Harris thrives as she drops Biden's campaign themes

Kamala Harris smiles and claps at a rally as supporters behind her raise campaign signs, one reading "When we fight, we win"

Aug. 10, 2024 3 AM PT

WASHINGTON — As Vice President Kamala Harris rallied in critical swing states this week, an observer could watch in real time as she honed the lines on which she’s campaigning — themes that differ sharply in both style and substance from those President Biden had planned.

Harris still has some major strategic decisions to make. But so far, her approach has worked better than most Democrats thought possible when Biden quit the race under pressure less than three weeks ago.

Harris inherited a race that Biden was on track to lose decisively, polls suggested. She now leads former President Trump in most national polls and is at least tied with the Republican in recent surveys of major swing states from Arizona to Pennsylvania.

Increasingly, voters also believe Harris can win — a measure that in the past has sometimes proved more predictive than head-to-head polling.

Going back to October of last year, voters nationwide consistently said they expected Trump to win, according to weekly polls by YouGov for the Economist. This week, for the first time, the Democrat took a slight edge on that measure, with 40% saying Harris would win and 38% predicting a Trump victory.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta.

Harris’ image more favorable

Harris’ popularity has increased to an unexpected degree, said Lakshya Jain, a political analyst with the website Split Ticket.

“Harris was not popular” before Biden dropped out of the race, Jain noted, adding that he’s surprised at how quickly and sharply voters’ opinions about the vice president have changed.

Split Ticket commissioned two polls of voters in the three northern swing states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. One was conducted July 18-23, during which Biden left the race, and the other July 29-Aug. 2.

The surveys showed a swing of 8 percentage points in the head-to-head race — from a Trump lead of 7 points to a nominal edge of 1 point for Harris.

But it was the improvement in voters’ views of Harris that most caught Jain’s attention. In the earlier poll, Harris had a 12-point favorability deficit — 42% of respondents viewed her positively and 54% had a negative view.

In the latter poll, views of her improved to 48% positive versus 49% negative. That’s nothing to brag about, but it represents a sharp improvement for Harris.

It’s also notably better than Trump’s rating in the survey — 46% favorable to 53% unfavorable.

Other polls, nationally and in swing states, have shown similar shifts.

A lasting shift or temporary honeymoon?

The two big questions now are whether those shifts represent a permanent change in the race or a temporary honeymoon, and whether Harris will feel a need to take further steps to fortify her position against Republican attacks.

Some portion of the shift in the race may be permanent simply because of who Harris is.

In February, when Nikki Haley lost New Hampshire’s Republican primary to Trump, the former South Carolina governor predicted that “the first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the party that wins this election.” She may have been correct.

In Wisconsin, a poll released this week by Marquette University indicated 76% of voters thought Biden, 81, was too old to be president, and 59% said the same about Trump, who is 78. Only 12% said that Harris is too old at 59.

The poll, taken July 24-Aug. 1, found the race in Wisconsin to be a dead heat: Trump had a nominal 1-point edge, 50% to 49%, among registered voters in a head-to-head race, while Harris had a 45%-43% edge when third-party candidates were included. By contrast, 47% of respondents said they would have voted for Trump if Biden had remained on the ticket; 42% said they wouldn’t.

Striking changes in tone and substance

Beyond Biden and Harris’ age difference, Democratic voters have been energized by Harris’ shift in tone.

Before Biden left the race, his campaign had the air of a dutiful slog: “I’ve got to finish this job,” the president said at a July 11 news conference to make his case for remaining in the race.

By contrast, Harris’ visible enthusiasm for the race has itself become a campaign theme. She and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have dubbed themselves “happy warriors” — a nickname with a Democratic pedigree that extends back at least a century, to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech at the party’s 1924 convention.

The response from voters can be measured by huge crowds drawn to Harris and Walz’s rallies as well as polling: In the Wisconsin survey, for example, the share of Democrats who said they were very enthusiastic about voting had jumped to 62%, up from 40% in May, erasing a gap with Republican voters’ enthusiasm.

In addition to the changes in her style and affect, Harris is offering a significantly different argument for election than Biden did.

Biden had framed his rematch against Trump around an oft-repeated phrase — a “battle for the soul of America.” He frequently talked about the threat that he said Trump posed to “the very foundations of our republic.”

Harris touches on those themes in her campaign rallies — reminding audiences that Trump said he would act like a “dictator” to close the border and expand oil drilling. But in her speeches, she quickly pivots.

“This campaign is not just about us against Donald Trump. It’s about two very different visions … one focused on the future, the other focused on the past,” she repeated at her rallies this week.

Looking ahead versus behind

That’s a powerful theme in American politics: Candidates as diverse as John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama have succeeded by embracing optimistic aspirations toward the future.

The future-versus-past framing may be especially effective against Trump, who often seems obsessed with relitigating the 2020 election and other grievances.

Harris has used the contrast effectively. Her slogan “We’re not going back” has become one of the most reliable applause lines at Democratic rallies.

Rather than the abstract idea of the “soul of the nation,” Harris’ speeches and campaign ads have focused on a concrete set of issues related to daily life, including lowering rent and drug prices, defending the Affordable Care Act and protecting abortion rights.

The focus on the healthcare law is especially notable because it completes the transformation of what’s widely known as Obamacare from a major liability for Democrats in its early years to a foundation of their campaigns today.

Her approach to inflation, meantime, provides one of the sharpest contrasts to Biden.

The president felt compelled to defend his administration’s economic record; Harris breezes past it.

“While our economy is doing well by many measures, prices for everyday things like groceries are still too high. You know it, and I know it,” she says at her rallies. “When I am president, it will be a Day 1 priority to fight to bring down prices.”

She links that to a vow to fight price gouging by big corporations — a stance that is economically dubious (there’s not much evidence that price gouging has been the chief driver of inflation), but politically popular.

Countering Republican attacks

Republicans, of course, aren’t going to allow Harris to skate away unchallenged from the administration’s record. Ohio’s Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, now routinely refers to the “Harris administration” when he talks about the current White House, airbrushing Biden out of the picture entirely.

Attacks have focused on the argument that Harris is a “dangerous California radical.” With her choice of Walz as her running mate, the GOP has now added him to that category.

To date, those attacks haven’t gained much traction. But the GOP can be expected to intensify its efforts in the coming weeks.

That means Harris still has some important strategic decisions to make, especially around what aspects of her record as a prosecutor she should stress.

That part of her resume has been tricky for her politically due to skepticism on the left of the Democratic Party toward law enforcement. But a record as a crime fighter has proved to be an asset for politicians in the U.S. for decades, especially for liberals under fire from conservative opponents.

So far in her rallies, Harris has mostly talked about her experience going after big banks and prosecuting white-collar fraud. It was notable, therefore, that a new ad aimed at Latino voters, released Thursday, declares that “as a prosecutor, she protected us against violent criminals.”

How heavily to stress that theme for a wider audience will be one of the key decisions Harris will have to make between now and the Democratic convention, which is just over a week away.