Call it the big announcement: Vice President Kamala Harris has stepped out from behind the curtain of the Biden administration and onto her own stage in the past seven days. “There was a kind of explosion of joy, and you could see that in the reaction around the country,” said Stuart Stevens, a longtime Republican political strategist and author.
“Being vice president makes you smaller, but being the nominee of a political party makes you bigger,” he said. “So I think we’ve seen a process since the president declined the nomination where VP Harris has become bigger than just the vice presidency.”
Traditionally, candidates have months — the entire primary season — to prove themselves big enough to be president in the eyes of voters. Harris has exactly 100 days from now until Nov. 5.
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She’s in such a rush, winning the nomination in a week, raising a ton of money, and assembling an impressive list of supporters, that thousands of young people, volunteers and voters who had turned their attention away from the presidential race have tuned back in to support Harris, and the latest polls are putting her statistically close to matching former President Donald Trump’s approval rating.
Harris moved quickly to clarify her campaign’s story before Trump got ahead of her: the fact that she is a Black woman of South Asian descent is an ever-present undercurrent amid the chaos of a now-redefined election cycle.
“Do you think the fact that Kamala Harris is a woman will be a big factor in this election?” Teichner asked.
“When this is all over, we’ll look back and say that was the deciding factor,” Stevens replied.
“Harris is going to be up against the expectation that a strong leader, that a president looks like a man,” said Lindsay Cherbinski, president of the George Washington Presidential Library and a presidential historian. “So she’s going to have to acknowledge that she’s different, but also appear strong and persuasive. Finding that fine line between being assertive and a strong leader and not being disliked is going to be difficult.”
“Whenever there’s been a female candidate, from the early 1900s to Hillary Clinton, there’s been a lot of attack. [on them] “It can be gender-based,” Chervinsky said.
Trump has already proven that: “Did you see her huffing and puffing on TV last night?” he said at a 2020 rally.
“There’s a double standard for women in public office and it’s the same for non-white candidates. I think they’ll use every kind of racial and gender dog whistle they can think of,” Stevens said.
How will Harris respond to this? “The answer is simple: I have never stood in court where anyone I prosecuted had many good things to say about me,” Stevens said.
#ProsecutorsVsFelons has become a meme, and audiences are chanting “put him in jail” for a Republican candidate convicted of 34 felonies. Have we heard that line from Trump before?
Looking back from a historical perspective, sometimes a catchphrase or moment can change the perception of a candidate or an election. Example: A sweaty, grimacing Richard Nixon and a telegenic John F. Kennedy during the 1960 debates.
Chervinsky added, “Bill Clinton’s performance of Arsenio Hall’s saxophone really spoke to the moment and confirmed why people love him.”
“I don’t think there were many polls in 2007 and early 2008 that said ‘hope and change’ was the No. 1 issue for the American people,” Stevens said. “But Barack Obama was able to make that the No. 1 issue, and that’s how you win elections.”
Stevens is an anti-Trump figure, but he’s been a top adviser to Republican presidential candidates since the mid-1990s. Ask him what he thinks about Harris: “I think she’s going to win handily.”
But the odds aren’t necessarily in Harris’ favor. “Typically, when a vice president runs for president on their own, it ends in dismal success,” Cherbinski said. “They’re rarely successful, and they usually only last one more term.”
Of the 24 former vice presidents who have run for office, only 10 have won, most recently Joe Biden.
Now Donald Trump is the “old man” running for president, so could this be a history-making moment for Kamala Harris?
Her married life won’t last forever, but she’s started off with a bang.
Detailed information:
“The Plot to End America: Five Ways My Old Party is Leading Democracy to Authoritarianism” by political strategist Stuart Stevens, by Stuart Stevens (Twelve), available in hardcover, e-book and audio formats at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org. “The Making of a President: John Adams and the Precedents that Built a Republic” by Lindsay Chervinski, Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library, by Lindsay M. Chervinski (Oxford University Press), available in hardcover, e-book and audio formats at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org on September 5.
Story produced by John Karas. Edited by Carol Ross.
reference:
Sen. Coons on Biden’s ‘selfless’ retreat from race issues Martha Teichner
