Kamala Harris breathes new life into democratic campaign

At the beginning of July, following Joe Biden's disastrous performance in a televised debate and an unsuccessful attempt on Donald Trump, it seemed the Republican had a clear path to return to the White House. By the beginning of August, the situation looks entirely different.

Biden's withdrawal from the presidential race and his replacement by Kamala Harris breathed new energy into the Democrats’ campaign. The Republicans' campaign, however, has entered a "when it rains, it pours" mode—best exemplified by Trump's catastrophic performance at the National Association of Black Journalists meeting in Chicago on Wednesday.

Many commentators, strategists, and politicians in the Democratic Party were doubtful whether Harris could effectively replace Biden, unite the party around her, and mobilize its electorate. The past two weeks seem to have dispelled these fears. Kamala Harris joining the race gave Democrats hope for victory, energized their voter base, and filled it with enthusiasm for the new candidate.

Enthusiasm was something lacking in Biden's campaign, and that was long before the disastrous debate. Democrats portrayed voting for the current president as a civic duty every person with a minimum sense of responsibility should fulfill to prevent a lawfully convicted criminal from moving into the White House. No one even tried to sell Biden as a candidate for which one could want to vote enthusiastically.

Harris, at least for now, has managed to spark such enthusiasm among Democratic voters, including key groups like young voters, women, and minorities. This enthusiasm translates into many significant factors for the campaign's dynamics. It is visible in the record-breaking donations to the new candidate’s campaign. Since Harris replaced Biden, $200 million has been donated to her campaign—more than Biden raised in the entire first quarter of this year. These funds came from small donors who contributed tens or hundreds of dollars.

Democratic voters are more willing to send contributions than in June and volunteer to work for Harris's campaign and other party candidates. There has also been a significant increase in new voter registrations; in the US, voters must first complete the formalities of registering to vote.

Crucially, Harris has essentially managed to nullify Trump's polling lead over Biden. In an Ipsos poll for Reuters on July 30, Harris led Trump by one percentage point. The poll also shows a rise in personal ratings for the Democratic candidate. In the same survey at the beginning of June, 40% of voters viewed her positively and 57% negatively. By the end of the month, 47% of respondents had a positive view of Harris, with 51% having a negative view.

The poll average calculated by "The New York Times" still gives Trump a one-percentage-point lead: he leads Harris 48 to 47 percent. However, in such surveys, the margin of error can be up to 3 percentage points, so we essentially have a tie. Key to determining the winner will be the results in five to seven states where either Harris or Trump could win: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and possibly North Carolina.

The latest Public Opinion Strategies poll from five key states indicates a tie. Trump decisively leads in Arizona by a 5-percentage point difference, while Harris leads in Pennsylvania by three points. The differences are within the margins of error in Nevada, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Harris is likely to see a boost after the Democratic convention in Chicago, scheduled for the second half of August. For now, she is certainly on an upward trend.

At the same time, the Republican campaign seems to have nothing but trouble. So far, the vice-presidential nomination for Ohio senator J.D. Vance has proven to be a bust. Initial polls showed Vance with the worst ratings among vice-presidential candidates in history; in an ABC poll, his negative ratings outweighed positive ones by 15 percentage points.

There are increasing voices from the Republican camp that Vance may be a liability for Trump's campaign. Certainly, uncovered remarks from years ago about the United States being run by "a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives" and persecuting families with children did not help him. This is especially notable since these words were not a slip-up but reflected Vance’s belief that childless individuals, especially by choice, are morally inferior to those who decided to have children and should have less say in the country's future.

The media in the past week have been dominated by information on how radically right-wing Vance's views are, especially on issues like women's rights. The politician is known for his opposition to abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. Although he now officially claims that individual states should regulate the legality of abortion, statements from his past supporting a nationwide ban on abortion or policies that would prevent women from states where abortion is banned from getting the procedure where it is legal can be found.

Vance, an atheist in his youth, was baptized and confirmed in the Catholic Church a few years ago, aligning himself with the radical anti-liberal Catholic right centered around Patrick Deneen, a philosopher at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and the author of the concept of "post-liberal politics."

