When Kamala Harris took to the stage on the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago after four days of incessant praise, it seemed as though she could have said anything and got rapturous applause. Where was the policy? The substance? That was unnecessary, her party replied. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, from Rhode Island, told me that detail is not what the public wants. “They want to hear vision, goals and energy and a new attitude about politics and campaigning,” he told me. “As long as she stays on what she’s doing, she’s going to be fine.”
And she delivered. She promised to build the middle class, end the housing crisis, and put the country before party and self. Echoing Barack Obama’s DNC speech in 2007, she pledged to champion Republicans as much as Democrats. As a former prosecutor, she would be hard on law and order. Secure the border. Protect the troops. She lent on centrist tropes about freedom to win over trepidatious Republicans. The convention was delighted. Her gamble is that Americans chose ill-defined joy over familiar Trumpian division.
After four days the convention was already besotted with Kamala Harris. When Joe Biden dropped out of the race in July, she was tapped to be the Democrat’s nominee almost immediately, avoiding a bruising contest with other presidential hopefuls in her party. Her first job has been to reduce the age of this senile campaign by a few decades – a bar she cleared with ease. She has lightened the tone and sandpapered the crusader lexicon Biden leaned into. She has distanced the Democratic ticket from the current administration whose popularity has waned; her powerlessness as vice-president is finally an advantage.
She is also literate in online parlance. Social media influencers were given a special platform within the arena in Chicago. In place of interviews with the press corps, she shares videos of her and her running mate, the Minnesota governor Tim Walz, trading tips on their favourite tacos, or shopping for Doritos in a service station on the campaign trail. Harris has mastered that essential quality of a modern politician: sincerity contrived for the camera. A 78-year-old Bill Clinton told the convention in his speech on Wednesday night that “one of the reasons that president-to-be Harris is doing so well is that we are all so happy”. Cynically viewed, he was insinuating that the nominee’s primary job is to please the party – and the party was very pleased.
The polls do not warrant such elation. Donald Trump may be ill-disciplined and off-message. He may be dumbfounded by Harris’s race and good looks, questioning her identity as a black woman and comparing her to his ex-model wife. Republican donors may have implored him in vain to talk more about the economy. But most swing states remain too close to call, and Harris desperately needs to win them. If she does not win come November, the relief and joy at this week’s convention will look, at best, premature.
[See also: The lessons Kamala Harris learned from Hillary Clinton]
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