A Sense of Doubt blog post #3493 - DNC 2024 ROUNDUP: When We FIGHT, We WIN!!!
 |
| Kamala Harris Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times |
‘U.S.A.! U.S.A.!’
Kamala Harris capped her first month as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate with a roughly 35-minute convention speech last night that embodied her aggressive efforts to win over swing voters.
It was a patriotic speech that was hawkish on foreign policy and border security. She described the United States as the greatest country in the world — a view many Americans hold but most Democratic voters do not — and she ended by saying that being an American was “the greatest privilege on earth.” She promised to confront China, Russia, Iran and Iran-backed terrorists and to make sure that the U.S. military remained the “most lethal fighting force in the world.”
She also offered a series of populist promises to help the middle class by reducing the cost of housing and health care — policies that many independents and some Republicans favor. And she spent little if any time on subjects that inspire passion among Democrats but are either secondary or off-putting to many swing voters, such as student debt forgiveness and President Biden’s climate agenda.
You can read more about Harris’s speech in this news story, as well as in this article on how she contrasted herself with Donald Trump.
In today’s newsletter, I want to explain why Harris’s move to the political center seems to be working, at least so far.
Who vs. what
Harris has surged in the polls, erasing Biden’s deficit and taking a small lead over Trump, for two main reasons. First, she has won over some swing voters, including independents, working-class Midwesterners and even a fraction of 2020 Trump voters. Second, she has done so at no apparent cost: In addition to attracting swing voters, she has built a bigger lead than Biden had among the Democratic base, such as young voters, college graduates and city residents.
How could this be? It comes down to the difference between the who and the what of her candidacy.
Loyal Democrats are energized about the who. They spent months agonizing over Biden’s flailing candidacy. Once he quit and Harris wrapped up party support in just a few hours, everything felt different.
Democrats remembered what it was like to have a candidate who could deliver a speech without making people fret that something was about to go wrong. Harris is full of energy and joy. She can cogently explain the administration’s policies, and she seems to be having fun in the process. Amid this electricity, many Democrats have been willing to tolerate her triangulation in the service of winning.
 |
| Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times |
Harris isn’t just another Democratic politician, either. She would be the country’s first female president, of course, and is a woman of color. Today’s Democratic Party puts great emphasis on identity, especially race and gender. The party defines itself in large part as the defender of groups that suffer discrimination and injustice. Just watch Tuesday night’s ceremonial roll call to nominate Harris, when delegates celebrated her historic status — and their own identities.
This focus on personal identity can give pathbreaking candidates more flexibility to stray from Democratic orthodoxy without angering the base. Barack Obama benefited from a similar dynamic in 2008. He was more moderate than some other Democratic candidates that year, yet he still excited many progressives. (Obama’s speech this week was also fairly moderate. Nonetheless, it received rapturous applause.)
For all these reasons, Harris has formed an emotional bond with liberals and others who make up the Democratic base. That bond has freed her to pursue swing voters with the what of her candidacy. She offers an economic agenda that many working-class voters support. She claims that she, not Trump, is the true candidate of border security. She encourages “U.S.A.!” chants. Last night, she referred to American history as “the most extraordinary story ever told.”
A tight race
Even so, the presidential race remains close. Harris leads in enough states to win, but only just. And if recent polls have undercounted Trump voters as much as they did in 2016 and 2020, he would probably win an election held today.
 |
| Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times |
With the convention now over, Democrats won’t be able to control the narrative the way that they have this week. Republicans have already started running ads to remind voters of Harris’s liberal past. One ad opens by calling Harris a “San Francisco radical” and showing her wearing a Covid mask while she announces her pronouns. It then includes clips in which she calls for a ban on plastic straws, supports looser immigration policies and says more police officers don’t lead to more safety. Expect to see a lot of these ads before November.
It is possible that Harris has been enjoying a temporary polling bump — from the good vibes of replacing Biden — that will soon fade. (In that case, I’ll be curious to see if Harris goes even further to moderate her image; she said nothing last night, for example, about whether she supported an “all of the above” energy policy to reduce prices.)
Nobody knows what will happen between now and Election Day. What’s clear is that Harris has run an effective first month of her campaign, managing both to consolidate Democratic support and to moderately — in both senses of the word — expand her appeal.
More from the convention
|
|
More on the campaign
|
|
|
 |
| In Chicago. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times |
Agents of change
 | I cover politics. |
It’s hard for the party that holds the White House to run as the party of change. But Kamala Harris and the Democrats are trying.
