Kamala Harris's Obama Makeover
"Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn't it?" asked Michelle Obama at the top of her stemwinder speech to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week. "You know, we're feeling it here in this arena, but it's spreading across this country we love. A familiar feeling that has been buried too deep for far too long. You know what I'm talking about. It's the contagious power of hope." Hope and change: the twin themes of her husband's winning 2008 campaign.
Michelle knew what she was doing. And she wasn't the only speaker at the DNC who portrayed Kamala Harris as Barack Obama's rightful heir. Obama himself did the same. Democratic heavyweights, from Bill and Hillary Clinton to Pete Buttigieg and Josh Shapiro, suggested that circumstances are ripe for a "Yes, We Can" repeat. They painted a picture of a bleak and divided country where personal rights are under threat and working families have trouble making ends meet. A country desperate for new leadership. A country like America in the autumn of 2008.
The convention's goal was to revive the faded tropes of Obamamania and use them to aid Harris in November. Entertainment figures who appeared on stage and in the audience turned the proceedings into not just a political event, but also a cultural one. Harris has her own Shepard Fairey poster. Stevie Wonder, who rocked Mile-High Stadium when Obama was nominated in 2008, spoke and sang in Chicago. Oprah Winfrey campaigned with Obama at a critical point in his ascent. She endorsed Harris from the dais. "We won't go back," Winfrey told the adoring hometown crowd. "We won't be sent back, pushed back, bullied back, kicked back. We're not going back."
Oprah, where have you been? If you watched the DNC, you would have come away thinking the current president is Donald Trump. More was said about him than any issue or policy. The Democrats charged Trump with insurrection, bigotry, misogyny, lawlessness, and cruelty. And that was just night one. Every night featured a segment on the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, a policy handbook Trump disavows. Not that Trump's actual agenda mattered to the Democrats. He was blamed for all problems facing the country—the economy and inflation, the border and immigration, the uncertainty of abortion law.
The man who has lived in the White House since January 20, 2021, was hustled off the stage as soon as he finished his speech after midnight Tuesday and shipped to a ranch in California. From that point on, Joe Biden's name was barely uttered. An occasional speaker would thank him, perfunctorily. Not for his public service. For withdrawing his candidacy. For endorsing Kamala Harris. She's the one they've been waiting for.
This was the convention Democrats wanted to hold in 2020. Barack Obama helped to select the past three Democratic presidential nominees despite leaving office eight years ago. He never wanted Biden to lead his party. He pushed Biden aside in 2016 for Hillary Clinton. Oops. Clinton lost and Trump took power. And Obama cast about for a non-Biden alternative. He's known Harris for years and boosted her 2020 campaign.
Back then, Harris ran as a "Squad"-adjacent progressive who embraced the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, Defund the Police, DEI and equity, and decriminalizing illegal border crossings. Harris had a brilliant debut, summoning crowds in Oakland and sliming Biden as an opponent of racial integration. But she stumbled, her campaign lost momentum, and she dropped out two months before the Iowa caucuses.
Obama briefly moved on to Pete Buttigieg, to little effect. Bernie Sanders won the first three contests. Miraculously, Biden came back with a sweeping win in South Carolina. He was the only candidate with widespread support from black voters. Obama pressured Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) to drop out, and Biden went on to winning Super Tuesday.
The 2020 election took place amid a pandemic and, after the death of George Floyd in May, nationwide social unrest. The Democrats held a virtual convention. The pressures of the moment changed Biden. He had always wanted voters to think of him as a moderate, as a small-state, down-to-earth guy with working-class roots. The coronavirus made him believe he could be FDR reborn. The mostly peaceful protests and riots pushed him toward political correctness and identity politics. The Sandernistas wrote his "unity" program. Biden swore he'd choose a woman as vice president and a black woman as his first Supreme Court pick. And Harris returned to presidential politics as his running mate.
Biden's term has been a disaster, the result of recklessness and incompetence compounded by age and infirmity. The Obama crew is no happier about it than you or I. Finally, when Biden relented and gave up the nomination, Obama and his allies reasserted their authority. Harris was eager to accept their counsel. Obama consigliere David Plouffe joined her campaign. Stephanie Cutter, Jennifer Palmieri, and Mitch Stewart signed on as well.
Harris took on more than Obama's staff. She adopted the message that Obama strategist David Axelrod had been urging Biden to use for months: Drop the threat-to-democracy talk and instead cast the election as a choice between future promise and dwelling on Trump's past; concern for every American, not concern for Trump's interest; and lowering costs versus Trump's tariffs. Harris has followed the plan, while appropriating old-guard Republican buzzwords such as freedom, opportunity, and optimism.
The Chicago Democrats loved it. Biden's absence from the ticket has unleashed a torrent of energy, enthusiasm, and unity. The party assembled at the United Center doesn't want to go back to Trump, but it does want to go back to the Obama era, when the coalition of the ascendant and the Rising American Electorate was going to overthrow the patriarchy and white supremacy and guarantee progressive rule for generations. That's the future Harris represents to the MSNBC talking heads swooning over her.
Will it be our future? The race is a tossup. The convention had nothing to say to young men. There is only so much Amanda Gorman a person can take. Nor did the convention have much to say to working-class voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania concerned about the lower standard of living during the Biden administration, the broken southern border, the sense of public disorder in cities and on college campuses, and a world in chaos. If you don't share the Democratic view of social and cultural issues, or the Democratic understanding of "true freedom," you saw a bunch of Democrats who hate Trump and are very, very happy they no longer have Biden as their nominee.
Kamala Harris is not Barack Obama. She didn't risk her career over a stand against the Iraq war, only to see her party move toward her. She is not known for a groundbreaking speech, or a worldwide bestseller, or rallying a movement to win a sharply contested primary against a two-term senator and former first lady. She didn't win a primary at all. She has no defined set of policies—no Obamacare waiting in the wings. Tim Walz said that "Kamala Harris is tough. Kamala Harris is experienced. And Kamala Harris is ready." Three more whoppers from the "dad in plaid."
Walz may want to give Harris a few lessons in demagoguery. Her speech dragged in the beginning. We heard a little about Harris's background, and a lot about the threat of a second Trump term. The first half sounded more like a State of the Union Address than an acceptance speech. There was a partial defense of her record, but no signature line, no memorable image. Things picked up when Harris turned to foreign policy. Israel got cheers—but from this crowd, the Palestinians got more. Harris became most impassioned when she vowed to defend the United States. She may have raised a few eyebrows in Moscow and Tehran and Pyongyang and Beijing.
Then she retreated into generalities and cliché. It was a serviceable speech, but nowhere as effective as Walz's or as gripping as Michelle Obama's and Barack Obama's. This convention has revealed that the Democrats have a deeper bench of political talent than I had thought. To win in November, Harris will need all the help she can get.
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