Democrats in Array as Harris Consolidates Support
An uneasy electorate is an unreliable electorate, so aggression to get the Democratic Party base assured that hope is back on the menu is warranted
President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff view the Fourth of July fireworks display over the National Mall from the Blue Room Balcony, Thursday, July 4, 2024, at the White House. (Official White House Photo by Erin Scott)
The Democratic Party largely coalesced around Vice President Harris as its likely new presidential nominee on Monday, as she kicked off her campaign by promising to prosecute a forceful case against Republican nominee Donald Trump and defend the legacy of President Biden.
Hours after she delivered remarks laying out some of the themes of her campaign, Harris secured pledges of support from a majority of Democratic National Convention delegates, a strong show of unity behind her presidential campaign that signals she is likely to officially become the party’s nominee next month.
“Over the next 106 days, we are going to take our case to the American people, and we are going to win,” Harris said during a visit to campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., where she was greeted by a group of energized staffers for Biden’s now-abandoned candidacy. Harris accused Trump of wanting to “take our country backwards to a time before many of our fellow Americans had full freedoms and rights.” She added, “We believe in a brighter future that makes room for all Americans.”
President Biden urged campaign staff to rally around Vice President Harris on July 22, in his first remarks since he dropped his reelection bid. (Video: The Washington Post)
Biden dialed in to the impromptu meeting, using his first public remarks after dropping out of the presidential race Sunday to thank his staff and ask them to support Harris with “every bit of your heart and soul.”“The name has changed at the top of the ticket, but the mission hasn’t changed at all,” said Biden, who joined remotely from Rehoboth Beach, where he has been recovering from a case of covid. “We still need to save this democracy. Trump is still a danger to the community. He’s a danger to the nation.”
The high-energy, highly unified setting reflected the broader sentiment across the Democratic Party, in which Harris’s swift ascendancy has upended an already tumultuous and unpredictable presidential race. After being exhausted by weeks of turmoil and infighting over Biden’s prospects, relieved and newly energized Democrats across the country rushed to embrace Harris’s candidacy and unite around the goal of defeating Trump.
There is a very old Christian hymn called Blessed Assurance, one of the many from the prolific blind hymnist Fanny Crosby, with the well-known refrain of “This is my story, this is my song” as the chorus. It’s a song about being at peace regardless of what else is going on. Of setting aside the trials of the moment for the hope and splendor of better things to come.
What we are seeing right now from the Democratic Party is more like Aggressive Assurance. A party that only days ago seemed listless and hopeless is rushing at breakneck speed to consolidate support around Vice President Kamala Harris. A necessary party machination, not only because the election is just over one hundred days away, but to head off any messiness at the upcoming Democratic National Convention. An uneasy electorate is an unreliable electorate to turn out, so aggression to get the Democratic Party base assured that hope is back on the menu is warranted. If the newly minted Kamala Harris presidential campaign is seeking to foretaste electoral glory divine, they have a bunch of work to do on a truncated timetable.
The polling is going to be all over the place for a while, with the shock of Biden’s exit, the surge of support for Harris, the upcoming DNC, and Trump coming off his RNC and the assassination attempt. But the Harris campaign should assume they are behind, because they are, in ways besides just the polls. Grafting the Biden campaign into the K-Hive is a priority, evidenced by VP Harris making her debut as the presumptive nominee at the Wilmington, DE, headquarters complete with a President Biden phone-in. There is a vice president to select on short notice that has to be settled quickly but also needs to be timed for effect. The talking heads will wag tongues at winning the “define Kamala Harris” narrative race the next few days. There will be concerned brow-furrowing motions over whether Democrats are doing the right thing to rally round the VP for a promotion without dissenting process.
Oh, hi Ezra Klein, you beat all of us to that one.
Anywho…
The Democratic Party doesn’t really have a choice with only days before the Democratic National Convention and a hundred-some-odd days until the election. Trying to skip over Harris in a messy contested convention would rip the party apart at the worst possible moment. If Biden stepped aside it had to be Kamala Harris, and all the other fantasy booking of who’s that and such and such swooping in just wasn’t going to happen. If VP Harris loses to Trump, but only half as badly as Biden would have lost, the hindsight criticisms of “was it worth it” is going to be fun. If Harris loses and the Democratic Party loses the House and the Senate, the reaction is going to be apoplectic. If Trump wins, but a Harris/to-be-named-later campaign helps get the House for Team Blue, there are plenty of Democrats who would take that deal.
If Kamala Harris becomes the 47th President of the United States of America, then the minutia and machinations of how it went down won’t matter too much to a relieved Democratic Party. The song and the story, as the song goes, or “the narrative” in modern political nomenclature, of Kamala Harris is the key going forward. The aggressive assurance campaign combined with hope coming off the top rope to revive the party will give her a good start, and clean up the enthusiasm gap Democrats have been on the wrong end of for a while now. An engagement gap that has been getting wider in the weeks since the debate debacle. But at some point after the DNC, Kamala Harris is going to have to campaign and try to win the 2024 election. Campaigning not as the elevated VP, or bearer of Biden legacy, or as the second part of the Biden/Harris administration, but as Kamala Harris on her own two feet.
When her 2020 campaign failed to launch in 2019, the issue was in no small part due to Kamala Harris not having a good answer to the basic question of why Kamala Harris was running for president. Fast forward to 2024, and VP Harris is handed that answer: She’s running so Donald Trump won’t be president. “Not Donald Trump” was good enough to get Joe Biden elected in 2020. “Not Trump” wasn’t good enough to override the decline and now-complete fall of Joe Biden’s political career. “Not Trump” will get Kamala Harris within a few points of Trump as a starting point. To stay there, and bring in enough other folks to gather a winning electoral coalition, “Not Trump” is going to need help from Kamala Harris selling herself to the American people between now and November, and probably some help from Trump not handling this new challenge very well.
For all that has gone Donald Trump’s way politically lately, it has all gone his way in July. Kamala Harris has until November to rise or fall on her own to win this election. On short notice VP Harris will have to iron out the issues that doomed 2019 Harris not as the running mate but as the headliner. With an election that has already had more twists and turns than any in recent memories, there will be plenty more turmoil before all is at rest in this 2024 election.
Where are the dissenting pro-Biden forces? Did they just frog march them out?