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.
W need young people and minorities turning out to vote. It’s good to see that the future has hope i’m 25 myself.
Just an observation: my 21 year old son said most of his friends from college are strongly anti-Bush and active in politics. However, he also hangs out with a large group of kids who went into blue-collar jobs after high school. Those kids are either pro-Bush or don’t care at all.
FWIW….
I don’t think Sully could ever bring himself NOT to vote for Bush. I’ve seen the way he almost breaks away and then comes rushing back for some reason or another.
I don’t really know about the others though.
By the way (a quick thought after scanning a number of well-known libertarian blogs):
Kerry/Edwards would be well advised to try to exploit the rift between social conservatives (who adore “Shrub” and “Right Wing Dick” no matter how much they screw up Iraq or the federal deficit) and libertarians. Most of the leading libertarian bloggers such as Andrew Sullivan, Jacob Levy and Dan Drezner are now leaning strongly towards voting for Kerry this year.
One nice soundbite in the current “values” flamefest would be for Kerry to publicly taunt the GOP for giving so much air time to Arnie, Rudy, John McCain as GOP convention speakers. Kerry should join forces with the Family Research Council(!) by saying the Bush Administration should show what its “values” are by giving a prominent place to guys like Ashcroft, Rick Santorum, Sam Brownback, Henry Hyde etc.. Wouldn’t it be great if the New York convention would primarily showcase bible-thumpers, homophobes and other intolerants… That was a major reason why Poppy lost the 1992 elections to Clinton; the GOP convention in Houston had to give lots of room to disgruntled social conservatives, and it scared away the moderates.
As an aside, I have always thought Ruy’s book about the “Emerging Democratic Majority” might not necessarily predict the future even if the demographic/cultural trends turn out to be correct. Doesn’t it make sense to assume the Republican Party only will start to favor socially moderate fiscal conservatives at the expense of social conservatives, when that happens? After all, Arnold Schwarzenegger, William Weld, Michael Bloomberg & Rudy Giuliani have all been successful in heavily Democratic states.
MARCU$
Well that’s great news, then. Remember: the GOP automatically benefits from a low turnout on election day plus mis-informed voters.
BTW, didn’t some polls indicate a shocking number of Americans actually believe WMDs *have* been found in Iraq and that they *were* used against U.S. troops during the invasion?? No — I am not talking about the single artillery shell containing sarin found so far. I am talking about the whole shebang that Cheney strongly “suggested” would be found in Iraq by now.
It is frustrating isn’t it? If many people can’t even tell Osama’s Afghanistan from Saddam’s Iraq, or fact from fiction in general, it’s little wonder “Shrub’s” $200-million hate campaign of mis-information is quite effective.
MARCU$
As the mother of three – ages 25, 22 and 18 – I can agree with Sean that the members of the younger generation I come into contact with are heavily involved in this year’s election. It’s a frequent topic of passionate conversation among them. This is no generic election to them – they feel their own future is in the balance.
I keep seeing the name Adam Parkhomenko showing up places. He is only 18 years old. He is the one who tried to get Hillary Rodham Clinton to run for President this year. Does anyone have any contact information for him? There is info about him here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=Adam+parkhomenko
I fear that the disparity between those in the know and those not in the know will grow wider and wider in the 18-29 (though I think that’s a little too large of a lumping in my opinion).
Wonky kids are great but I really wonder if that’s a percentage which is growing.
As an 18-29 year old I don’t see too much wrong with some cyber-worshipping but then, as someone who has actually given money to political campaigns, and followed primaries since 2003, I am admittedly not a typical 18-29 year old.
The ignorance of 18-29-year-olds is, to judge from my not necessarily representative experience of living in a college town, not conspicuous by the standards of the American electorate. And I also see among them an undiminshed ability to analyze what information they do absorb. Most heartening, I’ve met a hell of a lot more wonky kids than I would have dreamed, a few years go, of existing in 2004. In the the late 1990s, we all pretty much expected a cyber-worshipping, materialistic Dark Ages to to descend when the Baby Boomers left the scene. It still might happen, but at least cautious optimism is justified now.
I predict, safely, I think, that voter participation among 18-29-year-olds this year will be at least 20 percentage points above its 2000 level, and I am willing to wager $100 that it will be 30 percentage points higher. Any takers can e-mail me to negotiate conditions:)
There was a poll that Amy Sullivan (of politicalaims.com) pointed to that showed some pretty uneducated folks out there… Though I guess it’s good that Democrats have a favourable party ID…