The Kamala Gamble

Kamala Harris’ entrance shakes up the race, but she has real liabilities.

Kamala Harris at a National Space Council meeting, December 1, 2021. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.)

After a whirlwind series of events this weekend, the coronation of Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee appears a foregone conclusion. Her entrance into the race gives the Democrats a new lease on life, but the Democrats would do well to remember that she also has abundant weaknesses that are likely to emerge in a general election.

Popularity issues

Part of the argument for Democrats moving on from Biden was his consistently dreary poll numbers—his approval rating had been underwater for nearly three years with no signs that it would ever bounce back. The problem with Harris is that she hasn’t fared any better. Not only has her own approval tracked very closely with Biden’s, sinking into negative territory in mid-2021, but she has also never cracked 50%, while Biden at least sat in the mid-50s for the first several months of his presidency. This is a good indication that Harris has been less popular than Biden from the start.

This impression has been reinforced on other fronts, too. In a brutal critique of her, over half of registered voters, including 53% of independents, say they don’t think Harris cares about people like them. Thus, Harris will clearly have a lot of work to do to endear herself more to a skeptical public.

Electoral missteps

Harris’s ascent to the vice presidency was as perplexing as it was rapid, for her history in political competition has left a lot to be desired. Her first election to a major office came in 2010. That cycle, she won a close race for California’s open attorney general seat, defeating her Republican opponent by less than one point, 46.1%–45.3%. Some might be tempted to attribute this to a difficult midterm election for Democrats across the country—except that every other California Democrat running for statewide office significantly outperformed Harris, earning at least 50 percent of the vote and winning their races by double digits.

To be sure, Harris has been a barrier-breaking politician throughout her career. Her profile as a young woman of color and prosecutor appealed to Democrats as early as 2010, with many considering her a rising star in the party. And upon joining the Senate in 2017, Harris was catapulted into the national spotlight. Tapping into her widely-touted prosecutorial skills, she grilled Trump appointees and cast high-profile votes against many of them during the nomination process. Her performance in the Senate endeared her to the party’s base and engendered speculation about her plans to challenge Trump in 2020.

However, Harris’ presidential run went nowhere. She received lavish media attention, but her campaign flamed out before the Iowa caucuses. Parsing through the wreckage, observers noted that Harris never had a coherent message or offered a compelling reason for her candidacy, and her campaign was beset by infighting. Whether she can run a strong presidential campaign this time may hinge on what lessons she learned from her last bid.

The impulse to pull left

A key factor that likely did in Harris’ 2020 campaign was her desire to placate her party’s activist base—a base that ultimately coalesced around other candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Rather than embracing her accomplishments as a prosecutor and explaining her pragmatic vision for criminal justice, Harris ran from her record, fearing that it would be viewed as excessively punitive. She surrounded herself with staffers who were too beholden to ideas trending on Twitter. This cast of thought likely led her to sign onto some proposals with highly-limited mainstream appeal, including the decriminalization of border crossings and the Green New Deal.

If Harris has learned any lessons from 2020, she might consider a message that highlights her track record of prosecuting criminals—which could set her up for a favorable contrast against Donald Trump.

Defending an unpopular administration

Another difficulty for Harris is that she is still very closely tied to President Biden and his administration. In 2021, Biden tasked her with the thankless job of trying to resolve the crisis at the southern border. But far from successfully addressing the “root causes” of the problems there, they grew exponentially worse in the following years, with “migrant encounters” hitting a record high by the end of 2023. According to head-to-head polling against Biden, voters trust Trump by a 14-point margin on immigration issues and by a 10-point margin on the economy. Harris, with her ties to the administration, may well be inheriting the same losing hand.

Democrats’ deeper structural problems

In addition to issues related to herself and the Biden administration, Harris will also be contending with broader problems that the Democratic Party has not fully reckoned with. For instance, survey data indicates that the Dems have experienced substantial attrition among black and Hispanic voters, which may at least partially explain why important swing states like Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada have shifted in Trump’s favor this time around. Trump has also made overtures to union voters, a longtime Democratic constituency that has shown cracks in recent years—and that could be the difference in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The Democrats have also lost ground with rural voters, working-class voters, and even some young voters, a group that hasn’t been competitive in a generation. While Biden has made notable gains with seniors, a higher-turnout bloc that historically leans Republican, it’s not clear that those voters would stick with another Democratic nominee.

Some of these are longer-term issues that the party has been contending with since at least the start of the Trump era. Some may be specific to this cycle: Third-party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for example, are disproportionately attracting younger and non-white voters. There is also some evidence that Harris performs better than Biden with key groups, especially women and non-white voters. But suffice it to say, Harris will have to confront these bigger coalitional issues with less than four months to go in the campaign.

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The Democrats’ best argument for Harris is that she is a wild card: Neither they nor Trump’s campaign know how her candidacy will shake up the race. If voters’ views of her aren’t as entrenched as they are for Biden, she might have a slightly higher ceiling. Given the opportunity to prosecute the case against Trump—and to do so more effectively than Biden has done—she is also likely to be far stronger and more effective than Biden. And polls show that many Americans want someone, anyone, who isn’t Biden or Trump. Maybe all that is enough for Harris to succeed.

Even so, a simple swap of candidates isn’t guaranteed to strengthen the Democrats. Harris will certainly face significant obstacles of her own. What is most critical is that Harris recognize and address her liabilities. If she distances herself from the perceived setbacks of the Biden administration, tacks to the center, and comes into her own as a candidate, she can win. It's a manageable roadmap, but there is a great deal of work and a short amount of time to do it in.

Michael Baharaeen is a DC-based political and election analyst. He is a native of Kansas City and writes the Checks and Balances newsletter on Substack.

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