Kamala Harris changes the trajectory of the 2024 presidential campaign

She also has the opportunity to reset the whole conversation

Vice President Kamala Harris at an Iowa Democratic Party event in 2019. (Photo: Greg Hauenstein)

It’s no secret a lot of Americans didn’t want a rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Every time I walk in my neighborhood, I chuckle at the car with the bumper sticker: “Giant Meteor 2020. Just end it already.”

Yet, we were headed toward this same matchup four years later. Until Sunday’s announcement by President Biden that he wouldn’t seek re-election.

I don’t need to tell you that we now face a whole new election. Still, I’m struck by the predictable tenor of some of the debate since it’s become clear Vice President Kamala Harris is headed toward becoming the Democratic Party’s nominee. Trump’s team is trying to tie her to Biden’s record. Democrats, meanwhile, are dreaming of a matchup between Harris, the former prosecutor, and Trump, the current felon. Harris is echoing this approach.

Some of this is to be expected. Especially the Democrats’ eagerness to focus on Donald Trump and the contrast with Harris. When Trump is in the spotlight, he’s losing. It’s the same reason Biden was slipping in the polls when the media attention swung for weeks to his mental acuity. The key for both has been to keep the focus on the other. Recently, Biden lost that battle.

Harris now has a chance to change this dynamic. And not just by removing the age and vitality issue that drug Biden down, but by resetting the whole conversation.

Over the next four months, Harris has a unique opportunity to offer Americans a fresh new message that appeals to those people who never liked the choice between Biden and Trump—who desperately want to move beyond the familiar debates of the past and focus on a new candidate who will speak to their hopes for the future.

As the vice president, this kind of pivot will pose challenges for Harris. She’s a part of the Biden administration, after all. But now that she’s going to be at the top of the ticket, I believe she has the chance to fashion a message that is in her own image; to change the conversation from trying to “finish the job,” as Biden put it, to redefining what that job is going forward.

To be sure, she has a lot to talk about when it comes to the Biden record. Record job creation, historic help for veterans and a bipartisan deal to repair our ailing infrastructure. But Harris now has the chance to add her own, specific ideas.

There’s not much time. And Harris, like Biden—and Trump—has relatively low approval ratings. Still, I think swing voters hungry for change are willing to give Harris a new look. If she rewards them with a fresh vision for their future that gives them the sense that they aren’t mired in the same politics of the past, it could pay off for her.

What might that look like?

No doubt, Harris will accentuate protecting women’s rights in a way Biden has not. She already is. But there are other opportunities, too.

Lisa Garcia Bedolla, a political scientist at UC Berkeley, told the Berkeley News about the people in this country who don’t even bother to vote and the potential to appeal to these disaffected Americans:

Our political punditry is caught up in a polarized partisan world, ignoring that many Americans are simply disengaged from, and disenchanted by, that world. 

This moment gives the Democrats the chance to shift the narrative and give those disaffected eligible voters a reason to support Vice President Harris. What those voters want is a candidate who is willing to address the big issues that Americans are facing today: inflation, the lack of affordable housing and a growing sense that their communities are unsafe. 

She adds they don’t want a slick politician who glosses over the challenges, but one who understands that Americans are suffering in the aftermath of the pandemic and who offers a plan to address their problems.

Winning on some of these issues will be tough. Take inflation. Polls say voters have had more confidence in Trump than Biden when it comes to the economy. But, with Harris, there is a chance to cut into that lead; to reset the conversation in order to engage Americans who otherwise have tuned out Biden. Or who are turned off by Trump.

I don’t know if Harris has the ideas and talents to do this. But if she does—and does it quickly—it will be an effective response to Republicans who are trying to tie her to the worst parts of the Biden record and cherry pick her past to define her for their own purposes.

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I am approaching the two-year anniversary of Along the Mississippi, and it has invigorated me and given my long career in Iowa journalism a new life. If you value this work, please consider upgrading your subscription to paid. Contributions help to make this newsletter possible. Thanks for your consideration.

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The IWC Politics Podcast

If you’re interested in how other political analysts at the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative see the events of the past week, check out the Collaborative’s new politics podcast. We unveiled our latest episode on Wednesday morning. It’s the second podcast that we’ve posted this election season, and there are a range of perspectives from Iowa writers you’ll find interesting. I encourage you to check it out.

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How does Kamala Harris change Iowa elections?

Laura Belin at Bleeding Heartland posted a fascinating article about how Harris’ candidacy can help Democrats down ballot in Iowa in four specific ways.

It’s worth reading the whole thing, but I took note of this observation:

It would be hard to overstate how discouraged Iowa Democrats have been in recent months. Among the Democratic respondents in (Ann) Selzer’s Iowa Poll from June, 61 percent said they felt “exhaustion” thinking about the presidential race, and 59 percent said they felt “dread.” Just 45 percent of Democrats felt optimistic about the race, and only 26 percent said they were excited.

Again, that survey was in the field before the Trump-Biden debate.

I haven’t seen any fresh polling in Iowa since Biden stepped aside, but anecdotally, you can see that a fire has been ignited under Democrats in the state. Instead of a sense of dread, they now feel a new energy, a sense of relief.

Harris surely won’t win Iowa, but that newfound energy will help other Democratic candidates in the state.

HELPING OUR ADVERSARIES

Finally, there may be no conservative voice that more forcefully advocates for a muscular foreign and national security policy than the Wall Street Journal editorial board, so I was interested in one element of the board’s reaction to Biden’s decision to end his campaign.

Yes, the Journal called Biden “enfeebled,” but it also credited him with making the right decision. And it said of Republican calls for him to resign, that they “would do better by the country, and more for their own political interests, if they sent a public message that adversaries shouldn’t seek to exploit this period—that they’ll support a lame-duck Mr. Biden if he is forced to use military force to defend U.S. interests. This is what leaders of past generations would have done.”

That, of course, is not the message Republicans in Iowa sent. They did the opposite. They not only called for Biden to resign, but Jeff Kaufmann, the GOP chair, even said Biden “is incapable of governing.”

This is ridiculous, of course. But more importantly, it sends a dangerous message to our adversaries. Instead of making clear our enemies shouldn’t try to exploit this moment, as the Journal advised, they chose to traffic in the foolish idea that Biden can’t do what he’s done for almost four years—and that’s stand up effectively to enemies like Russia.

I shouldn’t be surprised at this. Despite all the talk of unity at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last week, Iowa GOP leaders have demonstrated that they would much rather play petty politics than put America’s national security interests first.

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