Harris rushes to define her image before Republicans can | Politics

George H. W. Bush struggled to establish a clear identity with voters after eight years of playing second fiddle to the highly popular President Ronald Reagan. In his speech to the Republican convention in August 1988, he called for a “kinder, gentler country” — to which Nancy Reagan famously responded:

“Kinder and gentler than who?”

Vice President Al Gore faced a problem less acute than Humphrey’s but more pressing than Bush’s: Most voters in 2000 liked President Bill Clinton’s performance, but many disapproved of his personal conduct.

Important points to note during the conference

A key question that will come up at next week’s Democratic convention is the extent to which Vice President Kamala Harris follows the pattern of previous vice presidents and defines herself in comparison to President Joe Biden.

That’s not the only question mark. Among other things:

—How much will Harris lean on her experience as a prosecutor? Her law enforcement experience was a liability during her 2020 primary campaign, but has now become a political asset again. Expect to hear it multiple times over the course of the week.

—How will she respond to expected protests over U.S. policy on the war in Gaza? Harris has tried to show more empathy than Biden for the suffering of Palestinian civilians. But that has done little to assuage protest groups that have called for a complete rollback of U.S. aid to Israel.

—Which voices in the party will she elevate with key speaking engagements? Convention organizers have said they will feature key voices from the Democratic legacy, including Biden and former Presidents Barack Obama and Clinton. The bigger question, though, will be which potential voices of the future party Harris chooses to highlight.

—How many policy details will she roll out? Republicans gave Democrats room to run by adopting a platform with almost no policy details. Harris seems likely to provide more details, while still dodging attempts to pin her down on potentially controversial commitments.

Big win among Latin American voters

In the run-up to convention week, Harris has managed to unite and galvanize her party. She has also won over a significant share of the more partisan voters who had been savaging Biden. That has given her a narrow lead over Donald Trump in most national polls and at least a tie in most swing states.

Some of the most notable gains have been among Latino voters, particularly younger Latinos who do not hold strong partisan views. While Biden led Trump by just 5 percentage points among Latino voters in swing states, Harris led by 19 points, according to a poll released this week by Equis Research.

The result is that the race has been “reset,” back to the level of Latino support that Democrats had in 2020, said Equis co-founder Carlos Odio. That’s still lower than what Democrats received in 2008 and 2012, but “far from the apocalyptic levels” that some polls indicated this spring and “enough to win” in key states, Odio said.

According to Odio, Harris has managed to win over these voters by presenting herself as a newcomer, while simultaneously presenting herself as experienced and tested.

“She’s managed to do a remarkable job of leveraging the advantages of being a sitting president and being someone new at the same time,” he said. “It’s a tricky balancing act, but so far it’s working.”

To illustrate this, a poll conducted with Amy Walter for the Cook Political Report found that 56% of voters in swing states said Harris represents an opportunity to “turn the page on the Trump/Biden era.”

The survey found that 59% of voters in the seven pivotal states — Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — said Harris represents “a new generation of leaders,” Walter wrote in reporting the findings.

One of the most notable areas where Harris has attempted to define her identity in a way that is separate from government is border security, which is one of Biden’s biggest policy weaknesses.

Republicans want to hold Harris accountable for the administration’s border policies. They have used the border as part of a broader attack on Harris as a “San Francisco liberal” who is soft on crime and disorder. As evidence, they cite Biden’s early 2021 mandate for Harris to work on the “root causes” of international migration.

Harris has not spoken out against Biden’s policies. Instead, she is trying to draw voters’ attention to another chapter in her life: her experience as California’s attorney general and San Francisco’s district attorney. Campaign ads tout her as a “border state prosecutor” who “took on drug cartels” and who, as president, “will hire thousands of additional border agents.”

“Fixing the border is hard. So is Kamala Harris,” reads a recent ad.

That emphasis on border security is a dramatic change from the 2020 presidential campaign, in which leading Democrats talked about decriminalizing the border and abolishing ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

“It’s a 180-degree change from what the Democratic orthodoxy has been” on immigration, said Mike Madrid, a California-based Republican strategist who opposes Trump.

Harris has been successful so far because the unusual circumstances of 2024 have allowed her to turn one of the traditional drawbacks of the vice presidency — its unfamiliarity — into an advantage.

Voters aren’t holding Harris fully responsible for Biden administration policies they don’t like, said Evan Roth Smith, a Democratic pollster who directs Blueprint, a message-testing project run by Democrats.

That’s especially true for foreign policy, which voters tend to see as a domain where the president calls the shots. But it’s also true for other issues, such as economic policy and borders, according to Blueprint polls.

“Voters’ attitudes toward Harris are much less ossified” than their views of Biden or Trump, Roth said during a briefing for reporters on Thursday.

Research in political science points in the same direction.

In early August, Yale political scientists Joshua Kalla and UC Berkeley’s David Broockman tested 35 different political messages to see which had the greatest impact on how voters judged the race.

None of the messages attacking Trump, whether about his involvement in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol or his position on abortion, offered much potential to change voters’ minds.

“Voters have been hearing about Donald Trump for nearly a decade. If they are willing to vote for him based on that nearly a decade of experience, it is unlikely that a few ads or a new joke will change their opinion of him,” the two wrote in their description of their research.

The messages that did have the potential to move voters were those that appealed to voters’ curiosity about Harris by explaining where she stood on key issues.

That’s why both parties in the campaign are investing huge amounts of money in the competition to define Harris’ image for voters.

Harris has had a big advantage so far, because the news of the past month has been focused on her, allowing her message to dominate the coverage. With the convention, she will likely enjoy that advantage for at least another week.

Harris’ campaign has tried to take full advantage of that spotlight while it has it. In the race to determine how voters view the vice president, luck has given them an edge.

The election will likely depend on how effectively they can use that time to build up Harris’s image before the expected Republican onslaught tears it down.

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