Call it “the big reveal.” Vice President Kamala Harris in the last seven days, emerging, blasting out from behind the curtain of the Biden presidency onto a stage of her own. “There’s been kind of a joyous explosion – certainly you’ve seen that in the reaction in the country,” said Stuart Stevens, a long-time Republican political strategist and author.
“There is something about being vice president that diminishes you, and there’s something about being the nominee of a party that enhances you,” he said. “So, I think what we’ve seen since the president withdrew from the nomination, this process of Vice President Harris becoming something larger than being a vice president.”
Someone large enough in the eyes of voters to be president. Traditionally, candidates have months, the entire primary season, to do that. Harris has exactly 100 days between now and November 5.
She’s in a big hurry. In a week, she’s locked up the nomination, hauled in a mountain of cash, and racked up an impressive list of endorsements. Young people, volunteers, constituencies who had tuned out of the presidential race are tuning back in by the thousands to support Harris, nudging her to a statistical tie with former President Donald Trump in a new poll.
Harris has moved fast to define the narrative of her own campaign before Trump does it for her. The fact she’s a Black South Asian woman is the ever-present undercurrent in the turbulence of the now-redefined election cycle.
Teichner asked, “Do you think that the fact that Kamala Harris is a woman will be a big factor in this election?”
Stevens replied, “When it’s said and done, we’re gonna look back and say it was the determinative factor.”
According to presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky, executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library, “Harris will be bumping up against that expectation that strong leaders, presidents look like men. And so, she’s going to have to look strong, look like a compelling leader, while acknowledging that she is different. Trying to find that fine line between being assertive and being a strong leader, while not being unlikeable, is going to be a challenge.
“Anytime there has been a female candidate, whether it’s all the way back to the early 1900s up through Hillary Clinton, many of the attacks [on them] can be gender-based,” said Chervinsky.
As Trump has already proven. “Did you see her last night on television with the laugh – Haa haa haa!” he remarked at a 2020 rally.
Stevens said, “We have double standards for women in public life, and the same for non-white candidates. Look, I think that they’re going to use every kind of racial, gender dog whistle that they can come up with.”
And how will Harris have to respond to that? “The easy answer to that is, I’ve never been in a courtroom with someone I was prosecuting who had a lot of nice things to say about me,” said Stevens.
#ProsecutorVsFelon has become a meme. And the audience chanting “Lock him up” with regards to the Republican candidate convicted of 34 felony counts – haven’t we heard that line before from Trump?
Looking back from the vantage point of history, sometimes a catch-phrase or a moment can alter the perception of a candidate or a race. Example: a sweaty, scowling Richard Nixon versus a telegenic JFK in the 1960 debate.
Also, added Chervinsky: “Bill Clinton’s Arsenio Hall saxophone playing, because it spoke to the moment, and it confirmed what people like about him.”
Stevens said, “I don’t think that there was a lot of polls out there in 2007 and early 2008 saying the American people, their #1 issue was ‘hope and change.’ But Barack Obama was able to make that the #1 issue. And that’s how you win campaigns.”
Stevens is an anti-Trumper, but he’s been a top advisor to Republican presidential candidates since the mid-1990s. Listen to his prediction about Harris: “I think she’ll win comfortably.”
The odds are not necessarily in Harris’ favor, though. “Typically vice presidents have abysmal success running for president on their own,” Chervinsky said. “We’ve seen very few that are successful, and typically they only serve one additional term.”
Of the 24 former VPs who have run, only 10 won, most recently Joe Biden.
Now, Donald Trump is the “old guy” running for the Oval Office. So, will this be Kamala Harris’ moment to make history?
Her honeymoon period won’t last forever. But she’s out of the gate swinging.
For more info:
- Political strategist Stuart Stevens
- The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy” by Stuart Stevens (Twelve), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org
- Lindsay Chervinsky, executive director, George Washington Presidential Library
- “Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic” by Lindsay M. Chervinsky (Oxford University Press), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats, available September 5 via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org
Story produced by Jon Carras. Editor: Carol Ross.
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