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.
I agree with Steve’s comments. I know from experience that, while I am not especially a liberal, I am not what they could loosely call a conservative, and therefore not one of them. They seem to be able to make that judgment about me in about 5 minutes. I can feel the sharp eyes watching me. I do not make the correct coded responses that they all seem to know. I don’t know the correct responses even though I grew up in a very fundamentalist church. Now there are politically oriented coded responses that must be passed. I don’t make it. They will be polite and easy-going to your face for a short while, but once you’ve shown your colors, then the shading starts: how far out are you, how far out am I willing to go. When they find out that I am not willing to play their authority game, then, I’m out.
The Christian Right are deadly serious about their agenda. I’m not that sure about how they stand with the GOP any more, though I think they still have their eyes on the levers of power. I think W & Cheney has taken them into uncharted waters, but the authoritarianism is not the brand they wanted.
Make no mistake about it, the game is one of authority. Power might be a side element, but if they have the authority to make you respond, you can be saved again, and you will submit to a particular personal power as directed by their representative of God.
Thank you. It was a good entry with some excellent points.
“….also offered a reminder that most conservative white evangelical Protestant Americans are kind, decent, well-adjusted people who (whatever their voting habits) don’t really reflect the angry views of some of their self-appointed political leaders.”
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You’re being far too generous as to “everyday, commonfolk” religious conservatives in the U.S. Yes, at a funeral or picnic or wedding interacting with them may seem a pleasant if not innocuous event. Smiles, handshakes, “Howya doing?” get traded. Even more in-depth discussions about life might not see you getting consigned to hell for being the degenerate “you don’t belong to the right religion (or no religion)” person you are. However, these same people fervently want leaders ensconced in office pledging to enact laws enforcing a moral code in line with their conservative beliefs. Homosexual marriage is to be banned. Even homosexual relations are to be banned or criminalized. Abortion is to be outlawed. Prayer (Christian prayer) is to be allowed if not outright encouraged in public schools. The federal and state governments are to pay for or subsidize private, religiously leaning schools. Many believe God says the enviroment, plants and animals are there to be plundered for the pleasure and needs of humans and therefore laws restricting or preserving them are contrary to God’s will. Jews and other non-Christians are going to hell. This tenet is sacrosanct. No Jesus, no afterlife. No, amend that, you get some sort of afterlife. It’s just one wherein you twist and writhe in the fires of Hell or linger about in some sort of nothingness forever regretting rejecting Billy Graham. No, I wouldn’t mistake a few hours of interplay with a crowd of cordial, devout Christians as indicative of their willingness to allow everyone to just be left alone. Over Cokes and chips you are silently being judged. And given absolute control of the levers of power you will bend to their vision of morality and execution of public policy controlling it.