Despite incumbency, Harris casts herself as the change candidate vs. Trump
Vice President Harris is trying to flip the script on former President Trump, positioning herself as the change candidate despite having served in the White House for the last 3 1/2 years.
Harris is clearly the incumbent in the 2024 race. She's served as vice president for nearly four years, and the current executive branch often describes itself as the Biden-Harris administration.
But Harris doesn't want the fact that she is an incumbent to prevent her from running as a candidate of change, and her team is signaling it thinks it can effectively make the argument to voters given how unusual this presidential race is.
While Joe Biden is the president, Trump has been the dominant figure in politics since 2016, winning the presidency, governing and then losing to Biden in a close race defined by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Trump hovered throughout the Biden years, often pushing the president out of headlines with his legal travails. He then won the GOP primary handily and looked like the favorite for the presidential race until Biden, in a historically unusual move, dropped out of the race in July and endorsed Harris.
Biden dropped out as polls consistently showed that while Trump had a lead, many voters wanted a choice for president who was not Trump or Biden.
That has created an unusual opening for Harris, who has since surged in the polls.
Biden’s exit changed the dynamics of the race, transforming a contest between two older white men into a battle that pits candidates of different generations, genders and racial backgrounds.
“People were tuning out of politics. Actively avoiding political news and information. They didn’t want to hear anymore from Donald Trump or Joe Biden,” said Jennifer Mercieca, a professor at Texas A&M University who specializes in political rhetoric.
“There’s a lot of energy and attention that is being given to Kamala Harris because of the positivity of her message, because of the freshness of her message,” Mercieca added.
Harris has repeatedly called for a “new way forward” while banking on public exhaustion with the former president. In her first major interview as the Democratic nominee, Harris told CNN that she hoped to “turn the page on the last decade of what I believe has been contrary to where the spirit of our country really lies.”
When CNN’s Dana Bash pointed out that Harris has been part of the administration in charge for the past 3 1/2 years, Harris said she was referring to “an era” that has been defined by Trump and his bitter brand of politics.
“On CNN, VP Harris says it is time to turn the page on the Trump era which dates back to when he came down the elevator nearly 10 years ago,” Harris campaign senior adviser Brian Fallon posted on social platform X. “Even after he lost in 2020, he never left the stage - he tried to overturn the election and began running again immediately. America is exhausted with him.”
Whether Harris is able to convince the public that someone who has been part of the current administration represents a new era could determine whether she can win in November.
The Trump campaign argues the country’s issues with inflation and immigration are a direct result of Harris’s 3 1/2 years as vice president. The campaign has dismissed Harris’s policy proposals to address those areas, questioning why she did not push for such solutions while serving as Biden’s No. 2.
If people are unhappy with the status quo, the arguments go, they should dump the candidate who is a big part of the present administration.
“Kamala Harris is not the candidate of change nor is she the candidate for the future — she is the Vice President of today and she is 100% responsible for the immigration, economic and foreign policy crises we face," Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said in a statement.
In her CNN interview, Harris said she had no regrets about defending Biden’s cognitive state before he opted to drop out, and she argued his presidency would be remembered as “transformative.”
“She is making it clear that she will embrace and be a continuation of Biden's economic policy, his record, what they've done. She offered no remorse, no regrets, no introspection about anything they've done,” GOP commentator Scott Jennings said following the interview.
“Now, if I were the Trump people, I would be salivating over the idea that that's how they are going to run the race. I don't believe it's tenable,” Jennings added.
Polling has thus far shown Harris is connecting with voters and that her pitch for a new generation of leadership may be resonating.
Harris has seen her favorability rating sharply increase since shortly after the June debate between Trump and Biden that sparked calls for Biden to step aside. A FiveThirtyEight tracker showed roughly 36 percent of Americans viewed Harris favorably in early July, compared to roughly 46 percent who do so as of late August.
A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll published Thursday found Harris has a 2-point average edge over Trump when it comes to registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Those are the seven states likely to determine the winner of November’s election.
Strategists argued it’s up to the Trump campaign and Republicans to undercut Harris’s framing of the race.
Alex Conant, a GOP strategist who has worked on previous Republican presidential campaigns, questioned why Trump and his campaign have not more aggressively tried to label Harris as a Washington, D.C., insider, a line of attack that proved effective in 2016 against Hillary Clinton.
“They’ve allowed Democrats to define [running mate Tim] Walz as a football coach instead of a congressman. He calls Harris by her first name instead of reminding everyone she’s vice president,” Conant said.
“They should reinforce that if you like the way things are going and you like D.C., the Harris-Walz ticket is for you,” he added. “I think they’re falling back on a very popular Republican playbook of calling the opposition too liberal, too progressive.”