Kamala Harris is Doing What Joe Biden Couldn’t

Kamala Harris is coming off of an enormously successful Democratic National Convention last week in Chicago. She enjoyed several days of positive press and a universally acclaimed acceptance speech. Her president endorsed her as well as Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton. She is clearly set up to have a successful final seventy days of campaigning. The latest polling has her ahead over three percentage points on the national level and leading in key swing states such as Nevada, Arizona, and Michigan.

Some observers may be curious as to how Harris finds herself in this situation. After all, Biden was the presumptive nominee a little more than a month ago. He presided over a ticket that was trailing badly in polling and beginning to split apart at the scenes. The most stalwart Democrats were beginning to give Donald Trump a second look. Following the attempted assassination on former president Trump, one Democratic staffer said, “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.”

Kamala Harris is running on much the same platform that Joe Biden was. But her approach and status as a candidate have helped paper over party divisions in a way that Biden has not been able to in years, a process that may be essential to victory in November.

What Biden failed at

Ever since the beginning of the campaign, Joe Biden implored his supporters to overcome petty political differences and unite to stop a second Trump administration. It was the central theme of nearly every campaign speech. He unofficially launched his campaign around the third anniversary of the January 6 attacks, arguing, “Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time… that’s what the 2024 election is all about.”

But the electorate never truly bought in. They were too angry about inflation and distracted by Joe Biden’s age and infirmity. Third party candidates kept receiving attention and votes despite the fact that they were likely to play spoilers for another Trump victory. The electorate’s responses regarding the success of the Trump presidency showed that they were not listening to his message. Biden fell further and further in the polls, a decline that led to the desperation of the first debate. 

How Harris recovered

With Harris, that dynamic has been inverted. Almost overnight, the idea of Democratic unity became paramount. The groups that did not support Harris were mocked and belittled. Even their criticisms of her marketing were ignored, such as the general frustration over labelling Donald Trump a “felon.” The major image of protest from the DNC was not disruption but the yard of littered signs left by groups that were not able to hand them out. The left is continuing to rally around Harris as she plans for her first interview and a September 10 debate with Trump. The concerns of the left have subsided to the overall goal of the Harris campaign.

Harris has brought a united front into the 2024 presidential election. She has injected energy, enjoyment, and hope into a previously moribund electorate. By turning her focus away from Trump’s threat to our government, she has done more to minimize it than Biden has done in the past few years. Harris has the potential to unite her party and set it up well for the 2020s and beyond. All she has to do first is win.