‘Kamala Harris’ honeymoon will be brief – the challenges facing her are huge’

With all potential rivals declaring their support for her nomination within hours of Joe Biden’s dramatic announcement on Sunday, Kamala Harris will be crowned the Democratic Presidential candidate at the party’s convention in Chicago next month.

It’s an extraordinary turnaround for a politician who has struggled to make an impact as Vice President in more than three years and who, until the last few weeks at least, had been all but written off as a future commander-in-chief by most political observers here in Washington.

This appeared to be Biden’s view too. After all, a critical reason why he resisted calls to drop out of the race earlier despite widespread public concerns over his age, was that he was the only person capable of beating Donald Trump.

So, was he wrong, and can his No.2 now step up and win the Presidency with barely three months left until the election on 5 November?

Party unity

The overwhelming sense of relief that has greeted Biden’s announcement, and the desire to unify quickly around Harris, has certainly given the party an early sugar-rush moment. More than $50m was raised within 24 hours from small donors and senior Democrats are flooding TV networks to sing the praises of their soon-to-be candidate.

But this temporary honeymoon cannot hide the fact that the challenge facing the 59-year-old former Californian Senator barely three months before the election on 5 November is huge.

First, she is up against an opponent who, since the TV debate with Biden at the end of June, has gathered crucial momentum in the race for the White House. The assassination attempt and his immediate response, followed by a Convention that showed the Republican Party now totally under his control, has given Trump front-runner status.

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Money is now flowing into Republican coffers, not least from the likes of Elon Musk and other billionaires keen to align themselves with a potential President who continues to threaten core features of American democracy and promises to cut taxes, wage war on woke and deport 10 million undocumented immigrants.

Second, Harris will need to win support well beyond the Democrat base, to independents and moderate Republicans, if she is to win swing states in November – and there has been little evidence so far of her ability to do so. Her public ratings as Vice President have been historically low and her bid for the Democrat candidacy in 2020 ended even before the primaries began.

She will rightly be able to claim incumbent credit for the successes of the Biden administration, not least the high performing economy and successful industrial strategy. But Harris faces an electorate still angry at cost of living increases and lack of control at the southern border, the latter a particular vulnerability given her role leading the administration’s “Root Causes Strategy” to tackle the drivers of irregular migration.

Third, she will need to break through the last great glass ceiling here and show that a woman can be elected to the highest office in the US. There are many, not least among many Democrats themselves, who still do not believe that Americans are willing to make this important step, and the defeat of Hilary Clinton to Trump in 2016, remains a deep scar.

Making history

We can certainly expect the attacks on the first Black woman to occupy the role of Vice President from today’s nativist GOP to be brutal and unforgiving. Even before Biden’s announcement on Sunday, senior Republicans were lining up at their Milwaukee convention to target her record and character.

Yet, as ever in politics, the challenges for Harris present opportunities too.

Trump’s star is currently in the ascendancy. But Democrats have demonstrated in mid-term election victories since 2020 that MAGA populism struggles to win over majority opinion. It is beatable and Harris can draw on her strong record as California’s Attorney General until 2017 to prosecute the argument about the dangers of Trump.

Many of Harris’s Democrat friends speak of her “tenaciousness”, values and “political astuteness”, and she is going to need all of these things and more if she is to compete in November. It is also true that few Vice Presidents – bound by the need for absolute loyalty to their boss – rarely have much space to develop their particular identity. She now has that chance.

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Perhaps, also, a female Presidential candidate is uniquely placed to mobilise wide political support following the attacks on women’s reproductive rights that we have seen since the overturning of Roe vs Wade in 2022.

Who Harris chooses as her running mate will tell us a lot about how she will seek to campaign and fight the coming election. Early frontrunners are three male Democrat governors, Andy Beshear (Kentucky), Roy Cooper (North Carolina) and Josh Shapiro (Pennsylvania). All help to reach parts of the electorate she may struggled to connect with.

Party unity, relief at Biden’s departure and the fact that Trump will become the oldest Presidential candidate in history in November, has brought some much-needed cheer to Democrats who have suffered a miserable few weeks. But the true test is only just beginning, and it is going to take the most extraordinary political story in recent years to pass it.

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