Along with the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner survey released August 9th, Democracy Corps has also released a strategy paper by Stan Greenberg and James Carville.
The paper, titled “From Small Bounce to Big Opportunity” examines Kerry’s post-convention gains on personal characteristics and national security issues and points to ways the campaign can use the theme of “Strength at Home” to address both national security and economic issues, where Kerry has not yet won all the support that he has the potential to attract.
TDS Strategy Memos
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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July 11: If Biden “Steps Aside” and Harris Steps Up, There Should Be No Falloff in Support
At New York I discussed and tried to resolve one source of anxiety about a potential alternative ticket:
One very central dynamic in the recent saga of Democratic anxiety over Joe Biden’s chances against Donald Trump, given the weaknesses he displayed in his first 2024 debate, has been the role of his understudy, Vice-President Kamala Harris. My colleague Gabriel Debenedetti explained the problem nearly two years ago as the “Kamala Harris conundrum”:
“Top party donors have privately worried to close Obama allies that they’re skeptical of Harris’s prospects as a presidential candidate, citing the implosion of her 2020 campaign and her struggles as VP. Jockeying from other potential competitors, like frenemy Gavin Newsom, suggests that few would defer to her if Biden retired. Yet Harris’s strength among the party’s most influential voters nonetheless puts her in clear pole position.”
The perception that Harris is too unpopular to pick up the party banner if Biden dropped it, but too well-positioned to be pushed aside without huge collateral damage, was a major part of the mindset of political observers when evaluating Democratic options after the debate. But now fresher evidence of Harris’s public standing shows she’s just as viable as many of the candidates floated in fantasy scenarios about an “open convention,” “mini-primary,” or smoke-filled room that would sweep away both parts of the Biden-Harris ticket.
For a good while now, Harris’s job-approval numbers have been converging with Biden’s after trailing them initially. These indicate dismal popularity among voters generally, but not in a way that makes her an unacceptable replacement candidate should she be pressed into service in an emergency. As of now, her job-approval ratio in the FiveThirtyEight averages is 37.1 percent approve to 51.2 percent disapprove. Biden’s is 37.4 percent approve to 56.8 percent disapprove. In the favorability ratios tracked by RealClearPolitics, Harris is at 38.3 favorable to 54.6 percent unfavorable, while Biden is at 39.4 percent favorable to 56.9 percent unfavorable. There’s just not a great deal of difference other than slightly lower disapproval/unfavorable numbers for the veep.
On the crucial measurement of viability as a general-election candidate against Trump, there wasn’t much credible polling prior to the post-debate crisis. An Emerson survey in February 2024 showed Harris trailing Trump by 3 percent (43 percent to 46 percent), which was a better showing than Gavin Newsom (down ten points, 36 percent to 46 percent) or Gretchen Whitmer (down 12 points, 33 percent to 45 percent).
After the debate, though, there was a sudden cascade of polling matching Democratic alternatives against Trump, and while Harris’s strength varied, she consistently did as well as or better than the fantasy alternatives. The first cookie on the plate was a one-day June 28 survey from Data for Progress, which showed virtually indistinguishable polling against Trump by Biden, Harris, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker, Josh Shapiro, and Gretchen Whitmer. All of them trailed Trump by 2 to 3 percent among likely voters.
Then two national polls released on July 2 showed Harris doing better than other feasible Biden alternatives. Reuters/Ipsos (which showed Biden and Trump tied) had Harris within a point of Trump, while Newsom trailed by three points, Andy Beshear by four, Whitmer by five, and Pritzker by six points. Similarly, CNN showed Harris trailing Trump by just two points; Pete Buttigieg trailing by four points; and Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer trailing him by five points.
Emerson came back with a new poll on July 9 that wasn’t as sunny as some for Democrats generally (every tested name trailed Trump, with Biden down by three points). But again, Harris (down by six points) did better than Newsom (down eight points); Buttigieg and Whitmer (down ten points); and Shapiro (down 12 points).
There’s been some talk that Harris might help Democrats with base constituencies that are sour about Biden. There’s not much publicly available evidence testing that hypothesis, though the crosstabs in the latest CNN poll do show Harris doing modestly better than Biden among people of color, voters under the age of 35, and women.
The bottom line is that one element of the “Kamala Harris conundrum” needs to be reconsidered. There should be no real drop-off in support if Biden (against current expectations) steps aside in favor of his vice-president (the only really feasible “replacement” scenario at this point). She probably has a higher ceiling of support than Biden as well, but in any event, she would have a fresh opportunity to make a strong first or second impression on many Americans who otherwise know little about her.
I’m trying to keep my powder dry, but with the release of the swift boat ads, I’m beginning to think that it’s time MoveOn, or some other 527 make an ad attacking Bush’s VietNam service, starting with the line, “The Republicans spent XX$ producing a political ad attacking Kerry’s military record. Perhaps it’s time we looked at what George W. Bush was doing during the VietNam war…” then they could ask some tough questions about how many men he jumped ahead of to get into the TX natl guard, and how many men were sent to VietNam and died there so that the Shrub could sit on his backside swigging beers at the local cantina missing drills.
Frankly, I think it’s time to get dirty.
Don’t get too antsy, boys and girls. It is still a long way from August to November, and the days grow short in late October. There are two debates coming up. I see a real key here in framing the issues prior to those debates so as to set an agenda for them. I’m expecting at least one question to Kerry about the $87 billion vote, and another on the vote to authorize the Iraq fiasco. That will be when Kerry needs to have the right answers, but he’ll need to be consistent with what he says now. What he has to do now is set up the message to come from those debates and to establish low expectations for himself in those debates and higher expectations for George Bush.
Now if there were only a way to fix things so that someone would ask Bush about sovereignty…
Kerry and company need to stay ahead tho.. and not let Bush set the topic of the day by directing questions at Kerry.. they need to diffuse that nonsense and get Bush on the defensive some more..
Meanwhile, it seems Bush is really vulnerable on nat’l security. Unlike 2002, the more moves he takes, the more America realizes that a lot of time has gone by and yet not a lot has been accomplished. And because it all depends on framing the possibility of terror, which can be interpreted in any way even on the most clear days, there is near inertia in his numbers.
Of course, the sad spectacle of his CIA chief nominee being outspooked by Michael Moore: http://martinirepublic.com/item/cia-chief-nominee-outspooked-by-michael-moore …won’t help with prospective converts, either.