The American political landscape is shifting rapidly. Almost overnight, Joe Biden went from being the unchallenged candidate for re-election to a disgraced debate failure under heavy pressure to withdraw from the campaign.
Then the news cycle shifted again, with the same lightning-quick moves, and Biden withdrew and disappeared from the public scene. His shift from campaigning to being the world’s most notable absentee was almost as fast as his fall from grace.
As a result, the internet has been abuzz with rumors that he is dying or already dead. For the record, he is not, but regardless of the president’s health, it is only logical that he steps out of the spotlight and lets his heiress-apparent, Vice President Kamala Harris, get attention.
She took her first stab at being the Democrat’s presidential candidate on Tuesday when she spoke in Wisconsin. The speech was of the usual campaign-trail kind, but it revealed the platitudes that will define her message going forward: freedom and opportunity, whatever that means. She also announced—to the surprise of nobody in particular—that she wants more abortions and more welfare-state benefits.
The speech invigorated her base without broadening her appeal. She looked and sounded stylized, which is one reason why pundits with a conservative bent will continue to dismiss Harris as a serious competitor to Trump.
This is a mistake. Although Kamala Harris herself has nowhere near the intelligence that Donald Trump has, she has all the potential and resources to be a formidable adversary in the final months before the election.
Another mistake we should avoid is regarding Vice President Harris as a lightweight because she has not built a resume of any consequence as vice president. To begin with, from the viewpoint of the Democratic Party she has performed diligently. The only policy issue given to her by Biden was the southern border and its illegal immigration problem. She has managed that exactly as intended: she allowed the border to remain weak and open to floods of illegal immigrants.
The fact that Harris has not created much fanfare until now is in compliance with Democratic Party doctrine—let the president shine—but it is also attributable to the nature of the office. Unless the president places any meaningful policy issues on the vice president’s desk (as President Bush Jr. did, handing parts of homeland security to Vice President Cheney after the 9/11 attacks) the only roles that the vice president plays are those that are specified in the Constitution. He or she is first in the line of succession to the presidency and presides over the Senate.
The latter is a somewhat meaningful job, since the vice president has voting power: in a Senate divided 50-50 between the Democrats and the Republicans, the vice president tips the scale. However, in practice, it does not give the vice president any real powers: he or she is expected to perform the parliamentary duties associated with the Senate presidency, and then vote the party line.
Overall, Kamala Harris has been no more, no less invisible as vice president than Mike Pence was under Trump.
In other words, when we assess her qualities as a presidential candidate, we should not assume that she is hapless, inept, or of limited intellectual abilities. Nobody climbs from the job as district attorney—not even in San Francisco—to the top of the American political food chain without having ambition, smarts, and a big chunk of moral adaptability.
Harris, like all other politicians at her level, has these qualities. Let us remember that she has been the attorney general of California, the biggest state in the nation, and a U.S. Senator. Both are demanding jobs, more so than being vice president.
Even if Harris has no real policy achievements to brag about going into the November election, Republicans would be wise to take her as seriously as the most formidable opponent imaginable. It is clear, namely, that the Democrat political machine is hard at work to align itself, its ranks, its money, and its voters behind Harris.
They have good reasons to do so. First of all, from a political cost viewpoint, Harris is the logical choice. Her position and name recognition give her a head start with voters nationally; picking a governor from North Carolina or Michigan would require months of arduous campaign work to introduce that candidate to voters in Nevada, Wisconsin, and other important states. The Democrats don’t have months, and it has been unclear just how much money they would have on hand for such campaign work.
Second, by current election financing rules, Kamala Harris is the only candidate that can smoothly ‘inherit’ President Biden’s vast campaign war chest. Other candidates could get the money, but it would require a major funneling of campaign funds through Super-PACs (a kind of third-party political campaign organizations) and other channels. Arranging such funds transfers would attract Republican-backed lawyers like gawkers to a traffic accident, and the Democrats simply cannot afford getting bogged down in campaign finance lawsuits within three months of a presidential election.
