The following is presented as part of The Columbian’s Opinion content, which offers a point of view in order to provoke thought and debate of civic issues. Opinions represent the viewpoint of the author. Unsigned editorials represent the consensus opinion of The Columbian’s editorial board, which operates independently of the news department.
What Kamala Harris has managed to do in one month is totally redefine herself in the eyes of American voters. She went from being a mostly disapproved of vice president to being a positively viewed candidate in the space of four weeks.
What it proves is what I’ve suspected all along: that the disapproval of her was not deeply rooted. It was mostly a reflection of the general malaise, fairly or unfairly, associated with the Biden administration. “Why don’t people like Kamala Harris?” I used to ask, and the answer would be something along the lines of, “What’s to like?” She was not in the limelight; the Biden people didn’t use her well; she had staff problems in the beginning; she was given a vague and impossible mandate. The truth — and it’s proven by the ease with which she turned things around — is that most people didn’t know very much about her.
Now they know what they’ve seen in four weeks — a positive, joyful, youthful unifier, her own woman with an ability to excite and inspire — and that’s been enough to totally change the dynamics of the race and to move her poll numbers way upward from Biden’s.
The question is: Will it last? Or can the Republicans, in nine weeks, manage to redefine her again?
Everyone has Donald Trump’s number. It’s why he has so much trouble getting beyond his base. His base buys into his shtick. Even his supporters who are not card-carrying Trumpers and may not love the shtick know what they’re getting when they say they support Trump. If you’re for Trump now, it’s unlikely that anything he does — or any of the negative ads or new bad quotes or mumbles and stumbles — will shake you.
The Democrats can pound on Trump’s vulnerabilities, but there’s a solid foundation there.
Harris’ foundation is just being built. She will spend the next nine weeks trying to firm up what she has already built, trying to fill in the blank spaces, reassuring people that they are right to trust her and it is worth it to get out and vote for her.
And the Republicans will try to obliterate the foundation she has built, to redefine her again. They are good at that. John Kerry was a war hero until he wasn’t. Michael Dukakis was competent until he became the guy who let a murderer out on furlough (Willie Horton).
The thing is, Republicans have been trying to do this since the day Biden stepped aside, and so far, they’ve failed to find anything resembling a silver bullet. They’ve been throwing lots of mud in her direction, but it’s not sticking. They’ve called her names and indulged in personal attacks, but it hasn’t been working.
According to Trump, his advisers think that the way to bring her down is not by mispronouncing her name and questioning her intelligence or her Blackness, but by sticking to the issues and holding her responsible for what are seen as the failings of the Biden administration.
It’s a better strategy than calling names and comparing crowd size (or whining about Barack Obama’s ultimate put-down), but it has obvious problems. Does anyone think that she was really the “border czar”? And what is the answer to the fact that Trump himself put the kibosh on a Republican-written border law because he wanted the issue for his campaign? Does anyone think that a convicted felon can convincingly make the case that a long-time prosecutor is soft on crime?
This is what Republicans are doing right now. They are testing attack messages, figuring out the best way to undermine the foundation Harris is building. I’m not going to do their work for them. But it’s coming, and they will put hundreds of millions of dollars between now and Election Day behind messages that seek to tarnish the positive first impression that Harris has managed to make.
Which is why, in addition to keeping Trump on the defensive, Harris needs to focus on fortifying the foundation she has built, letting Americans and especially swing voters in swing states see for themselves that she is everything they hoped she would be.
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