In July of this year, US vice-president Kamala Harris was handed perhaps the most poisoned chalice in political history – after a brutal month of Democrat-on-Democrat infighting, she was about to become the party’s nominee, and the avatar of efforts to deny Donald Trump a second term of the presidency.
There were many who thought this was an impossible task for anyone, and that Harris herself was particularly unsuited to the campaign (including your correspondent).
Harris was at the time a relatively unpopular vice-president (with a net favourability rating of -15) who in her role of “border tsar” had been landed with responsibility for the fiasco on America’s southern border. She had flamed out early in the 2020 primary race – before the first votes were cast – and had a reputation for struggling in front of the camera when she was on the spot rather than delivering prepared remarks.
Part of what made the Democratic infighting of June and July so very bitter was that the party hadn’t just split into two factions – keep Biden versus ditch Biden – but into several, with some determined that if Biden was persuaded to stand down, Harris should not be the candidate. The disagreement was so visceral that it seemed as if Harris’s prospects had been cut off at the knees.
Whatever the result, Harris has spectacularly confounded her critics – and so has the establishment Democratic Party. Biden was eventually persuaded to step aside and he immediately endorsed his vice-president to replace him as candidate. Prominent Democrats swiftly rallied around her, and within 24 hours it became obvious there would be no room for a challenger.
The party didn’t grudgingly rally, though: it actually got its act together (for once). Enthusiasm soared among members and voters alike, and this was matched by fundraising – Harris has absolutely blown Trump away in both total direct fundraising and small-dollar donations.
Harris had a textbook rollout, and appeared a candidate completely transformed in comparison with her 2020 showing – polished, charming, effective in debate, and even occasionally showing flashes of the effortless Obama cool that eludes almost every professional politician, most recently in her dismissal of hecklers at one of her rallies: “Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally… I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street.”
Harris is also, in some ways at least, fortunate in her opponent: the Donald Trump of 2024 is not the same as the 2020 variety, let alone 2016. Trump is carrying much more baggage: he is now a court-adjudicated rapist, a convicted felon, and the man who attempted to launch an insurrection against his own government in January 2021.
He is also visibly older and more tired, something that is even harder to ignore given that his first opponent was edged out of the contest over his age. Trump’s answers are vaguer and more rambling than ever, he cancels events and interviews at short notice, and even his gift of nicknames seems to have abandoned him – he coined “Kamabla” as a nickname for Harris in an interview with recently fallen star journalist Olivia Nuzzi, and didn’t seem to understand why neither she nor anyone else got what the joke was supposed to be. Trump is more beatable now than he ever has been.
And yet: since July, the Democrats have put on the best and most united performance they have for decades, and the Republicans have resembled nothing so much as a shitshow.
The Democrats couldn’t really have done better, the Republicans could hardly have been worse, and yet the race couldn’t be closer. Kamala Harris has a narrow lead in the national polls, but the presidency is decided by the electoral college, not popular vote, and in all seven of the crucial swing states that will decide the result, the two candidates are within the margin of error.
No one can guess which way the dominoes will fall, no one can predict this election, and the only useful thing anyone can say is it looks as if it couldn’t be much closer. Betting markets lean more heavily towards Trump, but those are skewed by Trump supporters making big bets on their candidate. Republicans are engaging in voter suppression schemes in multiple key swing states, which could influence the result, the polls might have systemic error… there are plenty of reasons to panic, and plenty of reasons to be calm. We just don’t know.
But that closeness itself speaks volumes. The Democratic Party hasn’t made an obvious misstep since it persuaded Joe Biden to step down. The party has been united. Biden, reportedly still fuming behind closed doors, has been a team player in public. Tim Walz has been well-received as VP pick. Fundraising has gone well. This is the Democrats putting on the absolute best show that they’re capable of performing.
