Miracle Harris

She was tapped for the presidential race exactly 107 days before election day. Within the available time, she is to alchemise a party in disarray into a united and potent force, clinch the nomination that momentarily seemed a toss, redirect the party’s mood from despondent anticipation of defeat to resurgent pursuit of victory, upend a long headstart of victory run by Republican nominee Donald Trump, plus overawe historical prejudices about gender and race. That was the task slate thrust on United States Vice President Kamala Harris over the past week; and so far, she’s maximised the moment. She transformed into the presumptive Democratic nominee without having run a primary, and has rattled the very core of Trump’s candidacy.

Harris entered the race after 81-year-old President Joe Biden bowed to pressure and dropped his bid for re-election. No sitting American president reportedly ever dropped out of a race so late in the election cycle. Biden was Democrats’ presumptive nominee for the 2024 presidential race, but his candidacy bottomed out following a calamitous debate performance against ex-President Trump on 27th June that escalated simmering fears about his cognitive grit and overall health to serve another four-year tenure. 

Following that debate, the octogenarian came under intense pressure from his party folk to pass the torch, which he did penultimate Sunday. “While it has been my intention to seek re-election, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country to stand down and focus entirely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term,” he said in a statement. But he didn’t just throw the race, he gave Harris his “full support and endorsement” in a social media post. “Democrats, it’s time to come together and beat Trump,” he said in rallying the party behind her.

Upon being thrown in the race, Harris swiftly picked the tabs, saying  she was “honored” by Biden’s endorsement. The catch, however, was: even though the president had locked down some 3,900 delegate votes from the primaries held earlier this year to pick the Democratic torchbearer in the 5th November poll, current party rules did not permit him to pass them on to another candidate. Hence, Harris said her intention was to “earn and win” the party nomination, and she sprinted for that mark at a dazzling pace. Within 24 hours of Biden’s endorsement, she pooled support from top Democrats, choked off running room for potential rivals for the party ticket, sparked a fundraising deluge and fired up a demoralised party that had seemed resigned to imminent defeat. Against a backdrop of donor cash freeze that helped force Biden’s hand, Democratic wallets were unzipped, such that the ‘Harris for president’ campaign netted a $81million haul in one day, according to her team.

The vice president’s outreach blitz to coalesce the party behind her candidacy smacked of an operation primed before time but kept secret between her and Biden. Ahead of the Democratic National Convention scheduled for 19th to 22nd August in Chicago, where the party’s nominee will emerge, she’s largely succeeded in strangling any hope of alternative candidates and is already looking forward to a match-up against Trump, the Republican torchbearer. She comes with in-built edge over any other rival for the Democratic ticket anyway, because she inherited an already existent campaign machinery from Biden and may as well take over the $96million in his defunct campaign’s coffers.   

On the heels of Biden’s endorsement, Harris picked other endorsements from party bigwigs like ex-President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, who is a former secretary of state and herself Democratic nominee in the 2016 presidential poll. California and Pennsylvania governors, who had been touted as potential contenders for the nomination, fell into line behind her; and so did many high-profile Democratic lawmakers. Former President Barack Obama, who was silent on Harris in an initial statement praising Biden for standing down, is reported to have now endorsed the vice president and along with his wife. Michelle, pledged to work for her victory. The most significant endorsement Harris picked was from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is reputed as America’s most influential Democrat and whose backdoor manoeuvering was instrumental to ending Biden’s stalled reelection bid. “It is with immense pride and limitless optimism for our country’s future that I endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States,” she said in a statement early last week.

“Harris’s candidacy holds promises and perils for Democrats.”

Outside of the Democratic Party, Harris’s entry fundamentally rewired the presidential race. A painstaking home run to victory for the Republicans suddenly turned a two-way sprint whose outcome is effectively up in the air; and in a race that Trump was on a trajectory to win, Harris has butted in as the ultimate X-factor. With the Democratic nomination she’s poised to get, she will be the first Black woman and first Asian-American to lead a major political party ticket in the US. But she is up against a feral campaign, considering Trump’s reputation for misogynistic slurs and racially charged rhetoric that he is prepped to unleash. 

Harris’s candidacy holds promises and perils for Democrats. She inverts the age argument that Trump and his campaign had damagingly used against Biden. Unlike the 81-year-old president, Harris is aged 59 years whereas Trump is aged 78. Within minutes of Biden quitting the race, Democrats pivoted on Republicans, questioning Trump’s capacity to govern into his eighties. Besides, Harris affords Democrats a far more vigorous campaigner than Biden, and she should be able to barnstorm the US continent at a pace faster than Trump. 

Public record of personal character is another factor Harris’s candidacy could leverage on. Before going to Washington, she was in 2011 elected attorney-general of California, and before then she was in 2004 elected the district attorney of San Francisco. In the short time she’s been in the race, she has formatted the choice facing Americans as between a prosecutor and a convicted felon – obviously referencing her personality record and that of Trump, who recently bagged 34 felony convictions in New York and faces future criminal trials. As a senator, before the vice presidency job, Harris had a reputation for needling interrogation of people who came before Congress judiciary committee of which she was a member. That is a trait she could deploy in debates with Trump, who himself has dropped the gauntlet. He was reported saying in a conference call with journalists last week that he “absolutely” wants to debate Harris and “would be willing to do more than one debate, actually.”

Harris in the last week handed Democrats a much-needed jolt of momentum that turned the tide of their foundering campaign under Biden. The Trump camp most likely didn’t anticipate such shake-up of a race he was winning by almost every metric – almost to the point of now being forced onto the back foot. As it were, the Republican campaign must recalibrate, given that Harris’s candidacy has the potential to mend sectors of the Democratic support base that for different reasons had been alienated by Biden. Her candidacy promises to boost enthusiasm among young, Hispanic, Black and women voters. But there is a flip side. Her extreme liberality on abortion and gay rights will likely estrange voter blocs that Biden’s moderation had accommodated and send them consolidating around Trump.

There are other perils. Every candidate is human and foible-prone, and the tight timeline before election could magnify any misstep Harris makes (although, there’s as well an inverse advantage of the short time minimising such chances). If in the coming days or weeks, she stumbles, Democrats risk being viewed as a party presenting America another candidate who is not up to the job, just like they did with Biden’s proposed but now aborted second term.

As Biden’s second-in-command, Harris faces the tricky burden of touting agenda continuity where some agenda are deeply embattled, like Biden’s immigration policy and America’s current posture on Israel’s war in Gaza. The test will be for the presumptive Democratic nominee to find a balance between selling Biden’s popular accomplishments, while soonest breaking from her boss and benefactor on unpopular ones for her own political good. She gave an indication of that when Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the US last week. Speaking on her meeting with Netanyahu, Harris affirmed her unwavering commitment to Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself against Hamas, which she tagged a “brutal terrorist organization.”  But she red-flagged the Palestinian toll of Israeli operation, saying: “What has happened in Gaza over the last nine months is devastating. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies, we cannot allow ourselves to be numb. And I will not be silent.” 

In my piece last week, I wrote that it would take a miracle to upset Trump’s victory run in the November poll. Harris is proving to be that miracle.