Harris has the momentum to beat Trump

WASHINGTON, DC: Books will be written about the last month in American politics. In the space of just four weeks, the race for the US presidency has been twisted, turned, upended, and reset. Now, with just about 100 days to go until the election, Americans begin the race’s home stretch.

From the start of the campaign, voters’ top concern about President Joe Biden was his age. Already the oldest US president ever, Biden would be 86 at the end of a second four-year term. In both national and swing-state surveys, voters expressed serious doubts about his ability to maintain the mental acuity needed to run the country at such an advanced age.

Biden’s disastrous debate performance on June 27 seemed to vindicate voter concerns. His support dipped significantly, but not catastrophically, buoyed only by the profound unpopularity of his opponent, Donald Trump. If Trump was even a marginally more “normal” candidate, his gains may well have been far larger.

In the weeks that followed, while Biden, his family, and his inner circle wrestled with the question of whether he should drop out of the race, Trump went to ground, spending more time on the golf course than in the public eye. When he emerged for a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, America’s electoral saga grew more dramatic: while Trump was delivering his speech, shots rang out, and a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed his ear.

Even after the shooting – which Trump turned into a cunning photo-op, thrusting his fist into the air before the crowd, cheek smeared with blood – support for Trump didn’t surge. Nor did he gain much traction after the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where he officially accepted his nomination as the GOP’s presidential candidate with a rambling, incoherent, and divisive speech that defied his campaign’s calls for “unity” in the face of political violence.

How could all that drama fail to sway independents, undecided voters, or anti-Trump Republicans? Simply put, most Americans did not like either of their options. Biden is old, but at 78, Trump is not much younger. Trump is also chaotic, corrupt, irrational, and likely to implement policies that enjoy little support outside his narrow, extremist base.

The Democrats also made important strategic blunders. While Biden deliberated on whether to remain in the race, his campaign and the entire Democratic political apparatus should have been making the case against Trump and his newly announced, Kremlin-endorsed running mate, J.D. Vance. Instead, the Democrats stayed stuck in a kind of holding pattern – and not for the first time.

In fact, in my nearly five years working alongside the Democratic Party apparatus, I have seen firsthand how an unwillingness or inability to act quickly and decisively has left the party overly dependent on external factors to strengthen its position. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization – the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case which established a constitutional right to abortion – is a case in point. The Democrats could have cemented Roe by federal statute in 2009, when they controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. But President Barack Obama decided that abortion rights were not a high priority.

So, perhaps we should not be surprised that so little happened on the Democrats’ side between the June debate debacle and the Biden campaign’s announcement, nearly a month later, that he was stepping aside as the party’s presumptive nominee and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris. What was previously a rematch between two old, unpopular candidates has become a captivating contest for the future of the United States.

The twenty-first century has brought many firsts in American politics: the first African-American president, followed by the first would-be authoritarian president, the first election conducted amid a global pandemic, and now a major party candidate leaving the race after winning his party’s primary.

Soon there may be another first: if Harris wins in November, she will be America’s first female president. That prospect has proved invigorating. In just over 24 hours, donors shelled out a record-breaking $81 million for the Harris campaign, and her first appearances have featured roaring crowds. The Democratic Party – from its leaders to its donors – has done what it needed to do, expressing unreserved support for its new candidate.

The Trump team’s response has been entirely predictable. Trump argued that he should get a refund for the millions of dollars he spent campaigning against Biden, and claimed that anointing Harris amounted to a “coup”. Several Republican members of Congress have referred to Harris as a “DEI” (diversity, equity, and inclusion) candidate, suggesting that she was chosen for her identity, not her record. The GOP is throwing everything it can at Harris, but so far, nothing has stuck.

Over the next 100 days, the contrast between the two candidates will continue to sharpen. Standing beside the young, energetic Harris, the nearly 80-year-old Trump will look even more decrepit. Whereas Harris has the wind at her back, Trump’s lack of broad appeal will continue to drag him down. And as Harris (one hopes) makes a clear, forceful, and enthusiastic case for entering a new post-Baby Boom political era, Trump, inept and retrograde, will continue to lean on ugly rhetoric and scare tactics.

As the late President George H.W. Bush suggested, in politics, one should bet on the team with “Big Mo” (momentum). And, right now, that is Team Harris. If she manages to build on that momentum – to raise enthusiasm for her campaign to fever pitch – she may well get the chance to inflict a crushing defeat on Trump and the Republican Party.

Reed Galen, the author of The Home Front on Substack, is President of JoinTheUnion.us, a pro-democracy coalition dedicated to defending American democracy and defeating authoritarian candidates.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2024.

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