Third, they need to get a new candidate on the ballots in several states. That is reportedly more easily done with Harris than any other candidate, although there is a not-insignificant risk for legal challenges. The most effective way to ‘blanket swap’ a candidate is if the one whose name is on the ballot suddenly dies, but short of the incumbent president passing away, Harris still remains the best option for getting a new candidate on the ballot.
Which brings us to the fourth reason why the Democrats want Harris for November. Joe Biden is said to have caught COVID—and his doctor has reported that his symptoms have “almost resolved completely.” However, in the event that his health problems become so overwhelming that the president succumbs to them, the silver lining from a Democratic Party perspective would be that Harris then ascends to the presidency.
If Biden were to pass away, Kamala Harris would be campaigning against Donald Trump as the incumbent president. She would have time to make decisions, appear on the world stage (to the extent such meetings can be arranged in a haste), and be elevated by media as the indisputable leader that nobody outside her own campaign thinks she is at the moment.
Democrat strategists can line up more reasons why Kamala Harris is the best candidate: she has an mixed ethnic background. The Left has been selling her as the first black female vice president, as her father is Jamaican (with a bit of Irish). Harris’s mother was South Asian, from India. The Left has turned this into an advantage: they can sell her as virtually any kind of ethnicity that benefits them (except being Irish, which apparently is too white for their taste).
Given all this, the Trump campaign and his supporters should get ready for some heavy lifting going forward. With Joe Biden remaining the candidate, Trump could almost have spent his days sipping Diet Coke and still won; with Harris as the top name on the Democrat ticket, things change dramatically.
First of all, the Democrats now get to go back to their favorite campaign theme: their candidate is virtuous because she is Black/Asian/Caribbean and Republicans are all racists because they don’t fall flat before her feet. There is still power in the racial argument, though not nearly as much as there used to be. It will embolden core Democrat voters who were insecure about voting for Biden, and it will rope in some undecided voters who are drawn to the simplicity in determining who to vote for based on their looks.
In short, as they see it, they can shore up their base and stop the drainage to Trump.
Once the race card has been played, they can let Kamala Harris speak about how she as an attorney general went after people like Trump, whom they still see as a convicted felon even though he has never received a formal verdict from the politically driven case in New York. Harris can play the role of the law-and-order candidate, especially if she is sworn in as Biden’s successor before the election. Then she can use her new office to issue executive orders that sound tough on crime.
The fact that she did nothing to secure America’s border to Mexico will be buried deep in the remote annals of the internet.
Then there is the ‘age gap.’ Kamala Harris is 60, Donald Trump 78. This age difference is reminiscent of President Reagan’s re-election campaign in 1984, where Reagan, who was 73 at the time, promised not to use his opponent Walter Mondale’s “youth and inexperience” against him. Mondale was 56.
Republicans could of course play the age gap the same way Reagan did, but it also works the opposite way. Although there is no doubt that Trump is very vigorous for his age, the TV and online ads that will come out from the Left will undoubtedly portray him as old, tired, and weak, while Kamala Harris will be elevated as young, energetic, and vigorous.
None of these points are substantive in the sense of being relevant to the presidency, and their appeal will generally be more limited than the Democrats believe. In reality, Trump is surfing a strong wave of popularity and respect, part of which he earned in the minutes after the attempt on his life. That will remain with him, but not forever. As soon as the Democratic Party machine has coalesced around Kamala Harris—and that process is in full swing right now—their propaganda apparatus will go to work. When it does, it will do its best to erase the attempted assassination from people’s memories.
The less like a patriotic leader Trump looks, the closer they can pull him down to the same level as Kamala Harris.
Can Harris win? The answer depends not on who she picks among the presumptive vice-presidential candidates; all governors, except one more or less anonymous senator, they add nothing of substance to the ticket. The only exception would be if she chooses Hillary Clinton: that would bring a whole new level of dynamics into the race, one that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans could fully control.
Without Clinton on the ticket, Kamala Harris has less than a 50-50 chance of winning. With Clinton onboard, all bets are off. But Clinton will not be on the ticket, for one simple reason: she would outshine Kamala Harris.
Can Kamala Harris Revive the Democrats for November?
