The five days since Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign launched at warp speed have remade the 2024 race – and given Democrats new hope of preventing a second Donald Trump presidency.
Bright green, pro-Harris memes have erupted across social media. Fundraising exploded, with Harris’ campaign saying she raised $126 million between Sunday afternoon and Tuesday evening.
And Democrats were more eager to devote their own time to working to elect Harris: More than 100,000 people signed up to volunteer for her bid, and more than 2,000 applied for campaign jobs, Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a Wednesday memo. New polls show a race in which Trump had been ahead now having no clear leader.
It’s all made clear how desperate much of the Democratic Party was for a change at the top of the ticket – and how eager its donors and loyalists are to back a candidate who can take on Trump in a more consistent and aggressive way.
Michigan AFL-CIO President Ron Bieber described the energy in his state – one of November’s most important battlegrounds – as “electric.”
“I’ve never seen energy like this, this time in an election cycle,” he said.
The Democratic message is largely the same. Though Harris has put her own spin on it, much of what she’s focused on in recent days – defending women’s reproductive freedom; rejecting “trickle-down economic policies”; standing up for democratic norms and values – mirrors what President Joe Biden had campaigned on.
But it’s coming through more clearly with a new messenger, whose energetic performances on the campaign trail in recent days have laid bare the limitations of the 81-year-old Biden.
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The strength of Harris’ launch has at times surprised even the former Biden campaign staffers who on Sunday suddenly found themselves working for what was converted into the Harris campaign.
It’s far too soon to draw many conclusions about how Harris’ ascension changes a race that had long looked to be a rematch between Biden and Trump. Harris hasn’t yet chosen a running mate or launched her campaign’s first television advertisement. The Democratic National Convention is just weeks away.
And Harris and Trump could debate – the sort of showdown that would attract tens of millions of viewers and potentially change the trajectory of the race.
Though Trump said earlier this week that he has not committed to debating Harris, the vice president said Thursday that she would participate in the September 10 debate that ABC had originally scheduled between Trump and Biden.
“I think that the voters deserve to see the split screen that exists in this race on a debate stage and so, I’m ready. Let’s go,” she told reporters after landing at Joint Base Andrews following a campaign trip to Houston.
It adds up to an unsettled race – even though there are signs of Harris improving on key Biden weaknesses among younger, non-White and female voters.
Trump, after surviving an assassination attempt and making his party’s case at the Republican National Convention last week, was in a margin-of-error race with Harris – 49% to her 46% – in a CNN/SSRS poll of registered nationwide voters released Wednesday.
Half of those who backed Harris in the new poll (50%) said their vote was more in support of her than against Trump. That’s a dramatic shift compared with the Trump-focused dynamic of the Biden-Trump race. Among Biden’s supporters in CNN’s June poll, just 37% said their vote was mainly to express support for the president. About three-quarters of Trump supporters (74%) said in the latest survey that their vote was to express support for him rather than opposition to Harris.
The shift toward affirmative support for Harris was notably strong among young voters, voters of color and women – groups that typically back Democrats but had been seen as trouble spots for the Biden campaign.
A New York Times/Siena College poll released Thursday offered similar findings, with Trump at 48% and Harris at 46% among registered voters nationwide – and Harris gaining strength compared with Biden among young and non-White voters.
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