Democrats are in mourning after the November 5 defeat, but it’s not a bad time to appreciate what the party’s presidential nominee accomplished, even though she fell short of victory, and I wrote about how far she came at New York:
On March 12, the presidential contest was locked into place. On that day, Donald Trump clinched his third presidential nomination and Joe Biden clinched the Democratic nomination. Biden’s accomplishment had been in somewhat greater doubt than Trump’s owing to his party’s deep concerns about his advanced age and unpopularity. Despite that, he had put aside some of his own and his party’s anxiety about his running for reelection in part because of fears that if Vice-President Kamala Harris were the nominee, she would be incapable of beating Trump. Indeed, there had earlier been talk of Biden dumping Harris from the ticket to find a more appealing vice-president.
Suffice it to say that almost no one at the beginning of 2024 had Harris as the Democratic nominee on their bingo cards. Yet she seamlessly took over the party when Biden withdrew from the race following a catastrophic debate performance against Trump on June 27. She subsequently united Democrats, made big gains in the polls against Trump, and produced an incredibly close race that fell just short.
This sudden leap to the threshold of the White House represented a distinct contrast with the slow and steady progress Harris made earlier in her career. While Trump’s first successful run for office in 2016 was something of a lateral transfer from the heights of popular culture he had long commanded as a reality-TV star and a fixture of New York high society, Harris was then only just entering Washington. She had spent the previous quarter-century as a state and local prosecutor, rising through the ranks of California law enforcement and politics. Within three years, this junior senator was running for president, and the next year she was elected vice-president. During her years as a prosecutor, she was known as much for her interpersonal as for her professional accomplishments, becoming a staple of California’s more rarefied circles despite her own modest background as a child of Jamaican and Indian immigrants. Harris’s views and interests fit her comfortably into the pragmatic-progressive wing of her state’s Democratic Party. But she showed some real toughness in winning her first statewide race in the tea-party year of 2010, narrowly defeating the popular Los Angeles district attorney to become California attorney general. By then, she was known as an ally of President Barack Obama, whom she had backed early in his 2008 candidacy when he was an underdog running against Hillary Clinton. Her 2020 presidential campaign was very much modeled on Obama’s historic effort, after a period of senatorial tempering when she was a notably effective member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
But seeking a “lane” to the presidential nomination in a crowded field led Harris to take some notably left-bent positions that would later help Trump label her as an extremist, including support for single-payer health care, total commitment to LGBTQ rights, and criminal-justice reforms that extended to decriminalization of illegal border crossings. When her candidacy failed (after a brief moment of ascendence in 2019 when she scored major points against early front-runner Joe Biden over his one-time opposition to busing) amid signs of disorganization and strategic mistakes, her reputation as a rising political superstar took a hit. But her many assets were enough to make her a logical choice as Biden’s running-mate in 2020, and she did a fine job as a vice-presidential candidate, never upstaging her boss but not submerging her identity in his either.
While she will be eternally grateful to Biden for lifting her to the vice-presidency when other options were entirely available, the 46th president did her few favors once they were in office. Even as it became apparent that the new administration’s handling of migrants and asylum petitions was controversial and quickly unpopular, he placed Harris in the highly visible position of representing the new administration in Latin America, where she was sent on a hopeless journey to persuade refugees from poverty and violence to stay home. No, she was not “border czar,” but her association with the issue was indelible. She was also charged with being the public face of another administration initiative that wasn’t unpopular but was doomed: a drive to enact a national voting-rights measure over a Republican filibuster in the Senate. She finally got the chance to do something distinctive and in her wheelhouse when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Biden’s reluctance to talk about abortion in the frank language the wave of state bans and restrictions demanded soon led Harris to become the administration’s — and to a considerable extent, the Democratic Party’s — chief advocate for the restoration of reproductive rights.
But even as her public profile improved (along with her job-approval ratings), Harris had to negotiate without a hint of disloyalty the seas of Democratic unhappiness about Biden’s age, unpopularity, and signs of unfitness for another four years as president. When the crisis of his candidacy erupted after his disastrous performance in the June debate with Trump, Harris was ready. As steady pressure from Capitol Hill and around the country confronted Biden with his eroding support, she was even steadier in her support for her boss. And when Biden finally came to grips with the necessity of his self-sequestration as Democratic nominee, the moment came and went when the president and party might have seriously entertained the idea of choosing someone other than Harris as a successor via a “blitz primary” or some other gimmick for starting the nomination process all over again just before or even at the Democratic Convention in August. Biden, determined to control the nomination even as he abandoned it, never wavered in harnessing his withdrawal to a firm endorsement of his vice-president as his replacement, and after just a few days of uncertainty, the party, including every potential alternative to Harris, fell into line.
