Harris gets a dream start, but the task ahead is monumental

Originally Published: 23 JUL 24 00:00 ET

Updated: 23 JUL 24 06:32 ET

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

(CNN) — Kamala Harris has aced her moment. So far.

The vice president has already won the backing of enough delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, sparked a fundraising bonanza and alchemized the mood of a party that looked headed for defeat.

But while Harris can hardly have hoped for a better start in establishing legitimacy among Democrats after President Joe Biden abandoned his reelection campaign, she is still just hours into a mission that ranks as the most daunting for any modern potential presidential nominee. And the full intensity of Republican nominee Donald Trump’s attacks is yet to unfold in the most unpredictable election season in generations.

In a rousing speech Monday afternoon, the vice president rallied campaign staff at their Wilmington, Delaware, headquarters with Biden – still recovering from Covid-19 – calling in to solidify the transition. After laying out her prosecutorial case against Trump, Harris cast the contest as “two different versions of what we see as the future of our country.”

And in her first public event since Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday, Harris earlier Monday officiated at an event on the White House lawn centering her in the imagery of the presidency.

Perhaps most significantly, she also notched the endorsement of her fellow Californian, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose backdoor maneuvering was critical to ending Biden’s stalled reelection bid and revealed the 84-year-old is still the nation’s most skilled and influential Democrat. After Pelosi said her backing was “official, personal and political,” other congressional leaders fell into line behind Harris – ready to entrust their party’s hopes to a historic standard bearer who is nevertheless an untested leader at the pinnacle of American politics.

By Monday evening, the vice president had been backed by well more than the 1,976 pledged delegates she’ll need to win the nomination on the first ballot, according to according to CNN’s delegate estimate.

And after the freezing of donor cash helped force Biden out of the race, Democratic wallets have opened big-time. Harris raked in more than $100 million between Sunday and Monday evening, a campaign official said, boasting more than 1.1 million unique donors – 62% of them first-time contributors.

The vice president’s swift consolidation of power has been impressive. Her multi-hour phone blitz to Democratic Party power players on Sunday hinted at an operation primed ahead of time but that was kept secret and didn’t leak. The plan appears to have strangled any hope of alternative candidates and the aspirations of some in the party for a lightning primary to find a new nominee who could argue that they had won a contested bid for the party banner.

Danger signs lurk despite strong start

There is an old saying in Washington that a presidential candidate will never have a better day than the one that follows their announcement. The maxim usually applies to the heady first hours of primary campaigns. But Harris, 59, is now playing in the big leagues.

Harris must sustain the sudden new momentum in a party that until Sunday believed it was heading to defeat as lawmaker after lawmaker deserted the president following his disastrous debate performance.

Even if she succeeds in her plan to “earn and win” the Democratic nomination, Harris will come up against the most feral campaign machine in years. Trump is known for misogynistic and racially charged rhetoric that could turn the next few months into the most searing general election in modern memory.

The pressure on Harris from Democrats is also immense. The vice president has shown signs of improving her political skills recently, but that’s never been her forte. This year, party leaders are not just investing in her as the last barrier to a new era of unrestrained conservative rule that could obliterate the achievements of the Biden and Barack Obama presidencies. After replacing Biden as the figurehead of the campaign, Harris is now leading an effort that has as its foundation an attempt to save democracy from Trump.

She has just more than 100 days to pull this all off.

Trump has seemed momentarily thrown off by the swift shift in Democratic candidates after Biden recognized the unsustainable nature of his bid for a second term that would have ended when he is 86.

But there were fresh signs on Monday that Trump’s political operation was readjusting to the new reality and sharpening its attacks against the vice president. In a memo to reporters, the Trump campaign previewed a blistering assault to come on Harris.

Trump co-campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita cast her as the “copilot” of some of Biden’s most “egregious failures.” They signaled that the vice president’s lack of success in addressing the causes in Latin America of southern border crossings would morph into a narrative that she’s soft on illegal immigration. “She’s had a lower approval rating than Joe Biden. Harris is the least popular vice president in history – which is no surprise given her terrible record,” the memo said.

“She makes just as much sense as Joe Biden. By that we mean, none at all.”

Harris carves out early success

The push by Harris for the Democratic nomination was the latest stunning twist of a race that has defied convention as the oldest president in US history launched a reelection bid and then stepped back at a late hour. The Republican nominee is another unpopular old man who tried to crush US democracy to stay in power after losing the last election. He’s also a convicted felon.

No matter, Trump was hailed at last week’s GOP convention as a strongman hero touched by divine providence following an assassination attempt that, along with the debate and the elevation of Harris, represented three of the most momentous events in the history of modern White House campaigns within a four-week span.