"Post-liberals" are convinced that state policy—both at the state and federal levels—should be subordinate to a vision of the good life derived from Catholic anthropology, ethics, and social teachings, even if they contradict constitutional decisions, established legal interpretations, or the will of the majority. This vision is unacceptable to most Americans, including significantly more liberal American Catholics.

Vance, combining radically distant views from the American center with personal awkwardness and weak communication skills, supports the argument that Democrats have increasingly made on social media: that Republicans are simply weird.

This term, proposed by Democratic Governor of Minnesota Tim Walz, has proven exceptionally catchy and troublesome for Republicans. It clearly bothers, touches, and even hurts them. However, the more Republican politicians, publicists, or influencers try to prove in recent days that they are not weird and represent the majority of normal Americans, the more they draw attention to the problem that they are.

This was confirmed by Trump's appearance in Chicago on Wednesday. Questioned by three Black female journalists, Trump was uncomfortable, acting as if the mere fact that a woman of a different color dared to ask him tough questions was an affront to his majesty. The Republican candidate regularly missed the mark with one of his interlocutors, Rachel Scott from ABC, making absurdly exaggerated claims—such as that no president since Abraham Lincoln has done as much for African Americans as he has. The audience responded to such declarations with laughter.

However, the media was most captured by Trump's attacks on Harris. The former president claimed that the Democratic politician only recently "became black" when it suited her politically, and before that, she identified herself as an American of Indian descent. Trump repeated these attacks on social media and at a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's capital.

As usual, Trump is not truthful. Harris is the daughter of an Indian mother and a black Jamaican father. She has always emphasized her biracial identity and identified as a Black woman. She studied at Howard University in Washington—one of the so-called historically Black colleges and universities established after the Civil War under conditions of racial segregation to educate Black students. During her studies, Harris belonged to Alpha Kappa Alpha, a sorority for young Black women.

Many Republicans were embarrassed by such an attack on the Democratic candidate. Former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, fighting for a Senate seat in this election, openly distanced himself from Trump’s words. Montana Senator Steve Daines, coordinating the Republicans' Senate campaign, said he would prefer Trump to focus on criticizing Harris's political positions. The Republican governor of the relatively liberal state of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, wrote in "The New York Times" that if Trump wants to win the election, he must start addressing Americans' real problems and not focus on personal attacks on opponents.

Democrats condemned Trump’s words as racist. The party hopes such behavior will further mobilize minorities around their candidate and prevent Trump from reaching out to the groups he counted on—like young Black men.

Simultaneously, Democrats remember what happened in 2016. Back then, it also seemed that Trump's outrageous, sexist attacks on Clinton excluded his chances of victory. As we know, they ultimately did not harm him.

Matt Bai, a columnist for "The Washington Post," wonders if Trump's attack on Harris is a deliberate tactic aimed at provoking his opponent. The more the Democratic candidate responds to such attacks with accusations of racism, the easier it will be for Trump to reduce his opponent to the stereotype of the "angry Black woman" and sell his narrative to his older, less-educated white voters: "If she thinks I’m a racist, she certainly thinks you are too. Do you want a president who despises you as racists?"

At the same time, much has changed in American politics since 2016, and what worked against Clinton might not work against Harris. Clinton was a much more controversial and disliked politician, consistently demonized by Republicans since she became the First Lady.

Unlike Clinton, Harris knows she cannot automatically count on support from states like Michigan and must visit them during the campaign. Research shows that support for women in the highest leadership positions is growing, at least declaratively, in American society. Voters know what Trump's administration looks like. The former president is burdened by a very unpopular vice-presidential candidate and a possible Supreme Court decision, thanks to his judicial nominations, that would take away the constitutional right to abortion from American women.

There are more than three months left until the election—that’s a lot of time. Harris’s honeymoon will eventually end, and her campaign will likely face more than one crisis before November. The fight will continue until the very end, but thanks to the candidate change, Democrats have a real chance to win.