The Democratic convention in Chicago proved to be a gathering in the great revivalist tradition of America with thousands of the party’s political representatives, delegates, supporters and stars converging to proclaim and celebrate their faith in Kamala Harris.
The uplifting atmosphere was, for many of those there, infectious and intoxicating with heady talk of Harris’s candidacy for the Presidency becoming an unstoppable popular movement that will sweep her to victory in November.
The tributes to the woman of the moment were as effusive as they were consistent. Bill Clinton described her as “the president of joy”, while Michell Obama reflected on “the joy of her laughter and her light”. Oprah Winfrey urged voters to “choose joy”.
One delegate on her way to the Convention on the day of Harris’s speech said, breathlessly: “It’s been an amazing week. We loved Joe Biden but the energy and enthusiasm for Kamala is extraordinary. We’re united and confident that we can take the fight to Trump and win.”
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The Democrats have certainly discovered their post-Joe mojo and the Harris/Walz ticket has energized the faithful in a way that few could have imagined just six weeks ago. The key question though is whether this Harrismania reflects a wider shift in the wider electorate too.
Has it changed the fundamentals of the 2024 race – or is this just an outpouring of tribal relief among Democrats not now having to campaign for an octogenarian candidate whose low public ratings were threatening not only to lose the White House but also to unseat representatives facing re-election in the House and Senate?
Does it now put Harris on a course for victory in November – or (as some commentators in the UK have suggested) are we at risk of falling for the hype and the noise, not least because of our own hopes and prejudices about what and who the election involves?
The polls are, for now at least, clear that Harris’s candidature has turned around the fortunes of a party that was looking doomed under Biden. Most pollsters agree that, nationally, she now leads Trump having added up to two to three percentage points, and battleground states like Michigan, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina are potentially back in play.
She appears to be playing particularly well with Black, Hispanic, female and young voters, groups her predecessor was struggling to mobilise in anything like the numbers he did in 2020.
Volunteers have been signing up in droves and Harris has been raising lots of money too. In a letter to activists this week, Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of the Harris/Walz campaign, says that the party has raised more than half a billion dollars in just over a month – “a record for any campaign in history.”
What’s more, Harris has certainly got under Donald Trump’s skin and disrupted his campaign. He has been using his public events over the last few weeks to complain about Biden dropping out and his attacks on his newly crowned Democratic rival have been weak and unfocused.
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Yet let’s not get carried away. The boost Harris has given the Democrats has served to make competitive again a race that appeared to be moving away from the party. That’s a big difference to where things stood at the time of the attempted assassination of Trump in July. But it certainly does not represent a decisive shift.
“This election is currently tied,” says Matt Bennett, former Clinton aide and founder of the centre-left think tank, Third Way. “Harris has given us a chance but we need to keep things in perspective. This remains a very tough election to win.”
After all, Trump continues to hold significant leads on key issues voters care about – the economy, inflation and immgration – and senior Democrat strategists remain wary about recent polling, not least because of the experience of 2016 when Trump defied the predictions to beat Hilary Clinton.
This sensible caution appears to have shaped Harris’s own address to the party last week. In a marked contrast to the exuberant joy that had characterised so much of the Chicago convention, her speech was serious in tone and substance, stressing her Presidential credentials.
Dressed in a dark navy suit, she contrasted her approach with that of her maverick opponent who she described as “an unserious man”, and sought to address those issues she is seen as having an electoral vulnerability.
One of those is foreign policy and defence on which she deployed one of her sharpest lines: “As Vice President, I have: confronted threats to our security, negotiated with foreign leaders, strengthened our alliances, and engaged with our brave troops overseas. As Commander-in-Chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”
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Labor Day this coming Monday is seen as the time when many voters start to “tune in” to the Presidential election, and the televised debate between Trump and Harris scheduled for 10th September is going to tell us a great deal about how the campaign will play out.
The debate will also represent the first time since her assumption as the Democrat’s Presidential nominee that Harris will have been tested in a live, unscripted environment.
It is scarcely believable that the current Vice President who as operated at the heart of the current administration for most of the last four years has suddenly emerged as the new, disruptive candidate who has thrown open this election. But that’s where we are, and over the next ten weeks we will find out its impact with real voters.
“Irrational exuberance is deadly in politics and we must avoid it,” says Bennett. “But the last month is what a movement campaign looks like. It might not last and we must not count on it. But it is possible that something big is happening.”
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