It is also a very particular version of the Democratic Party, and it’s not the one of 2020. Almost anything that could be described as “woke” has been either sidelined or ditched entirely. No one is taking a knee, talk of “defunding the police” is absolutely out, and while the party is still supporting trans rights it is doing so as quietly as it possibly can.
The Kamala Harris of 2024 wants you to know that she owns a Glock and she has fired it. She’s frustrated that Republicans stopped her passing a bill that would have been vastly tougher on people at the US southern border. She plans to appoint a Republican to her cabinet, if elected. She is palling around with Dick Cheney, who was for most left-leaning and centrist people aged 35 to 45 regarded as something close to the human embodiment of Satan.
This is the kind of establishment Democratic Party that seemed to be dead in 2020: it wants to be bipartisan, it likes norms and values, it likes to appeal to “Middle America” (whatever that means), and it seems to be occupying a different universe entirely to its political opponents.
The more radical and more left-leaning flank that seemed to have taken the reins of the party is very obviously out. This is at its most obvious – and emotive – over the issue of Gaza, where in several states during the primary process, groups calling for the US to take much stronger action to secure a ceasefire mobilised against Biden. The most prominent of these movements was the “Uncommitted” grouping in the crucial swing state of Michigan, which contains Dearborn, the US city with the highest Muslim populace.
The Uncommitted movement had hoped to show its strength in the primary and use this as leverage on Biden (and then Harris) to secure action on Gaza, in exchange for them mobilising their support in the general election. This led to a stand-off at the party convention in which the Uncommitted delegates eventually resorted to a sit-in, as part of a bid to get a Palestinian speaker on the main stage. The bid was not a success.
Following that public and brutal snubbing from the candidate, the movement is floundering: some of its members won’t vote, some plan to vote for Trump – a man who as president tried to introduce an outright ban on Muslim immigration to America – and others are struggling to get their friends and families to vote for Harris.
Win or lose, the seeds for future discontent are obvious. If Harris wins, the establishment wing of the Democratic Party will say this sends a signal that the party’s left can (and “should”) be ignored outright, and that this is in fact the best path to victory.
Whether it is right or wrong about that, it will be the faction that “owns” the presidency for the second term in a row, and president Harris would likely have an even more difficult start than Biden – the map for the Democrats to keep even the tenuous 50/50 hold on the Senate they have now is a very difficult one.
If Harris won the presidency but lost the Senate, it is not clear she should confirm her officials, let alone new federal judges – and passing any major laws would be a distant prospect indeed. If the centre is in charge but of an ungovernable nation, that could explode in any number of directions.
The blowback if the Democrats lose, though, could be even more immediate and spectacular. The party has stayed astonishingly disciplined and has remained united in a way not seen in decades. If that fails to get the Democrats over the line, it is possible that multiple different factions at once will conclude the existing party model doesn’t make sense.
Should Pennsylvania go to Trump, figures on the party’s right will point to Team Harris’s failure to pick Josh Shapiro for vice president. If Michigan goes to Trump and proves pivotal, it could be “proof” that inaction on Gaza was fatal. Both could happen at the same time, suggesting the party should run in two contradictory directions at once.
Harris’s sustained bid to secure traditionally Republican voters who dislike Trump will be hailed as genius if it works, and condemned as idiocy if it fails – which will be judged by the overall result, not the detailed breakdowns that emerge weeks or months later. If Harris falls short, she will be accused of throwing out her voting coalition for imaginary Republicans who no longer exist. If she holds the line, her consultants will be praised as political geniuses. It is ever the way.
Trump creates such relentless sound and fury that it so often fills the room: the race feels like a referendum on whether Trump should be in the White House or not. It is bizarrely easy to forget the Democrats exist as a political entity in their own right.
That they have managed to do their job so well and still face a toss-up says more about the state of America than the state of the Democratic Party. But the success and the unity of the last few months is not a new normal – the party has put on the best show it can for election day. Whatever comes next, though, will involve a reckoning with itself.
