This article is part of HuffPost’s biweekly politics newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
It’s hard to believe it’s been only five days since President Joe Biden announced he was dropping his reelection bid and “passing the torch” to Vice President Kamala Harris.
It’s even harder to believe how well these five days have gone for her.
Harris has gotten the endorsement of every would-be challenger and major party leader ― including, as of Friday morning, former President Barack Obama. She’s secured pledges of support from the vast majority of Democratic delegates, far more than she needs to lock down the nomination. She’s raised more than $100 million and drawn tens of thousands of supporters onto campaign organizing calls. She even got permission from Beyoncé to use a song in a campaign video.
And then there are the Republicans, who seem to be struggling a bit. Nominee and former President Donald Trump keeps raising objections to the prospect of debating Harris, in a way that sounds an awful lot like he’s trying to duck out. His campaign is busy contextualizing and rationalizing past comments by running mate JD Vance in which the Ohio senator suggested that women should stay in abusive marriages, and that “childless cat ladies” ― that is, adults with no biological children ― should have less voting power.
The sheer giddiness among Democrats is palpable, in a way I’ve seen only twice in my lifetime: in 1992 with Bill Clinton, and in 2008 with Obama. Notably, those were years in which Democrats were finally on the verge of breaking an extended Republican hold on the White House. This time, though, the incumbent is a Democrat. It says something about the desperation to stop Trump from returning to the White House ― and the despair over Biden’s chances of doing it ― that Democrats are feeling the same kind of euphoria now that Harris is leading the ticket.
It also says something about Harris herself, in ways that probably surprise a lot of people and certainly surprise some members of the political class. A big reason Democratic leaders didn’t think seriously about switching out the ticket earlier this year, despite Biden’s clear political struggles, was their assumption that Harris in the top spot would be a weaker candidate.
They were not crazy to think that. Harris really does have some serious political liabilities, starting with the difficulties that a Black woman running for office inevitably faces, especially while confronting the kind of racist, sexist attacks that ― as HuffPost’s Igor Bobic has detailed ― are already underway. New polls show Harris making up the ground Biden lost in the last few weeks, which is huge. But even as she is winning back younger, Black and Latino voters whom Biden had lost, she’s losing some of the older, white voters Biden had won.
She’s got time. And even the most gifted politicians have to win over skeptical groups. But an even bigger reason for the reservations about Harris was her performance in 2020, when she ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primaries. The campaign was so dismal, following such high expectations, that it was easy to assume Harris just wasn’t very good at it.
But looking back, her failures had a lot to do with her professional trajectory to that point, and the political environment prevailing at the time. Both are different now. In fact, the circumstances of the 2024 election may play perfectly to her strengths, just as the circumstances of 2020 exposed all of her weaknesses.
A Different Year, And A Different Candidate
For better or worse, Democratic voters care a lot about policy. And in years when there have been openly contested primaries, they want to hear detailed plans from their presidential candidates, with lengthy white papers and expert testimonials as support. They also crave vision ― candidates who have big ideas about what the world should look like, and how their agenda will achieve that.
Ironically, this may not be what it takes to win in the general election, which frequently requires attracting voters who care less about such ambition ― or who aren’t going to get excited about the sorts of ideas that energize Democratic activists. They might be looking for somebody they simply trust to manage the country’s business, or to provide an acceptable alternative to another candidate they find objectionable.
But usually the only way to get to the general election is to win in the primaries, which means delivering some of the big themes that will capture the imagination of Democratic Party loyalists.
Bill Clinton and Obama both did that in their initial runs. So did other high-profile Democratic candidates who won or came close to winning the nomination. That includes Bernie Sanders, the independent Vermont senator who in 2020 was the clear progressive in the race at a time when the party’s progressive base was gaining more influence. Biden, who would eventually get the nomination, had staked out a clear position as a more moderate candidate. Other candidates, including Harris herself, had to find a political “lane” somewhere in between, so they could distinguish themselves while staying true to their core values.
It’s the sort of challenge that’s tough for any politician running in the primaries for the first time. But I’ve always thought it was particularly tough for Harris, given the road she’d taken there.
She’d come up through state politics as a prosecutor and then the attorney general of California. That gave her valuable experience, especially when it came to linking policy to real-life people. But it didn’t create much opportunity to fine-tune a policy vision or the best way of presenting it. Serving in the Senate could have offered that opportunity, but she’d been there for barely two years by the time she was running for president.
It showed most clearly in that year’s debate over health care, when Sanders was campaigning on his promise for “Medicare for All,” Biden was arguing for a more incremental set of expansions on the Affordable Care Act, and Harris came out with a hybrid plan. She had trouble defending her proposal, and ended up making contradictory claims that suggested she didn’t understand the specifics, didn’t know what she really wanted, or both.
The lack of experience continued to show in her early years as vice president ― including in some remarks she gave about immigration, when she stumbled over trip wires that a more seasoned politician might have known how to avoid.
During a high-profile trip to Guatemala, she included a sharp admonishment to would-be migrants: “Do not come.” Furious progressives called it “tone-deaf” because it sounded like she was ignoring the difficult conditions in those countries, and the role the U.S. had historically played in creating them. Later, during an interview with NBC, Harris gave a confusing answer to a question about whether she’d visited the border (she personally hadn’t), which provided Republicans with easy fodder for attacks they are still using today.
But that was 2021. She’s now spent nearly a full term as vice president, which means she’s gotten a lot more practice addressing policy issues in the national spotlight, with every word under scrutiny. And in 2024, unlike 2020, she doesn’t have to prevail in a monthslong debate over her vision while trying to establish an ideological niche between two better-known contenders. Taking over Biden’s mantle, and his campaign, means she’s running more or less on the record of the incumbent administration ― and in a context where the focus is less on what she would do as president, and more on what she’d stop from happening.
It’s a campaign about protecting abortion rights and health care, figuring out a way to fight a radically conservative Supreme Court, and keeping a convicted felon with contempt for democracy out of the White House. That’s perfect for a former prosecutor who has always been best on the attack, and who has always been most comfortable talking about questions of rights ― especially the rights of women.
Whether this all puts her in a position to win in November remains to be seen. It’s going to be a tough campaign, no matter how promising this past week has been. But Democrats who remember Harris’ disappointing 2020 run have good reason to think this time will be different.
