How Kamala Harris is trying to claim the mantle of change

The battle over whether Kamala Harris can effect change has become one of the early thematic battlegrounds of the 2024 race, playing out at the Democratic convention in Chicago this week and on radio in states where the outcome remains uncertain.

As cries of “we’re not going back” echo through a convention hall and her campaign slogan, “A New Way Forward,” is plastered outside, the vice president is making a bold attempt to portray the same Democratic Party now occupying the White House as the one that will bring a fresh start to the country.

The battle for the title of “change” is especially important at a time when polls show a significant majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the state of affairs in the country.

Former President Donald J. Trump had a clear lead as the candidate who would overturn the status quo when he faced President Biden. He was the insurgent; Mr. Biden was the incumbent. But now Ms. Harris, a 59-year-old who would go on to make history as the first female president, has changed the dynamics of a race that previously pitted two men against each other for the record for oldest president.

The desire for change is a constant in modern American politics.
Barack Obama promised “Change you can believe in.” Bill Clinton sold the nation on “change versus more of the same.” And Trump promised to break with eight years of Democratic rule and “Make America Great Again” in 2016.

For nearly a decade, Trump’s bulldozing approach was predicated on the idea that the nation was staring into an abyss and that only urgent upheaval could save it. The question for Ms. Harris is whether she can see Democrats’ continued rule in 2024 as a break with that dark and divisive era.

“She is absolutely the candidate for change,” said Cedric Richmond, a former Biden White House official who was part of Ms. Harris’s vice presidential vetting team. “The alternative is looking at yesterday, and she’s looking at tomorrow. So when you’re looking for change, you don’t want the person who takes you back — you want the person who takes you forward.”

Forward is the watchword for Democrats in Chicago as the party embraces its most forward-looking stance since Obama’s first campaign in 2008. Delegates and supporters have been circulating a new poster designed by artist Shepard Fairey, who created Obama’s famous “Hope” poster in 2008. The updated Harris poster features the word “Forward” at the bottom.

Mr. Obama himself laughed off the idea of ​​Mr. Trump returning to power in his prime-time address Tuesday night. “We’ve seen that movie before,” Mr. Obama said, “and we all know the sequel is usually worse.”

The Trump campaign is determined to pair Ms. Harris with Mr. Biden. The president is deeply unpopular in polls, and the Trump campaign believes that pairing her with him highlights a vulnerability. The goal is to saddle her with some of the least popular initiatives and issues of their administration, particularly on immigration and inflation.

“You don’t have to imagine what a Kamala Harris presidency would look like,” Trump said last week, “because you’re living that nightmare right now.”

Mr. Trump is making that point in ads, too. In a recent Trump ad, Ms. Harris says the word “Bidenomics” three times in 30 seconds. Another ad from a pro-Trump super PAC touts both inflation and the “border invasion,” with a video of Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris raising their arms together.

“They know Kamala owns this failed record,” a narrator says.

Chris LaCivita, one of Trump’s fellow campaign managers, dismissed the idea that Harris could convince voters who want to change course with vague talk about the future.

“They have no choice but to change the subject,” Mr. LaCivita said. “But changing the subject does not make you the agent of change.”

In a New York Times/Siena College poll of key states this spring, an overwhelming 69 percent of voters said major changes were needed in the country’s political and economic system, or that the system should be dismantled altogether.

The problem for Democrats was that only 24 percent of voters thought Biden would do either of those two things.

But recent polls of swing states in the Sun Belt show that voters do not view Ms. Harris in the same way that they view Mr. Biden. While many more voters still see Mr. Trump as more likely than Ms. Harris to enact major changes — 80 percent to 46 percent — they are more divided over whether he will deliver the change they want.

Exactly the same percentage of voters — 50 percent each — said Ms. Harris would make the right changes compared to Mr. Trump.

“Kamala Harris looks like change, and Donald Trump looks like more of the same,” said Pete Giangreco, a Democratic strategist who worked on the Obama campaign. “The way this race was framed was a repeat of 2020 — Biden and Trump — nobody wanted that race.”

“The change,” he explained, “has already happened.”

Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate, said at a campaign rally in Philadelphia this week that Harris’ talk of change was a political mirage.

“This is a person who promises that she’s going to fix the problems she’s been creating for 1,300 days,” Mr. Vance said. “And now she wants the American people to promote her.”

Ms. Harris has made no attempt to distance herself from the administration she serves. She joined Mr. Biden for an emotional embrace onstage on Monday night, and she often opens her rallies by thanking the president for his work. But she has tried to distinguish herself, both in style and with a number of new economic plans.

In her campaign speeches, Ms. Harris has repeatedly hit the rewind button on her biography, reintroducing herself to the nation, a story that began more than 20 years ago, in an era before Biden.

“Before I was elected vice president and before I was elected a United States senator, I was an elected attorney general and an elected district attorney,” she said recently at a rally in Atlanta. “And before that, I was a prosecutor.”

Claiming change isn’t the only issue Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris are fighting over.

Trump’s ads and campaign have aggressively branded her as a “dangerous liberal.” As Trump told reporters at his New Jersey golf course last week, “All we have to do is define our opponent as a communist or a socialist or someone who is going to destroy our country.”

Ms. Harris has tried to neutralize Trump’s ideological attacks, starting with an ad that took a tough line on immigration and showcased her work as attorney general, taking on “drug cartels” and “gang members.”

Future Forward, the leading pro-Harris super PAC, has created 200 potential ads for Ms. Harris in the month since she emerged as the nominee, its leader, Chauncey McLean, said at an event in Chicago this week.

The group tests all of these ads rigorously to determine which ones will be most effective politically. It is notable, then, how much the group’s ads focus on the ways in which Ms. Harris is “turning the page” on the past. “This campaign is a fight for the future,” Ms. Harris says in the opening scene of a new ad that begins airing on Wednesday.

The single most-spent ad so far this election, according to data from ad tracking firm AdImpact, is a Future Forward spot that ends with the on-screen slogan, “Let the future begin.”

Mr McLean said Republicans may have hoped to “portray her as more of the same” but that his internal surveys showed voters were open to Ms Harris defining herself separately from Mr Biden.

“In retrospect, it was clear that for 18 months the American people were saying, ‘Please give us something different in this choice — and we will be euphoric,’” he said.

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