By Dave Andrusko
While there is a mad dash among party regulars to anoint Vice President Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s successor, it’ll be extremely interesting to see where Democrats are in a couple of weeks. The Democratic National Convention starts in 28 days– August 19– and will run through August 22 in Chicago. At some point, before the beginning of the convention, the party will hold a virtual roll call.
Pro-abortion organizations were enraptured by the news. Under the headline, “Dem ticket shakeup breathes new life into abortion-rights fight,” POLITICO’s Alice Miranda Ollstein begins “The country’s biggest abortion-rights groups quickly rallied around Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday, either explicitly backing her bid for president in the wake of Joe Biden’s announcement or, at the very least, praising her record.”
She adds, “Mini Timmaraju, the president of Reproductive Freedom for All [formerly NARAL Pro-Life America], told POLITICO that Harris’ candidacy is already energizing the group’s members and will ‘make sure this issue is front and center for the election, as it should be.’”
EMILY’s List’s Senior Vice President Christina Reynolds praised Harris as “a terrific messenger on the issue that we believe is going to win Democrats this election, which is abortion.”
In a statement on Sunday, Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said “[W]e know that she will continue to fight like hell to rebuild a fundamental right that was stripped away.”
One other. Nourbese Flint, president All in Action Fund, said, “We are fired up and laser-focused on mobilizing voters of color and engaging our communities in support of Vice President Harris, who has shown us time and time again that she will fight for us, our families, and our communities.”
You get the picture. From their perspective, what’s not to like? A pro-abortion absolutist potentially at the top of the Democrats’ ticket.
What do somewhat more neutral sources say? Nate Cohn is the New York Times’s chief political analyst. His story today ran under the headline “If Harris Is the Nominee, It Still Won’t Be Easy to Beat Trump: Biden’s age hasn’t been the only concern voters have been telling pollsters about recently.”
Cohn begins with “Ever since Donald J. Trump won the presidency, Democrats have stuck to a winning electoral playbook: From congressional races to presidential ones, they’ve nominated well-liked, moderate candidates who could appeal to nearly any voter who disliked Mr. Trump and his allies.”
Of course, they are “moderate” only because the media portrays them that way. But…
President Biden bowing out of the race Sunday and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris, Democrats still won’t find it easy to follow their time-tested approach. Many Democrats have coalesced behind Ms. Harris, but she doesn’t start the campaign as the kind of broadly acceptable candidate Democrats have put forward to great success during the Trump era.
Indeed, Harris does have a history: “A majority of voters have long had an unfavorable view of her,” Cohn writes.
She has trailed Mr. Trump in nearly every national and battleground state poll conducted so far this year. In the most recent New York Times/Siena College poll of Pennsylvania, just 42 percent of likely voters said they viewed Ms. Harris favorably — well short of the 51 percent who had a favorable view of Mr. Biden in the state ahead of the 2020 election. It’s even lower than the 46 percent who said the same for Mr. Trump in the recent poll.
Harris will inherit all the weaknesses. Yes, she is a “new face” and
to some extent, she might help satisfy the electorate’s desire for change, simply by being someone other than Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden. But she is still part of the Biden administration; she will be hobbled by many of the same challenges faced by Mr. Biden, and it’s not clear whether she is better positioned to overcome them. To do so, she would probably need to offer an optimistic and hopeful vision for the future, backed by a plausible agenda — something that her 2020 campaign largely failed to accomplish. [Underlining added.]
Cohn concludes
In fairness to Ms. Harris, it would be challenging for any Democrat today to advance a clear agenda for the future. Mr. Biden struggled to do so in his re-election campaign. The party has held power for almost 12 of the last 16 years, and it has exhausted much of its agenda; there aren’t many popular, liberal policies left in the cupboard. As long as voters remain dissatisfied with the status quo and the Democratic nominee, a campaign to defend the system might not be the slam dunk Democrats once thought it was.
We have several other stories today about Ms. Harris: here, here, here, and here.
And, food for thought. As of now, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and former President Barack Obama did not immediately jump on the Harris bandwagon.