Vice President Kamala Harris knows how to create a honeymoon. Keeping the love going has been tougher.
Ms. Harris has surged past former President Donald Trump in polling as voters take a fresh look at the Democratic nominee, but her campaign is well aware that she was in a similar position in 2019 as she sought the presidential nomination. She squandered a July polling surge of support among primary voters by running a cautious campaign in a crowded field.
Avoiding caution will be critical this year, said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston.
“The lesson that Harris must learn from 2019 is to accelerate her momentum with methodical granular campaign operations — not assume her momentum is a wave she can easily ride indefinitely,” he told The Washington Times. “Her advisers may opt to protect a polling lead, but at some critical point in the next three months, she may have to follow her gut and abandon the advice of the older White guys who are currently consulting on her campaign.”
The 2019 campaign was different for plenty of reasons, and the chaos of a lengthy and particular Democratic race contributed to Ms. Harris’ collapse. She struggled to distinguish herself in a primary field with several other minority candidates and ideological choices, from Sen. Bernard Sanders on the left to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden.
Now, she is in a three-month sprint to Election Day and faces just one opponent, Mr. Trump. She started the race with massive built-in support from committed Democrats. Her task now is to win and hold middle-of-the-road voters.
In conversations with political operatives and analysts about her primary campaign, two themes emerged: She was too cautious and was ill-served by her campaign team, which didn’t have a national reach and was consumed by conflicts.
“The challenge is going to be internal rivalry and navigating the different elements of the Democratic Party and what that looks like,” said David McCuan, a political scientist at Sonoma State University who has tracked Ms. Harris for years.
YouGov/Economist polling showed Ms. Harris hovering at about 7% support among Democratic primary voters in June 2019, squarely in the middle tier. She seized a big opening in a primary debate where she zinged Mr. Biden, the front-runner, for his history of supporting segregationist policies that hurt Black children.
“That little girl was me,” she said, delivering a rare one-line gem.
By early July, she had doubled her polling to 14% and was suddenly in the top tier. By August, her support slid to 8% and continued dropping. She bottomed out at 4% in late November and withdrew from the race on Dec. 3, 2019, well before the first primaries.
“Harris’ July move was a blip, and she did virtually nothing to coordinate/connect the progress she had made and to build on her momentum,” Mr. Paleologos said in an email. “In fact, she became more cautious and would equivocate on nearly every major issue frustrating Democratic voters who saw other Democrats who were articulating crisper messages.”
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Republicans are expecting a repeat performance.
“Remember, in the 2020 Democrat primary, Harris dropped out a month before the first vote was even cast,” Sen. J.D. Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, told supporters at a campaign rally in Nevada. “She was so unpopular she polled in the single digits even among Democrats her entire campaign.”
Mr. McCuan said Republicans shouldn’t count on a collapse.
He said Ms. Harris has proved to be remarkably resilient in politics. She ousted the incumbent in San Francisco’s 2002 district attorney’s race. Running for attorney general in 2010, she quickly cleared the field of some key Democratic opponents and won a tough race against Republican Steve Cooley, the district attorney in Los Angeles.
She won California’s open Senate seat in 2016 before pursuing her presidential campaign. Mr. Biden revived her ambitions by picking her as his running mate. Last month, after Mr. Trump chased Mr. Biden from the race, he anointed her as his successor.
“From attorney general to Senate, she learns on the fly how to be a better candidate,” Mr. McCuan said. “That gives her some momentum, some space, some visibility and some confidence.”
He said the “short runway” of a three-month campaign gives her less time to wear thin. Plus, she was able to start fresh in areas that weren’t working for Mr. Biden.
“That makes her really problematic if you’re Donald Trump and Republicans,” he said.
Mr. McCuan said he would watch how Ms. Harris handles looming flash points. She must be more nimble than the Biden team, he said.
He said she appears to have a good start with her early change of position on fracking.
In her ill-fated 2020 campaign, she supported a ban on the controversial oil extraction process. Now, according to her campaign, she has backed off the ban as she tries to court voters in swing-state Pennsylvania.
Ms. Harris also won plaudits from her party for her announcement Tuesday of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Democrats saw it as a safe move that had some appeal to all corners of the Democratic coalition.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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