It was this all but miraculous switchover, which angry and confused Republicans called a “coup,” that in turn produced the sense of relief and excitement that made the DNC a lovefest and gave Harris the kind of almost-immediate lead over Trump (in fundraising, enthusiasm, and the polls) that Biden could never achieve.
Harris’s struggle against Trump was a tempestuous contest that steadily tightened as the former president hammered away at her on one level as a progressive (or as he calls her, a “Marxist”) extremist and at a much lower, personal level as a “low-IQ” diversity queen as unfit as Biden to serve and sharing the responsibility for his alleged policy failures. Her own campaign combined old-school Democratic base mobilization with a clear focus on converting anti-Trump Republicans and GOP-leaning independents, even as she continued her demands for the restoration of abortion rights and laid down an economic and immigration platform differing just enough from Biden’s to make her credible as a “change” candidate. As the race entered its final phase, Harris stepped up media appearances and began to stress her own version of the threat to democracy posed by Trump, focusing on his dangerous unpredictability and hinting at an age-based unfitness reminiscent of what Republicans said of Biden. Despite what happened on November 5, Harris almost certainly doing better than any Democrat could have anticipated in the doldrums of June.
Gareth,
As Ruy (and many others) have pointed out, professionals have drastically shifted from being strongly Republican to Democratic. This shift has already had profound effects – for example, making urban districts very difficult for Republicans to win (the minorities and younger professionals tend to live in urban areas in higher percentages, while managers tend to reside in the suburbs). Managers (as distinct from professionals) remain strongly Republican. This distinction is also important in deciphering the North/South divide, as the larger Nothern urban areas tend to be more skewed towards professional services (law firms, financial institutions, advertising, media, healthcare) while most Southern cities’ economies are focused on managerially dominated firms (retail chains, travel, food industries and so on). Of course, there are many large exceptions to that.
According to the 2000 national exit poll, Gore carried African-Americans 90-9 with 1 percent for Nader. Gore also carried Asian Americans 55-41, with 3% for Nader and 1% for Buchanan. I don’t have a breakdown for students, but Gore carried voters aged 18-29 by a margin of 48-46, with 5% for Nader, and 1% for Buchanan.
I agree with Publius that most voters establish a partisan preference in their first few elections, and are very apt to remain with that party. It would be very encouraging, and strong evidence for the emergence of a clear Democratic national majority, if Kerry and Edwards can keep anything like the 58-37 margin among students they enjoy in the Harvard poll, and extend it over the next two presidential elections to the non-students in the 18-29 age group.
I don’t have data, but it seems to me that Reagan ran well among younger voters, and that they were Perot’s best group as well as Nader’s.
What was Bush’s approval rating among blacks in 2000?
I read that Kerry was writing his own speech for the convention, which would then be gone over by speechwriters.
Can you imagine if Bush wrote his own speech? {giggle}
Ruy: Single most important poll result I’ve seen so far this campaign (and apologies if you already noted it in your very long post which I haven’t quite made it through):
LA Times question: Among those voters (about 60%) who know enough about Kerry to evaluate him, he leads by 10 points. Among those voters who do not know enough, he trails by 12.
Bingo. That’s what’s weird about all the recent polling. To me, this is fabulous news, unless Kerry totally blows the convention (not very likely, based on the speech he gave at the send-off rally in Denver today, which I attended). He leads strongly among those who are clued in, and many of those currently choosing Bush don’t know enough about Kerry AND ADMIT IT.
The race is still on — to define John Kerry. And the man himself has the first best shot at it this week.
HEY! I’ve been paying taxes since I was 17! Bush being gone would be my wildest dream. All I can say is that in my upper-midwest college on the Minnesota/North Dakota border it runs about 55% Kerry, 40% Bush.
Ruy, why ignore Asians?
I believe they’re going to be the largest demo in 50 years or so (overtopping hispanics) and they are mostly republican aren’t they?
It’s a myth that people get more conservative with age. Just look at people over 65- that’s the best Democratic demographic! What in fact happens is that predispositions just get stronger with time. Basicially if you vote for the same party your 3 first presidential elections, you’re pretty much hooked for life. So the political environment during someone’s late teens through mid-twenties are decisive for future political loyalties.
BUt will African-Americans and GenX’ers decideit is important enough to go and vote?
Howdy Ruy!
do you (or any helpful commenters) have the numbers for Bush’s 2000 support among young voters?
Aren’t the young usually a good demographic for Democrats? And isn’t it usually a life-cycle, not cohort phenomenon? (In other words, don’t young college students become conservative professionals when they start paying income tax?)
Now the key is getting all those disaffected college students to actually vote!