U.S. Vice President and Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris waves as she boards Air Force Two for departure from Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport on July 23, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Photo: KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI / AFP
The American political landscape is shifting rapidly. Almost overnight, Joe Biden went from being the unchallenged candidate for re-election to a disgraced debate failure under heavy pressure to withdraw from the campaign.
Then the news cycle shifted again, with the same lightning-quick moves, and Biden withdrew and disappeared from the public scene. His shift from campaigning to being the world’s most notable absentee was almost as fast as his fall from grace.
As a result, the internet has been abuzz with rumors that he is dying or already dead. For the record, he is not, but regardless of the president’s health, it is only logical that he steps out of the spotlight and lets his heiress-apparent, Vice President Kamala Harris, get attention.
She took her first stab at being the Democrat’s presidential candidate on Tuesday when she spoke in Wisconsin. The speech was of the usual campaign-trail kind, but it revealed the platitudes that will define her message going forward: freedom and opportunity, whatever that means. She also announced—to the surprise of nobody in particular—that she wants more abortions and more welfare-state benefits.
The speech invigorated her base without broadening her appeal. She looked and sounded stylized, which is one reason why pundits with a conservative bent will continue to dismiss Harris as a serious competitor to Trump.
This is a mistake. Although Kamala Harris herself has nowhere near the intelligence that Donald Trump has, she has all the potential and resources to be a formidable adversary in the final months before the election.
Another mistake we should avoid is regarding Vice President Harris as a lightweight because she has not built a resume of any consequence as vice president. To begin with, from the viewpoint of the Democratic Party she has performed diligently. The only policy issue given to her by Biden was the southern border and its illegal immigration problem. She has managed that exactly as intended: she allowed the border to remain weak and open to floods of illegal immigrants.
The fact that Harris has not created much fanfare until now is in compliance with Democratic Party doctrine—let the president shine—but it is also attributable to the nature of the office. Unless the president places any meaningful policy issues on the vice president’s desk (as President Bush Jr. did, handing parts of homeland security to Vice President Cheney after the 9/11 attacks) the only roles that the vice president plays are those that are specified in the Constitution. He or she is first in the line of succession to the presidency and presides over the Senate.
The latter is a somewhat meaningful job, since the vice president has voting power: in a Senate divided 50-50 between the Democrats and the Republicans, the vice president tips the scale. However, in practice, it does not give the vice president any real powers: he or she is expected to perform the parliamentary duties associated with the Senate presidency, and then vote the party line.
Overall, Kamala Harris has been no more, no less invisible as vice president than Mike Pence was under Trump.
In other words, when we assess her qualities as a presidential candidate, we should not assume that she is hapless, inept, or of limited intellectual abilities. Nobody climbs from the job as district attorney—not even in San Francisco—to the top of the American political food chain without having ambition, smarts, and a big chunk of moral adaptability.
Harris, like all other politicians at her level, has these qualities. Let us remember that she has been the attorney general of California, the biggest state in the nation, and a U.S. Senator. Both are demanding jobs, more so than being vice president.
Even if Harris has no real policy achievements to brag about going into the November election, Republicans would be wise to take her as seriously as the most formidable opponent imaginable. It is clear, namely, that the Democrat political machine is hard at work to align itself, its ranks, its money, and its voters behind Harris.
They have good reasons to do so. First of all, from a political cost viewpoint, Harris is the logical choice. Her position and name recognition give her a head start with voters nationally; picking a governor from North Carolina or Michigan would require months of arduous campaign work to introduce that candidate to voters in Nevada, Wisconsin, and other important states. The Democrats don’t have months, and it has been unclear just how much money they would have on hand for such campaign work.
Second, by current election financing rules, Kamala Harris is the only candidate that can smoothly ‘inherit’ President Biden’s vast campaign war chest. Other candidates could get the money, but it would require a major funneling of campaign funds through Super-PACs (a kind of third-party political campaign organizations) and other channels. Arranging such funds transfers would attract Republican-backed lawyers like gawkers to a traffic accident, and the Democrats simply cannot afford getting bogged down in campaign finance lawsuits within three months of a presidential election.
