He’s succeeded in what he is trying to do. The only problem is that what he is trying to do, is only really good for about 1% of the population. Bush is trying to shape an economy in which there are tremendous productivity gains, but no wage gains, and guess what we’ve got? Duh!
Perhaps voteres are waking up to the fact that we have embraced an economic policy with the moral equivalence of throwing a huge drunken party complete with booze, dancing girls, and a rented ballroom, then charging it all to our children. . .
Well, probably not.
The most important changes for an optimistic economy are wage growth, control over health care and insurance costs, and secure retirements. Allowing these to be dictated by employers like Bush seems content on doing will only drive more pessimism and insecurity and doubt. The party that wins public support for the economy must raise the federal minimum wage, especially for full time workers, and keep it indexed to price inflation. Sen. Kennedy made this important proposal that should be tacked onto any bill that Republicans use to eviscerate the middle class! Middle class and working class workers can’t pay their bills and mortgages and health care costs, let alone save for retirement of Bush’s ludicrous Health Savings Accounts. Bush is incredibly out of touch and REFUSES to see the error of his ways. Why do Republicans seem to only care about GDP growth, not stagnant wages? about newly unemployed numbers, not those out of work for years and years? Kerry is the only one who understands and aims to help average Americans.
No amount of priveledge can take away the fact that Kerry has the best ideas! And no amount of cowboy antics and acting chumy with voters can take away the fact that Bush’s policies have emasculated most workers who don’t earn, say, $100,000 a year and have only helped the superrich!
The jobs numbers aren’t good according to BushCo’s econ team. An average of 306,00 jobs/month, thanks to tax cuts. At least they outpace population growth again though.
It’ll go away eventually. It lags, of course. I don’t think there’s any doubt at this point that the economy, and particularly the job situation, will be considerably better by this time next year. I used to be afraid that it would improve quickly enough to help Bush, but I’m nearly positive that there’s not enough time at this point. Thank god.
I suspect that SSJPabs is correct about a time lag. Especially given the competing news this week.
I think the key indicator of the economy for most people is “when do I expect my next raise, and how big will it be?” And right now, I now a _lot_ of people for whom that indicator is very negative. Anecdotally, nearly everyone I talk to (including, unfortunately, my own employees) is clear that there will be no raises this year, and unless things change radically, next years’ are likely to be small, too.
This contrasts very, very clearly with memories of the second half of the nineties, where raises (and even bonuses, remember those?) were regular and decently-sized, if not better.
From my reading, no matter what the numbers, the one major thing this recovery has not produced, and doesn’t seem likely to produce, is any real wage growth any time soon.
So for most people, the recovery is not real on a personal level. Everyone is happy that there isn’t any inflation (unless you’re trying to buy a first house), but there certainly isn’t any sense of hope that things are getting any better.
Well I suppose it took a lot of time for the lack of jobs to really impact the public perception on economics, it might take a while for that to be too.
I’m too close to these things, too informed. I honestly admit that I have little in common with the average public in reactions to these numbers.