WASHINGTON (AP) — She is the incumbent vice president who has been in office for 3 1/2 years and a presidential candidate for just five weeks, promising a “new way forward.”
Kamala Harris has it both ways as she goes on the campaign trail after the Democratic National Conventionrecognition for parts of President Joe Biden’s She has set a record at rallies in front of Air Force Two, presenting herself as a new leader railing against “the policies of the past.”
In every presidential campaign, candidates rely on experience or freshness, but Harris seems to have succeeded so far in harmonizing two seemingly contradictory messages, much to the annoyance of the former president Donald Trump and his allies.
“She has this powerful, unique and interesting advantage that we’ve never seen before in our politics,” said Patrick Gaspard, CEO of the Democratic-leaning think tank Center for American Progress Action Fund and former executive director of the Democratic National Committee under President Barack Obama.
“She is both an incumbent,” he said, and “she has succeeded in taking the flag of ‘change’ away from Donald Trump.”
Harris’ vision for the country relied heavily on Biden’s plans, so much so that she did not rewrite those plans even after Biden left office. Platform approved by DNC was passed last week with frequent – and outdated – references to a “second term” for Biden.
Her emergence as someone offering a “new way forward” rests in large part on the fact that she is different from the norm. The 59-year-old daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants replaced an 81-year-old white man who first ran for president 36 years ago. She is running to become the country’s first female president and the first black woman or person of South Asian descent to hold the office.
Two-thirds of Democrats wanted Biden to drop out of the debate after his performance against Trump, which confirmed long-standing concerns about his readiness to campaign, both in public and among many prominent Democrats in private.
Republican pollster Whit Ayres said Harris’ ability to embody change “has much more to do with her age, race and gender than the policy positions she articulates.” He added: “This screams change.”
From her staff’s perspective, Harris offers what voters have apparently been longing for all year: a new ambassador who, however, has so far offered only a modest improvement on the accomplishments of Biden and Harris.
“Of course she is her own leader,” Brian Nelson, her senior campaign adviser, told reporters at a Bloomberg event at the DNC. “But she is a leader who has stood by President Biden for the last three and a half years,” adding that they have “shared values and principles.”
The Trump campaign has criticized her lack of concrete policy statements and tried to portray her as far more liberal than she lets on. Perhaps to raise expectations before new polls come out, the campaign predicted Saturday that Harris would see a surge in the polls after the convention, blaming the so-called “Harris honeymoon.”
“We certainly had a front-row seat to the ‘honeymoon,'” wrote Trump pollsters Tony Fabrizio and Travis Tunis. “In fact, the media has now decided to extend the honeymoon by over four weeks.”
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Harris’ campaign announced Sunday that it had raised $82 million during the week of the Democratic National Convention, and a whopping $540 million since Biden dropped out of the race on July 21 and endorsed her.
Harris has sought to borrow parts of Biden’s foreign policy record. In her speech at the convention, she said she met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky five days before the large-scale Russian attack “to warn him about Russia’s invasion plans.” The meeting took place at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, at a time when the U.S. had already been warning publicly and privately of an invasion for months and was already working with Ukrainian forces to prepare for it.
Trump will continue to try to stick Harris with the less rosy side of Biden’s record. On Monday, he is expected to visit Arlington National Cemetery to commemorate the soldiers killed in the bombing outside Kabul airport three years ago during the devastating U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Trump will then travel to Michigan to speak at the National Guard Association of the United States conference.
Harris confirmed to CNN in August 2021 that she was the so-called last person in the room when Biden made his decision to withdraw.
“This is a president who has extraordinary courage,” she told the network at the time. “I wish the American public could sometimes see what I see, because ultimately – and the decision is always his – I have seen him make decisions time and time again based on exactly what he believes is right. Regardless of what politicians may tell him is in his best interest.”
Harris’ message now implicitly argues that Biden was also part of the politics of the past – even as she takes credit for his achievements and publicly praises him. Harris’ first national ad after the convention aims to highlight the generational contrast with Trump. “Instead of focusing on the politics of the past, we need to think about the future.”
Voters, said former Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer, “are thirsting for new, more hopeful politics.”
“If she can prove to people that she can turn the tide, Kamala Harris will win,” she said.