Third, they need to get a new candidate on the ballots in several states. That is reportedly more easily done with Harris than any other candidate, although there is a not-insignificant risk for legal challenges. The most effective way to ‘blanket swap’ a candidate is if the one whose name is on the ballot suddenly dies, but short of the incumbent president passing away, Harris still remains the best option for getting a new candidate on the ballot.
Which brings us to the fourth reason why the Democrats want Harris for November. Joe Biden is said to have caught COVID—and his doctor has reported that his symptoms have “almost resolved completely.” However, in the event that his health problems become so overwhelming that the president succumbs to them, the silver lining from a Democratic Party perspective would be that Harris then ascends to the presidency.
If Biden were to pass away, Kamala Harris would be campaigning against Donald Trump as the incumbent president. She would have time to make decisions, appear on the world stage (to the extent such meetings can be arranged in a haste), and be elevated by media as the indisputable leader that nobody outside her own campaign thinks she is at the moment.
Democrat strategists can line up more reasons why Kamala Harris is the best candidate: she has an mixed ethnic background. The Left has been selling her as the first black female vice president, as her father is Jamaican (with a bit of Irish). Harris’s mother was South Asian, from India. The Left has turned this into an advantage: they can sell her as virtually any kind of ethnicity that benefits them (except being Irish, which apparently is too white for their taste).
Given all this, the Trump campaign and his supporters should get ready for some heavy lifting going forward. With Joe Biden remaining the candidate, Trump could almost have spent his days sipping Diet Coke and still won; with Harris as the top name on the Democrat ticket, things change dramatically.
First of all, the Democrats now get to go back to their favorite campaign theme: their candidate is virtuous because she is Black/Asian/Caribbean and Republicans are all racists because they don’t fall flat before her feet. There is still power in the racial argument, though not nearly as much as there used to be. It will embolden core Democrat voters who were insecure about voting for Biden, and it will rope in some undecided voters who are drawn to the simplicity in determining who to vote for based on their looks.
In short, as they see it, they can shore up their base and stop the drainage to Trump.
Once the race card has been played, they can let Kamala Harris speak about how she as an attorney general went after people like Trump, whom they still see as a convicted felon even though he has never received a formal verdict from the politically driven case in New York. Harris can play the role of the law-and-order candidate, especially if she is sworn in as Biden’s successor before the election. Then she can use her new office to issue executive orders that sound tough on crime.
The fact that she did nothing to secure America’s border to Mexico will be buried deep in the remote annals of the internet.
Then there is the ‘age gap.’ Kamala Harris is 60, Donald Trump 78. This age difference is reminiscent of President Reagan’s re-election campaign in 1984, where Reagan, who was 73 at the time, promised not to use his opponent Walter Mondale’s “youth and inexperience” against him. Mondale was 56.
Republicans could of course play the age gap the same way Reagan did, but it also works the opposite way. Although there is no doubt that Trump is very vigorous for his age, the TV and online ads that will come out from the Left will undoubtedly portray him as old, tired, and weak, while Kamala Harris will be elevated as young, energetic, and vigorous.
None of these points are substantive in the sense of being relevant to the presidency, and their appeal will generally be more limited than the Democrats believe. In reality, Trump is surfing a strong wave of popularity and respect, part of which he earned in the minutes after the attempt on his life. That will remain with him, but not forever. As soon as the Democratic Party machine has coalesced around Kamala Harris—and that process is in full swing right now—their propaganda apparatus will go to work. When it does, it will do its best to erase the attempted assassination from people’s memories.
The less like a patriotic leader Trump looks, the closer they can pull him down to the same level as Kamala Harris.
Can Harris win? The answer depends not on who she picks among the presumptive vice-presidential candidates; all governors, except one more or less anonymous senator, they add nothing of substance to the ticket. The only exception would be if she chooses Hillary Clinton: that would bring a whole new level of dynamics into the race, one that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans could fully control.
Without Clinton on the ticket, Kamala Harris has less than a 50-50 chance of winning. With Clinton onboard, all bets are off. But Clinton will not be on the ticket, for one simple reason: she would outshine Kamala Harris.
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