Kamala Harris may be unstoppable as a Democratic candidate (no one has emerged to run against her), but a nasty fight to define her won't be won so easily.
The vice president has been a nationally known figure for nearly four years, but she has never had to perform under the intense scrutiny of a presidential candidate, and just a month away from her party's convention, even with the support of Joe Biden, she faces an uphill battle against Donald Trump, who is fresh off a hugely successful convention and miraculously survived an assassination attempt.
Trump's narrativeKamala is weird, she has a weird laugh, a strange speaking style, and a foreign-sounding name (which some Republicans insist on mispronouncing, like the Democratic Party).
She's a radical leftist from San Francisco who makes Biden look like an angry moderate.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, July 22, 2024, during an event with NCAA college athletes. This is her first public appearance since President Joe Biden endorsed her to be the Democratic Party's next presidential nominee. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Harris bears responsibility for the Biden administration’s failures, especially at the border, where Biden nominally put her in charge, and shares the blame for rising inflation.
She was complicit in covering up the president's frailty and declining mental acuity, helping to hide it from the public.
Harris ran a terrible campaign in 2020, not even making it to Iowa, a true measure of her political incompetence.
Harris's narrativeShe is a former prosecutor who faces a criminal.
AS CAMPAIGN LEAK BOOSTS BIDEN, WILL DEMOCRATS ANOINT KAMALA HARRIS?
(Here's a real example. I received an email from the Harris campaign, which has obviously taken over the Biden mailing list, that said, “Kamala Harris stands up to scammers and criminals. Donald Trump is a convicted felon.”)
The real problem is Trump, who is a danger to democracy, consumed by personal resentment and wants to return the White House to the days of constant chaos.
Harris would bring energy and vigor to the presidency. At 78, Trump, some Democrats say, perhaps ironically, would be the oldest person ever elected to the White House.
Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump speaks during the final day of the Republican National Convention, Thursday, July 18, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Trump's idea for dealing with a porous border was to cruelly separate children from their families.
The former president is planning to withdraw from NATO and abandon Ukraine, boasts of his relationship with Vladimir Putin and speaks admiringly of authoritarians like Kim Jong-un and Viktor Orban.
Harris has been consistently underestimated in her rise to the top of California politics.
My take: Kamala Harris is a little odd, but that also makes her interesting.
VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS EXPOSED FOR NEVER MEETING WITH KEY BORDER OFFICIAL AS CRISIS WILDS
She is definitely to the left of Biden, having supported Medicare for All during the last campaign.
Harris ran a terrible campaign last time.
The inflation rate has slowed, but people don't perceive it that way, so the economy (remember Bidenomics?) is hurting.
The airwaves will be filled with Harris’ indirect responses, which are a “word salad,” but most of them are from her first two years and she is sharper now, especially since becoming the administration’s point person on abortion rights. Still, that first impression may prove indelible.
The question of whether she hid Biden's illnesses from the public is definitely valid and undoubtedly true, but she can simply say she was being loyal.
Trump would probably not leave NATO, but he would probably seek a quick deal that would allow Russia to keep part of Ukraine. He rarely criticizes Putin.
He was convicted in the flimsy Stormy Daniels case, but he has successfully portrayed the four charges as a way for the administration to weaponize law enforcement, which only boosted his poll numbers.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speak during a news conference at the NATO summit in Washington, July 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Harris went to Wilmington yesterday to thank campaign staff and Biden called him with rambling comments. I think that was a mistake.
When the vice president decided to attack Trump, she linked it to his record as a prosecutor.
Harris said she faced predators who abused women and that “Donald Trump was found guilty of sexual abuse.”
“I stood up to the big banks,” while Trump was found guilty of “34 counts of fraud.”
He also made an effort to lay out an agenda. “Strengthening the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency,” while Trump gave “massive tax cuts to big corporations… We are not going to back down.” He spoke of the freedom to vote and living safe from gun violence.
But Harris said some things that were exaggerations or simply not true.
She said Trump put Social Security and Medicare “in his crosshairs,” having said as early as 2015, in interviews with me and others, that he would protect those programs.
Speaking about reproductive rights, she said Trump would “sign a national abortion ban,” something he specifically denied and said under the Dobbs ruling it should be left to the states.
Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi, who was more responsible than anyone for the campaign of leaks that led Biden to resign, yesterday endorsed Harris, and the president remains furious with the former House speaker.
TED CRUZ WARNS AGAINST UNDERESTIMATING KAMALA HARRIS
Joe Manchin also said yesterday that he will not run. Gretchen Whitmer, who had been considered a possible candidate because she governs Michigan, said yesterday that she will be co-chair of Harris' campaign.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who would be the second Jewish candidate on a major party ticket, and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear also endorsed the vice president.
Who is left to challenge her? Which Democrats would want to risk their careers for a likely defeat, especially given the racial and sexist repercussions if the first black woman and the first Asian-American woman were to be knocked out of the race? One of the oldest sayings in politics is that you can't beat someone without someone.
That has shifted attention to the new vice presidential races, the search for Kamala’s running mate. It can’t be Gavin Newsom because they are from the same state. Picking Whitmer would force voters to accept an all-female field, and she says she doesn’t want to be vice president.
Plus, as Trump has told me and others, people vote for the candidate at the top of the ticket. While it doesn't hurt to have a No. 2 candidate from Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin (Harris will be in Milwaukee today), it doesn't guarantee a win in those swing states.
Axios gives us a glimpse into the future media landscape:
“Harris's time as vice president has been occasionally checkered, defined in part by high staff turnover… Of Harris's 47 staffers listed in 2021, only five still worked for her as of this spring…
“Former Harris aides told Axios that the high staff turnover is due in part to how the vice president treats her staff.”
What Harris will likely do is generate more enthusiasm among black voters, many of whom had abandoned Biden, or among independent women who are wary of Trump. And her team says she raised $81 million online in the 24 hours after the announcement.
But Harris fares just as well as Biden when facing Trump, who must still be considered a heavy favorite.
Interestingly, some on the right – including the editors of National Review – say that if Biden is not fit to campaign for re-election, he should not be in charge of nuclear weapons now and should resign. That, of course, would give Harris a four-month head start as president.
Trump says he wants to move the planned debate with Biden on ABC in September to a debate with Kamala on Fox News, something I don't think will happen. But the vice president may not see any benefit in debating Trump.
Yesterday was a peculiar situation, as Harris' first event since the announcement was to fill in for the COVID-stricken president at the annual tribute to college sports champions. She addressed the official event by praising Biden and his record of accomplishments.
His team soon realized that this was not much of a reintroduction to the United States and quickly scheduled the visit to Wilmington.
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Unsolicited adviceKamala should not appear with Biden at any time except at the convention because he is so unpopular. She has to forge her own identity in the next 105 days to get out of his shadow. No matter how much she loves him, she is now at the top of the ticket and she has to stop caving to him.
KickerDonald Trump donated $6,000 to Harris between 2011 and 2013, when he was the state's attorney general, USA Today reports. Trump said in 2016: “I've donated to Democrats. I've donated to Hillary. I've donated to everybody! Because that was my job.” Which is true.