But something has undeniably shifted.

One of the two parties has now given voters what they have told pollsters they want for months — a choice of a candidate who is not named Biden or Trump. The question now is whether Harris, who has exhibited considerable political liabilities as vice president, has the skills, staying power and luck to take advantage.

• Harris moved swiftly to unify the party behind her, helped by an apparent desire by key power brokers to avoid a divisive fight for the nomination at the convention next month in Chicago. Governors, senators and congressional and state delegations rushed to get on board. The quickening momentum reflects a party desperate to prevent a second Trump term. As Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler put it on Monday after 89 of the Badger State’s 95 delegates pledged support to Harris, there had been a “flowering of unity” after Biden stepped down.

• Democrats could be experiencing a pivot point if Harris’ unique coalition can replace the frayed one that hampered Biden’s electoral hopes. A CNN poll at the end of June showed, for instance, that in a hypothetical matchup against Trump, the vice president outpolled her boss among women voters, political independents and movable voters. Such key voting blocs could be critical to the outcome of the election in the handful of swing states and districts likely to decide the race.

• Signs are growing that Harris’ rise and Biden’s exit have redefined the thematic dimensions of the 2024 race. For months, Democrats have been on the defensive over Biden’s age and claims that he was suffering from cognitive decline. Now, suddenly, they are enjoying a generational transformation with a candidate who is nearly 20 years younger than the 78-year-old Republican nominee. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley had tried during her GOP primary campaign to play the age card that the Democrats have now successfully deployed, saying the first party to “retire their 80-year-old” candidate would win the election. Democrats are now gleefully trying to reinforce the impression. “I promise you, you’re never going to hear Donald Trump ask his opponent to take a cognitive test again. And we’ve probably heard the last of that,” Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California told CNN’s John Berman Monday.

• New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu saw this coming. He said at a Politico event at the GOP convention last week, “If and when they make the switch, everything is going to change. It’s going to get very close in a lot of those tighter states. There’s going to be more energy. I think the Democrat party would effectively be rewarded, if you will, by independents who would say, ‘Hey none of us liked that whole Biden-Trump ticket to start with, you guys had the courage to change your nominee out.’”

• Harris on Monday showed how she could use the symbolic imagery of the White House to enhance her own reputation. If she is to be elected in November, Americans need to begin to see her as a potential president. She made a start on that by welcoming National Collegiate Athletics Association championship teams –  a duty typically performed by presidents but that Harris inherited because Biden is nearing the end of his Covid-19 isolation. Harris paid a moving tribute to Biden, saying he had “surpassed the legacy of most presidents who have served two terms.” She didn’t mention the election, but it hung over an event in which she allied with the youthful aspirations of young athletes and wrapped herself in the flag in predicting US triumphs at the Paris Olympics.

As House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who are both expected to soon endorse Harris, put it in a statement, “Vice President Kamala Harris is off to a great start with her promise to pursue the presidential nomination.”

Harris faces on oncoming storm

But far harder tests lay ahead.

• In racing to anoint Harris as the prohibitive potential nominee, Democrats are going all in on a candidate who is unpopular, has not yet demonstrated she can do better than Biden in key swing states and who sometimes showed a political tin ear during her 2020 primary campaign, which expired before the Iowa caucuses, and during her early vice presidency. If in the coming days or weeks, Harris stumbles, Democrats will risk being seen as a party that imposed on the country another 2024 candidate who is not up to the job.

• The coming days will also test whether the electorate’s frustration with the Democratic ticket was fueled by anxiety over Biden’s age or a broader disdain brewed from frustration about economic conditions, including high prices and interest rates. Trump, after all, has usually led polling on issues that matter most to voters — from immigration to national security and the economy. If Biden’s legacy is an electoral handicap, Harris could pay the price.

• Trump’s team is also ratcheting up the fury of rhetoric against Harris. It’s trying to make her complicit in what Republicans are characterizing as a White House cover-up of the president’s health and mental state. GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance on Monday claimed that “Kamala Harris lied about it. My Senate Democratic colleagues lied about it. The media lied about it. Every single person who saw Joe Biden knew that he wasn’t capable of doing the job, and for three years they said nothing, until he became political deadweight.”

• There is another potential impediment to the Harris campaign, not yet fully in the spotlight, that could factor into the election. Sixteen years ago, many Americans believed that the country would never put a Black man in the White House. But Barack Obama approved the doubters wrong. Now Harris, a Black woman and Asian American, faces an even higher historic barrier.

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