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.
Being that Bush has been re-elected (legally/officially) or
not, what differance does all this really prove or mean.
Like it or not, unless on 1/6 the Congress (Representitives &
at least 1 senitor) contest the election and somehow
the contest stands and Congress selects the P & VP.
(Kerry & Edwards ? unlikely under a Republican Congress,
wishfull thinking anyway).
We are now stuck with Bush for 4 more years. I’m not
sure about wanting him impeached either. Cheny would
then become P.
I’m just thinking that Bush is the lesser of two eveils, for
whatever better feeling that gives.
Is there a future in trading off intensiity of support for the war against breadth of support for the war, given a climate in which only 60% of the potential electorate, maximum, votes, and less than that in the next, mid-term cycle?
The 51% solution has worked so far, why would the Republicans not stick to it? As long as they get to determine by fair means — propaganda — or foul — Diebiold — 51% of *what*, it’s good enough to win.
I think Ruy understates it when he says Bush is “not out of the woods on Iraq yet.” Iraq is already a fait accompli disaster–it can only get worse and more humiliating. The election will inevitably result in a Shiite-dominated government that will most likely demand an accelerated, if not immediate, US troop withdrawal. Then all the sacrifice will have been to replace Saddam with a pro-Iranian Shiite Sharia-based government that will hand over oil redevelopment contracts to Russia, France, and Germany.
And I have to take issue with Larry when he says “God help us if we convince ourselves that in order to gain support from those currently on the other side we have to be more like the other side.”
I’m not sure what he means by being “more like the other side.” I don’t expect Democrats to initiate political strategies with an Orwellian super-state as the ultimate goal. But, the fact is that the goal is to win elections.
If Karl Rove had a revelation and became a Democrat overnight, would we not rejoice that the most cunning political strategist of the age was now on our side? Face it…he’s the Mariano Rivera of politics! And the Democrats lost not because the Republicans are such fascists, but because they are better at presenting their crap as ice cream. The Democratic campaign suffered an utter failure of marketing. We all know the list of mistakes. …
But high on the list of Democratic mistakes was to think that issues matter above all else. I’m not sure Rove is as tanked up about this war as Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz. But he accepted it as the baggage he had to take into the campaign. He dealt with his handicaps very, very well.
Let’s remember next time that the goal is to take office, not to run a “campaign we can be proud of” as the losers always say. A winning campaign is one to be proud of.
Jeez, Larry, the election was for only a four-year term. If your apocalyptic scenario is right, then Dems will certainly be returned to power in our lifetimes–quite possibly in four years. Hopefully it won’t be, but we certainly can regain power anyway.
And if you look at the polls you’ll see not only Bush’s ratings slipping to or below pre-election levels, but you’ll see Democrats registering as equal or better than the GOP in terms of public image and party identification. That’s not what I call a “reviled” minority.
I discovered your site today and have bookmarked it so I can read it regularly. I applaud your enthusiasm and your optimism about somehow being able to return the Democrats to the majority. But I think you need to get ready for a lifetime of being the loyal opposition, a reviled minority that can only succeed by cutting deals with the governing party, or by parliamentary strategies to block the worst of what the government would like to do.
The Bush administration no longer cares about their approval ratings, and rightly so: They don’t need another electoral win. They are now free to pursue their global domination and personal wealth accumulation goals without concern for public opinion. We should not be gloating that their poll numbers are slipping. We should be trying to obstruct them when we feel that they are wrong – on preemptive war, civil rights, social security, the death penalty and so on.
It has taken at least a generation for the GOP to get control of the debate, but they have worked at it relentlessly behind the scenes since the 1970’s and they now are in charge of the most powerful election-winning themes: religion, bigotry, greed and blind patriotism. It will take until these people are dead before the left can hope to explain itself in ways that the general public can embrace, and God help us if we convince ourselves that in order to gain support from those currently on the other side we have to be more like the other side.
I have to wonder when torture becomes a war crime and when do war crimes become high crimes and misdemeanors under the impeachment provisions opf the constitution.
Will the media start talking about impeachment being a correct response for enabling torture.
jim