Can Kamala Harris beat Trump?

The advantages of youth and incumbency say yes, but the polls currently say little better than maybe. With 100 days to go, however, Harris has a real chance to make the answer yes

It is a fairly universal truth of journalism that if an article has a question mark in its headline it indicates that the author does not know the answer. As an editor, I often found this tendency maddening, though not always avoidable. In the case of making judgements about an American presidential election that is still more than 100 days away, and about a candidate who has had barely four days in which to make an impression, the question mark is, however, justified. What we can do at this early stage in what is now a Harris-Trump contest is to identify strengths and weaknesses, pitfalls and opportunities.

In opinion polls, it is clear that when asked before Biden’s withdrawal whether or not they would choose Harris over Trump in a two-way contest, Harris scored better with respondents than Biden but not by much. However, two caveats have to be applied to those polls: the first is that questions about hypothetical pairings have not proved to be reliable indicators in the past once the hypothetical became real; the second, which would have applied to Biden-Trump too, is that in the nature of things most American voters do not think seriously about which choice they will make until after Labor Day in early September, if then. For Biden-Trump, however, there was a caveat against that caveat: since this was to be a re-run of 2020, voters arguably already knew everything they were ever going to know — or want to know — about these two candidates, so judgements recorded in June or July might have been more dependable than for previous campaigns. And the key thing they knew about Biden — that he was 81 years old, and showing signs of his age — was not going to change.

So a crucial issue must be whether voters already feel they know all that they need to know about Kamala Harris, given that she has been vice-president for three-and-a-half years now, or whether they can be induced by her campaign to think differently about her. Two common charges against her are that she performed poorly in the Democratic Party primaries in 2020 and that she has failed to impress as vice-president. Neither charge is conclusive: plenty of subsequent winners failed in their early attempts at winning nominations, including Ronald Reagan (twice) and Joe Biden himself (also twice). Vice-presidents always act in the deep shadow of their presidents so it is not at all surprising or unusual that she has not played a starring role since assuming office in January 2021. Nonetheless, her task now is to show that she can be a star when occupying the centre of the political stage.

As a result, she will do so with both the advantage and disadvantage of incumbency. It is an advantage because the economic record of the Biden-Harris administration is greatly superior to that of the Trump-Pence one that preceded it. Yes, there has been inflation which has diluted the feel-good factor, but 15 million jobs have been created since January 2021, whereas from 2017-2020 America suffered a net loss of 2.9 million. There is plenty of room to debate who was responsible for those figures, especially given the COVID pandemic from 2020-22, but it is always the prerogative of incumbents to claim credit for what happens under their watch, whether justified or not. Harris cannot change the way in which Americans feel about their own economic circumstances and prospects, but she can neutralise the issue by pointing out vigorously how badly they fared under Trump. For he too is a sort of incumbent: his presidency is recent enough to still be a strong memory for most people.

The potential disadvantage of incumbency for Harris is that it makes it harder for her to create in voters’ minds a distinctive idea about what a Harris presidency might be like, distinctive that is from what a Biden one has been like. She will, however, have some big opportunities to create some distinctiveness: the first will come with her choice of vice-presidential candidate, which will send messages to voters about what sort of manager she might be and what overall flavour she wants to create; the second will come with every speech now and at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago from August 19th, when she can create a different emphasis from the one Joe Biden would have done: she can be tougher about her desire to restore abortion rights, for example, and she can be tougher on Israel’s conduct in Gaza, which will offer some clue about her approach to foreign affairs.

Most of all, however, this election is not likely to be a battle of policy ideas but rather a battle of narratives. All presidential elections are like that to a large extent, but this one will be even more than most, for both sides have a clear interest in creating sharp contrasts in voters’ minds between the two candidates.

The narrative that Trump will want to make dominant is the idea that this election is a choice between the strong — him — and the weak, ie Harris. He already has a highly masculine theme, but he will want to use this to make Americans feel afraid that a Harris presidency might leave them, and American national interests, poorly protected. The narrative Harris will want to create is the idea that this election is a choice between the young and the old, between the fresh and the stale. “Hope”, “new” and “change” are always powerful ideas in elections if a candidate or party can credibly capture them. Harris’s challenge now and over the next three months is to capture those notions.

She has a good chance of doing so as long as she can stand up to Trump’s bullying and lying in a — yes — strong way. For sure, he has a lot of rural and non-coastal America already sewn up, and a hefty group of backers in Christian Evangelicals. But independent voters are more numerous than many people think, as long as a candidate can persuade them to turn out to vote, and Harris has a better chance than Biden did of persuading women and minorities of all kinds to come out and vote for her. Her record as vice-president makes her vulnerable on the hot-button issue of immigration, for she was given some responsibility for the southern border and failed to make an impact, but she has a ready answer if she can find a way to deploy it effectively: she supported the bipartisan Border Security Bill that Trump opposed because he didn’t want Biden to make an election year gain on this issue. She has to expose and emphasise that cynical hypocrisy at every opportunity if she is to defuse attacks on her for being weak on illegal border crossings.

If she picks a vice-president who can deliver one of the larger swing states to her, the combination of that and her greater chance to boost turnout among women, African-Americans and Arab-Americans could offer her a path to victory. Above all, in an election in which before last weekend many voters hated the idea of both candidates, Harris now has the chance to provide voters who dislike Trump — of which the primaries showed there were many among Republicans too — a valid chance to avoid voting for him.

Where the Harris candidacy definitely has a chance of making a difference is in preventing a Republican sweep of both houses of Congress and of state governorships. This was the deepest fear among Democratic Party leaders and donors, if Biden had refused to stand down: that they might have lost not just the White House, which would be bad enough, but also the Senate and the House, making the potential legislative impact of a Trump presidency all the greater. This still can’t be ruled out, of course, but it is definitely now less likely.

There is a huge amount to play for. A week ago, that did not look to be the case.