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.
Stay on Point-
I have to say up front I am an Obama supporter… and I keep coming on blog sites, not to root for my candidate, but to try and understand why others are not as inspired as I am. I want to understand the various reasons folks support Clinton… fear, as you outline seems to me the saddest motivation of all.
The campaign you envision, is in fact the one the Clintons have been running. Race cards, unions, sex, changing the rules, etc… Wedge issue divisiveness as practiced in Politics today is backfiring, and hurting both of the Clintons – check the recent news cycles and polls.
Worry not about the Republicans in the fall, but rather consider that the name Clinton is nearly as polarizing as the thought of a black man with the name Barrak Hussein Obama… One of the troubles with old school scorched earth politics as usual is that the loads of new voters that the recent primaries have brought in have been extremely consistent in saying what brought them out is “Change”
Clinton, and what her campaign has come to represent in a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton line-up is going to be a tough sell to keeping that turn out come November.
The point of the analysis above is to point out in a subtle and statistical way is to demonstrate how the Obama campaign is rising above this out dated model to do what his campaign has promised to do from the start – and before if you remember his Key note speech – to paraphrase it, “no longer consider us a collection of red states and blue states, but the United States of America.”
In closing, don’t listen to fear and a list of things that should have nothing to do with an election – but act as a truly informed voter and listen to the man speak and decide if he stands for the country you would most hope to live in. If not, please tell me why the candidate of your choice has inspired you to believe they are best to serve as leader of our country.
I wish and hope that Obama’s net actually catches enough to win. So far, it looks like the traditional divide and conquer is doing just that.
I think McCain appeals to a lot of the same independents and disgruntled Republicans that Obama is angling for, and as long as McCain remains viable it will be hard for Obama to pull them into his net.
Below are a few points for those of you who are considering voting for Obama as the Democratic candidate to pursue the Presidency. Please read and consider these points thoroughly before casting your vote:
1. Obama is a Diversion;
2. Over the last two years, the large powerful conservative new agencies owned by influential Republicans have purposely given Obama either neutral or positive news reporting in his run for presidency, amplifying his exposure and ratings amongst Democrats;
3. The neutral/positive news reporting of Obama has split Democrats in choosing between Clinton or Obama as the Canidate to run for President;
4. The conservative news agencies and powerful Republicans politicians are trying to manipulate the Democrats to choose Obama to run for President;
5. When Obama is chosen to run for President, the conservative news agencies WILL turn on Obama by inciting (through negative reporting) the fears of Americans, and the Presidency will go to a Republican candidate;
6. Please do not be manipulated and vote for Clinton (or urge them to unite). Democrats should unite together behind Clinton or else the Republicans will literally steal the presidency.
Obama and Clinton should unite or Obama should step-down to ensure a Republican is not elected to the presidency.
This is in no way anti-Obama.(Bless you Obama for running; however unfortunate the timing, considering the above).
The point of the above is to make us Democrats aware. We dealt with very similar manipulation the last eight years (remember Karl Rove?) and need to wake up. There is much at stake to let the powerful Republican politicians manipulate our vote.
This is no means an attack on Republican citizens or Obama supporters, and much respect to you. Please consider the above points.
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