On the Right Foot

After weeks of Groundhog Day, a chance to change the script

When circumstances change, you improvise

On Sunday, I argued that history won’t be much of a help in thinking through the macro patterns of the Biden/Harris switch. If you really think the times are unprecedented, then you should really believe that history can’t offer much of a guide to what to expect.

So where should you be looking to understand the dynamics of the race now? The fundamental task of campaigning is to get to 50% plus one vote (yes, in the Electoral College—that’s why it’s called 270toWin.com, not Most Popular Votes). To do that, a campaign needs to assemble a coalition of people whose interests and identities are sufficiently mobilized that they can overcome all of the obstacles to voting—starting with the fact that voting is an inefficient way of changing policy on an individual basis (votes matter, but your vote won’t change the outcome, but all of our votes can change).

For the past several months, party enthusiasm and independents have been discouraged—sometimes actively—from voting for Biden. That’s changed. A campaign whose outcome seemed, if not certain, then weighted toward one side is suddenly wide open again. For the first time since 2022, it seems like the Democratic national campaign is on the offensive, rather than waging a positional campaign.

Much has been written about the phenomenon of the “double haters”, voters who didn’t like Trump or Biden enough to want to turn out. Kamala changes this immediately because she changes the conversation around fitness for office. She might be, for lack of a better term, somewhat goofy in some of her appearances, but she’s clearly not at risk of going senile, and her natural levels of energy are almost disconcertingly peppy in a political world seemingly dominated by octogenarians. This makes it easier for Democrats to reach out to anti-Trump voters who were also less than enthusiastic for voting for someone who was very visibly slipping in his public performances.

Kamala also immediately changes the dynamic of Trump’s fitness. Biden’s numbers were terrible on the basic hurdle of whether he was physically fit to be president. But Trump’s numbers are not great. He has also visibly lost a step since 2020, and three or four since 2016. (I remain staunchly convinced that he just out-performed the other Republicans in the primary debates—he was sharper, funnier, and more focused than the talking-point bots on the stage.) Next to Harris, though, Trump will look … old. And for a campaign that’s been premised on strength, that’s a bad hole to find yourself in.

The Democrats also now have the advantage of being able to craft a ticket and a campaign with a fresh face who can pose herself as a candidate of change compared to Trump. The unprecedented nature of Biden’s withdrawal threatens to overshadow the previously most unprecedented fact about the campaign, which is that Trump is very much a known quality. Unlike most elections, in which the challenger can run on “time for a change”, Trump is the de facto incumbent in this race, and Harris is the new arrival. Harris will get to blame Biden for everything voters don’t like about his administration while claiming credit for all the bounties Democratic rule will deliver—but she’ll also be able to remind everyone about what a (to use a technical term) absolute freak show the Trump administration was.

This is one reason why I think the tragic and absolutely deplorable assassination attempt will have fading campaign effects. If anything, it will fire up the weirdest zealotries among the MAGA faithful while draping the campaign in off-putting messianism—waving the bloody ear, so to speak—but also actually reminding everyone about the continual parade of craziness that Trump’s presidency delivered.

There are big challenges, to be sure. The vice president is simply not a massively popular political figure. (Although are there any of those left?) She inherits Biden’s coalition but also inherits many of the strains within that coalition—and those tensions will be tamped down during the campaign but they will be real. (Not a few lefty social media accounts seem to think that this was a Harris coup against Biden, as opposed to Biden giving the campaign to Harris in part to avoid an open convention that could have led to a much more rightist candidate.) Finally, like all vice presidents, she got stuck with some crummy portfolios as well as some good ones, and you can imagine that RNC researchers are chugging Red Bull as they go through miles of footage.

For all that, though, Harris has avoided most of the perils of the vice presidency. She didn’t really make any enemies and her conduct over the past three weeks—during which, in retrospect, she was clearly campaigning for the top job—has shown she can handle tough situations without gaffes. Further, although California politics are a less than optimal preparation for national politics in many ways, she did rise to the top of the greasy pole there on her own merits, and she has been an official dealing with national issues for more than a decade. She will be able to hold her own in tough interviews and debates.

Most important, for the past three months, Biden’s numbers have been ground down by the fact that important elites have been signaling he wasn’t up for the job. The past twenty four hours have shown that the broader Democratic universe is capable of hailing a new leader with one voice, more or less. A drumbeat of positive signals will provide a boost to poll numbers—just as it’s unleashed a genuine torrent of pent-up campaign donations. (I personally have received many texts from friends who haven’t donated until now and have done so in the past 24 hours.)

Harris has the chance to run as the candidate of vital normalcy. Any attack that could have been levied at Biden will fall flat against her. There will be attacks (including about, say, her relationship with Willie Brown) but it’s going to be harder to make them stick than the lines that had developed against Biden. Right now, it’s the Republicans who have to improvise and turn their campaign around while Democrats can consolidate and strategize for what’s still a shockingly long road (more than three months) to the election.