The Democratic Opportunity – New Statesman

In a month, Kamala Harris has transformed the U.S. presidential election. What started out as a sad replay of the last race between two older and unpopular candidates is now a real battle. Democratic operatives are enthusiastically evoking Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, while huge crowds attend stadium rallies and millions of dollars pour in, breaking political fundraising records. The polls are encouraging, though still within the margin of error. Key swing states like Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, which were considered all but lost to Donald Trump, are back in play.

Tim Walz, Ms. Harris’s vice presidential candidate, has provided a master class in how to present progressive policies to a broad audience. The Minnesota governor, 60, understands that his role on the ballot is to appease the “old white boys” he invokes at campaign rallies, often referring to hunting and exuding what the Internet calls “big dad energy.” But he effectively transitions from his biography to big political issues, like abortion, which he presents as a matter of personal choice. “There’s a golden rule,” he likes to say of his time in the rural Midwest: “Mind your own damn business.” He defends the bill he signed in 2023 to implement free school meals for all by drawing on his years as a high school teacher in Minnesota. “What a monster!” he derides. “Kids eat and have full bellies so they can learn.”

But winning this election will take more than competent campaigning and good vibes. Democrats must learn the lessons of 2016, when Hillary Clinton’s election as the first female president seemed all but assured until those final, fateful hours handed victory to Trump. In retrospect, the focus on Mrs. Clinton’s identity, captured in her campaign slogan — “I’m with her” — was a mistake. The message this time must be: “She’s with us.”

By eschewing the traditional Democratic primary process and limiting her interactions with the press, Harris has avoided early missteps, but her political honeymoon will soon be over. Her current campaign speech is noticeably light on details; she will need to articulate a coherent policy platform. That includes an economic approach that acknowledges the affordability crisis and the blistering impact of inflation on many Americans during the Biden administration, of which she was a part. Likewise, she must acknowledge that many voters see Biden’s handling of immigration as a failure and outline how she would govern differently (polls show voters still trust Trump more on both immigration and the economy).

In this respect, Labour’s recent election victory offers lessons on how the centre-left can win in an age of polarisation: by occupying the common ground. As opposed to supposed centrism, this means reflecting the broad public consensus on economic interventionism, workers’ rights, law and order and immigration. Keir Starmer has promised to crush the gangs profiting from the Channel crossings; Ms Harris has promised to tackle the “transnational gangs, drug cartels and people traffickers who enter our country illegally”, as she did when she was a lawyer.

There’s also an opportunity for Democrats to expose the hollowness of Trump’s gestures toward economic populism. Despite efforts by a vocal minority on the right to reposition the Republican Party as the vanguard of the working class, it remains beholden to corporate interests. In his farcical two-hour interview with Elon Musk, Trump praised efforts to fire striking workers en masse, prompting Republicans to claim that it’s the party of workers’ rights that’s being undermined, as well as a lawsuit against both by the United Auto Workers union.

Trump has always been a weak candidate. He lost the popular vote in both 2016 and 2020, and in JD Vance he has selected a historically unpopular vice presidential candidate. The Republican duo is very beatable.

But the Democrats’ toughest task lies ahead. To win the presidential election, it won’t be enough for Ms. Harris to simply affirm what she stands against. She must also make clear what—and who—she stands for. “We won’t go back” is an effective rallying cry, but Ms. Harris must now lay out an equally compelling vision of national renewal.

(See also: A Rediscovery of Who We Are)