Running on change is often smart politics. Voters are perennially unhappy with the country’s trajectory, and the pandemic made it worse. According to Gallup, it has been two decades since a majority of Americans said they were satisfied with the direction of the nation. No wonder politicians cater to them with promises of new beginnings.
When Donald Trump was still facing President Biden — just a month ago — the former president could make a clearer case. Trump was out of power. He was the insurgent running against an incumbent. He promised to alter the country’s course.
Now Harris has jostled that dynamic after her party’s midsummer candidate switch. At its convention in Chicago this week, the Democratic Party has embraced the 59-year-old as the face of a new generation in a presidential contest that had previously featured two men seeking to set the record as the oldest person ever to serve. Inside the convention hall, chants of “We’re not going back” have rung out. And a fresh campaign slogan, “A New Way Forward,” is on banners and in speeches.
In today’s newsletter, I’ll look at that battle over who best represents change.
What polling shows
Embodying change has mattered for many years. Long before Barack Obama promised “change you can believe in,” Bill Clinton pitched “change versus more of the same.” Trump, of course, captured the change vote in 2016 when he promised a clean break from the Obama years.
 |
| Kamala Harris on the first day of the Democratic National Convention. Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times |
If anything, the desire for change has grown in the past decade. When a New York Times/Siena College poll asked voters in May what they thought the country’s political and economic system required, the results were overwhelming: 69 percent said either major changes were needed or the system needed to be torn down entirely.
Only 24 percent of voters thought Biden would do either of those things. But recent polls in swing states suggest people view Harris differently. While far more voters still see Trump as more likely than Harris to make major changes — 80 percent to 46 percent — they are more divided on whether he would bring the kind of change that they want.
In fact, an identical share of voters (50 percent vs. 50 percent) said Harris would bring about the right kind of change compared with Trump.
The messaging wars
The fight over who most represents change is playing out on television, where campaigns spend much of their money. Future Forward, the leading Harris super PAC, created 200 potential ads for her, its leader, Chauncey McLean, said this week. The group tested all of those ads to determine which ones will be most effective.
So it is notable that several of the group’s ads already pitch Harris as a break with the past. “If you’ve had enough of this political era and you’re ready to turn the page, Kamala Harris is ready to lead us to the future,” concludes one recent spot. The ad on which the most money has been spent so far, according to AdImpact, is another one from Future Forward. It ends with a tagline on the screen: “Let the future begin.”
 |
| In Raleigh, N.C. Erin Schaff/The New York Times |
“The Republicans were hoping that they were going to be able to paint her as more of the same,” explained McLean. But he said their surveys had shown that voters were open to Harris defining herself separately from Biden.
Chris LaCivita, one of Trump’s campaign managers, told me he didn’t think that Harris could seize the mantle of change from Trump. “They have no choice than to change the subject,” he said. “But changing the subject does not make you the agent of change.”
Trump’s ads have yoked Harris to the least popular parts of the Biden-Harris administration. One recent spot features Harris saying the word “Bidenomics” three times in 30 seconds. Another, from a Trump super PAC, talks about inflation and the “border invasion,” with a video of Biden and Harris hoisting their arms in the air together. “Kamala owns this failed record,” the narrator says.
The fight for change is just beginning. Harris allies say she has one obvious advantage that can’t be ignored: She looks like change. She’d be the first woman and the first person of South Asian descent to serve as president. Trump, of course, has brought a constant level of upheaval since his arrival on the political scene in 2015.
The question, after nine years, is whether keeping Democrats in power can itself represent a break from that.
More on the convention
 |
| Barack and Michelle Obama. Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times |
|
More on the campaign
|
Take ratings. Trump cares about television ratings and crowd sizes above all else, but for the past month, Harris has countered him, even bested him, at his own game. Her crowds now match or exceed his. Her followers now are as enthusiastic as his, a dramatic change from when Biden was the expected Democratic nominee. Her campaign fundraising, stuffed with grassroots contributions, far exceeds Trump’s. Now, her convention’s ratings were better than his through at least Wednesday. In short, by the kinds of measures that Trump seems to care about most, he has fallen behind a woman he has disparaged and for whom he has said he has no respect.
On the issues, the debate that Republicans say they want has not been engaged. The Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll of a week ago showed voters trust Trump more than Harris on some of the most important issues, among them inflation, the economy, immigration and the Israel-Gaza war. Harris enjoys the advantage on abortion, race relations, health care, protecting democracy, appointments to the Supreme Court and gun violence.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/22/harris-reinvention-speeches-rallies/
KAMALA name pronunciation
https://www.npr.org/2024/08/22/g-s1-19207/kamala-name-pronunciation-kerry-washington
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment