As Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage in Milwaukee on Tuesday at the first official rally of her nascent campaign for the presidency, a raucous crowd of more than 3,000 burst into wild applause while Beyonce’s Freedom blared from the loudspeakers. A smiling Harris stepped back from the podium and basked in the adulation for a full minute before beginning her speech, during which the crowd regularly erupted in response to her crisply delivered applause lines.  

The high-energy kickoff to Harris’ bid for the presidency stood in stark contrast with the rallies held by President Joe Biden before he announced his withdrawal from the 2024 race on July 21, fueling Democrats’ hopes that the race has been “rebooted” some 100 days before Americans go to the polls.

The question is, can Harris sustain this initial burst of enthusiasm? And does having her atop the ticket truly give her party a better chance of defeating former president Donald Trump?

Along with newfound enthusiasm, new campaign strategies and tactics have emerged in the Democratic Party’s efforts to prevent Trump from winning a second term, including efforts to frame the race as being between “a prosecutor and a perpetrator” and to shift strategy in the Electoral College to better reflect Harris’ strengths. 

The Harris campaign also has signaled that “reproductive rights” will get even greater emphasis than it already had with Biden at the helm, as most would expect, given her visit to an abortion facility in March and her silence on naming any restrictions on abortion that she’d support.

“While Joe Biden has trouble saying the word abortion, Kamala Harris shouts it,” SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement following Harris’ elevation.

Political scientists from numerous leading Catholic universities believe the shift opens a window of opportunity for Democrats to reintroduce Harris to the nation, though it is a delicate operation.

“The likely nomination of Harris as the Democrats’ presidential nominee brings a great deal more energy and excitement, and it also reunifies the party in its effort to defeat Trump,” said professor Geoffrey Layman, chair of the department of political science at the University of Notre Dame. “There will be a much more energetic and aggressive effort to go hard after Trump, his many weaknesses, and the Trump-Vance policy agenda.”

Kevin Walker, associate professor of politics at the University of Mary, agrees that the swap is sure to raise Democratic spirits in the near term.

“It is a massive relief for Democrats,” he told the Register. “Biden himself was the weakest part of the campaign and a major source of stress for his staff. To take all of the fundraising, planning and strategizing and simply replace him with the young, energetic Harris was the best thing that could happen for them.”

 

Law Enforcement Credentials

The Harris campaign’s decision to emphasize her law enforcement credentials as a means of “reintroducing” the vice president to the public also has the effect of emphasizing Trump’s recent felony conviction in the Stormy Daniels hush-money trial. It also casts light upon Trump’s loss to E. Jean Carroll in civil court earlier this year, for which a nine-person jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse, but not of rape. The court awarded Carroll more than $80 million for this decision as well as for a defamation suit against the former president.

For David Barrett, professor of political science at the University of Villanova, the strategy of highlighting Trump’s legal woes is smart. 

“Harris has not made a great impression as a vice president,” he said. “Obviously, they believe they need to point out that this is a man who has a very bad history with women and who was convicted by a jury. I assume they want to unnerve him, if they can. I don’t see a downside to that.”

However, any reminders of her “tough-on-crime” past have the potential to cause backlash among the Democratic base. The anti-police sentiment that swept through the Democratic Party in recent years, which caused a substantial number of political leaders to adopt the phrase “defund the police” as a rallying cry, saw new life during anti-Israel protests on college campuses across the nation this spring. A Quinnipiac poll released earlier this week found Harris trailing Trump by 19 points among voters aged 18-34, which is a gap that must be closed should she have a shot at winning in November. 

During a 2020 Democratic primary debate, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard attacked Harris over her record of prosecuting record numbers of marijuana offenders. The moment was credited as being a significant factor in the downfall of Harris’ candidacy.

“That background hurt her in 2020 because the killing of George Floyd led to a widespread backlash among Democrats against the ‘tough-on-crime’ policies of earlier years,” said Jonathan Culp, chair of the politics department at the University of Dallas. “In 2020, a lot of Democrats were convinced that the police and the criminal-justice system were being used to unfairly target African Americans, and anyone with Harris’ background as a prosecutor was potentially implicated in injustice.”

 

Electoral-Map Strategy

The Harris nomination also has major implications on electoral-map strategy. Her status as the first Black female vice president is likely to blunt Trump’s momentum with Black voters — a June New York Times/Siena poll found Trump winning 30% of the Black vote against Biden, which would be a historic showing for a Republican politician. Theoretically, this would put key Southern swing states such as Georgia and North Carolina on the radar for Democrats. However, her low favorability ratings with other key demographics, particularly Hispanics, whites and seniors, means that she could underperform Biden in the all-important Midwest battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. 

“With a woman of Black and Asian descent at the top of the ticket and Trump having passed over Tim Scott as his running mate, I think the Black vote will now be as heavily in the Democrats’ favor as it’s been in the for the last 60 years,” Layman said. “Harris may put some Southern states with substantial Black populations back in play for the Democrats. This doesn’t reduce the importance of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, but it might give the Democrats a little margin for error.”

Debates over who Harris might select as a running mate have centered around which region is the most crucial to target to gain 270 electoral votes. 

In one school of thought, Harris’ disadvantages in the Midwest make carrying either Georgia or North Carolina imperative, and so she should select a running mate who plays best in the South, such as Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina. Another school of thought emphasizes the Midwest above all because the path to 270 votes is nearly impossible without picking up at least one of the Rust Belt battlegrounds. This line of thinking makes Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro an obvious pick — though his pro-Israel stance has the potential to cause trouble with the Democrats’ activist base. 

Still others believe that a potential nominee’s appeal to Independents is the key to winning the race, no matter the region.

“I think Gov. Shapiro of Pennsylvania would be a strong running mate,” Barrett told the Register. “It doesn’t matter that he lacks foreign-policy experience. We’ve had presidents in office who had virtually no foreign-policy experience. He would be running for vice president; he’s popular in Pennsylvania.”

For Walker, Shapiro grades out well, particularly for his moving eulogy of Corey Comperatore, the firefighter murdered at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. But he thinks Sen. Mark Kelly, R-Ariz., is the most compelling of the names often mentioned. 

“He’s from a border state; he’s married to Gabby Giffords, who was a victim of gun violence in 2011, though he supports ‘red-flag’ laws instead of the usual gun legislation. Plus, he’s a former astronaut, which is just cool.”

 

Trump to Frame Harris as More of the Same

Numerous reports indicate Trump’s desire to define Harris in terms of competency and avoid character attacks. 

Instead, Trump plans to attack Harris’ record as Biden’s “Border Czar” and tie her to the rest of the administration’s record on the economy, particularly in relation to tie-breaking votes she cast on “inflation-reduction” bills as president of the Senate. 

“She owns the Biden record,” Trump campaign strategist Chris LaCivita recently told The Bulwark. “We’ve got everything ready for what she did as [district attorney in San Francisco]. And she was part of the cover-up with Biden’s fitness to serve.”  

The Trump campaign views Harris’ tenure in law enforcement as particularly rich in unflattering content. 

One incident they will seek to highlight is her questionable decision as attorney general of San Francisco to grant probation to the man who later murdered Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey. Campaign officials have claimed there are several similar incidents they will underscore in the coming months. 

Said LaCivita, “We see her as a candidate now, and we’re holding the bucket of paint to define her at a time of our choosing.”