On the second night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Kamala Harris suddenly appeared on the big screen at the United Center. Many in the audience seemed momentarily confused—the candidate, who had already made a surprise appearance the night before, was not scheduled to return to the stage until later in the week. Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, were uploaded from the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, where they were holding a rally for more than 15,000 supporters. “See you in two days, Chicago,” Harris said, waving. While a nominating convention is traditionally a cheer-on for superfans, Democrats turned it into a popularity contest. The Fiserv Forum was the host site of the Republican National Convention, where Donald Trump was officially named his party’s nominee in July. In a single night—four weeks into her presidential campaign and less than three months before Election Day—Harris filled two stadiums.
Can the enthusiasm last? Harris, the vice president of a historically unpopular incumbent, is an unlikely candidate for change. And yet, in both quarters, the sense of relief was as overwhelming as the general euphoria last week. Less than a month earlier, when President Joe Biden clung to his failed candidacy, the odds of a Democratic victory were in the single digits, according to internal polls. Now those odds are about the same. In Chicago, it was both telling and understandable that enthusiasm was highest when Biden kept out of sight. On Monday, he delivered a twisting, emotional speech that was at once a testament to all he had accomplished as president and a reminder that it was not enough. Many of the speakers addressed him kindly; one of the week’s refrains was “Thank you, Joe.” But if Democrats were proud of Biden for his historic abdication, they were even prouder of themselves for accomplishing what Republicans, who remained devoted to their shaky candidate, had failed to do.
Without an octogenarian at the top of the ticket, the Democratic Party could present itself for the first time in years as closer to the national electorate in age, spirit and experience. Trump, whose entire campaign was built on the contrast between his strength and Biden’s weakness, seemed angry and old. At the convention, he was both punch line and foil. He was strange, small, disturbed – “a strikebreaker,” as Shawn Fain, the head of the United Auto Workers, put it. The uniqueness of Harris’s identity – as a black woman of South Asian descent, a symbol of a young, diverse and hopeful country – was perhaps the great subtext of the convention, celebrated and honored at every turn but rarely brought forward as an explicit theme of its history. What made 2024 a historic election was the question of whether American democracy could survive against Trump.
Harris is still largely running her campaign based on the agenda of the administration she is part of. (Earlier this week, the DNC ratified her 94-page platform, but stopped short of removing references to Biden’s “second term.”) Many of those policies – on climate change, health care, public infrastructure and student debt – are overwhelmingly popular with Democratic voters. Others – on the Middle East and immigration – are more complicated. Democrats assume that Biden’s age, not his positions, has made him so unpopular. Harris and her advisers clearly believe that their priority should be selling herself as a person rather than getting bogged down in policy specifics. With so little time until the election, this could be the right move, but it’s also a balancing act. At a breakout session during the convention, Julie Chávez Rodríguez – the campaign manager who took over for Harris from Biden – was called to the microphone to give a “campaign update.” Hundreds cheered her speech; only as she left the stage could someone be heard saying in a confused voice: “Wait, so what was new?”
State-level organizers have told reporters that the volunteers flocking to local campaign offices aren’t interested in policy issues; their energy is for the candidate and the sense of possibility she has brought to a moribund campaign. One oft-overlooked fact of Harris’ campaign is the work she’s been doing since the Supreme Court struck down a constitutional right to abortion in the summer of 2022. This year alone, she made more than 80 trips to speak about reproductive rights in two dozen states. Someone close to the campaign said Harris’s local contacts were one reason she was able to secure the nomination by such a large margin. That effort could also help in the general election. In such a close race, the young, undecided women who fear inflation but are also moderate and pro-choice could prove crucial, according to Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report.
Most polls have Harris ahead of Trump in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and may have a small lead in Arizona and North Carolina. She has narrowed Trump’s lead in states like Nevada and Georgia. But behind closed doors in Chicago, Democrats urged caution. Just As he pointed out, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden were both leading Trump by larger margins at this point in their respective elections in 2016 and 2020. David Axelrod, Obama’s former strategist, said on the eve of the convention that Trump could well win if the election were held on that day.
When Harris finally addressed the convention on Thursday night, she acknowledged the dramatic circumstances of her candidacy. “Unusual travel is nothing new to me,” she said. Her initially hushed voice became more forceful as she described how the humility of her upbringing – the daughter of a single immigrant mother, raised by neighbors, “none of them by blood, but all by love” – hardened into the goal of a career as a prosecutor. Her only client, she said, was “the people.” A few minutes later, she repeated the statement to attack Trump, who, she said, would “use the immense powers of the presidency … to serve the only client he’s ever had – himself.”
No one in the United Center could doubt the legitimacy of her cause. And Harris seemed to be proving a crucial point in a quiet, intimate way. The applause was as passionate when she spoke about abortion rights as when she called for an end to the Gaza war. At the moment, it was the messenger of the message that mattered most. ♦
