The Democratic Party’s fortunes have shifted dramatically in the five weeks since US President Joe Biden abandoned his failed re-election campaign, and that transformation will be on full display this week.
Vice President Kamala Harris, now the party’s nominee, is heading into the Democratic National Convention with a historic storm: Her campaign has broken fund-raising records, packed arenas with supporters, and turned the vote in some key states in Democrats’ favor.
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, have made “joy” the key word of the campaign, a reminder of the despair the party felt just weeks ago. Both publicly accepted their party’s nomination at the Chicago convention that began on Monday.
“This is a historic change,” said Joseph Foster, a 71-year-old former Democratic Party chairman in the Philadelphia suburbs who remains active in the party. “People are excited, young people are involved. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
With less than 80 days left until election day, the party is hoping to ride this wave of enthusiasm to victory.
This would make Harris the first black and Asian person to become vice president, and the country’s first female president.
But pollsters and strategists from both major parties warn that the “high euphoria” of Harris’s early lead will fade, given growing differences among Democrats over issues such as the economy and the Israel-Hamas war, as well as a fierce battle against Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Republican pollster Adam Geller predicted that Harris’s historic personal story “is beautiful and wonderful, but it’s the issues that will ultimately decide this election. These issues include inflation, security, leadership and the world stage.”
Harris delivered her first major economy-focused speech on Friday and laid out proposals to cut taxes for most Americans, ban “price gouging” by grocery store owners and boost affordable housing, an early sign of a turn for the party’s progressive wing.
Public pressure will mount on her to provide more details on policy in the coming weeks. Her aides have indicated she is unlikely to provide much detail in some areas, such as energy, to avoid alienating moderate and progressive wings of her party.
Harris may also have to deal with divisions within the party over US support for Israel’s war against Hamas, and differences between progressives and moderates on policy questions such as energy, health care and immigration.
Nearly 200 social justice organizations plan to march at the Democratic National Convention on Monday to protest the Biden administration’s continued support for Israel in a war in Gaza that has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians.
New Map of Victory
Harris, who will address the convention on Thursday, is entering this week of celebration bolstered by multiple polls that show she has already redrawn the electoral map, tilting it firmly in Trump’s favor in the final weeks of Biden’s candidacy.
Harris is leading or tied with Trump in six of the seven states that are expected to decide the Nov. 5 election, according to the latest polls from the nonpartisan Cook Political Report released Wednesday.
The election handicapper shifted its ratings for the swing states of Arizona, Georgia and Nevada toward Harris, after it had rated all three states “favoring Republicans” in early July when Biden was still the Democratic nominee.
Cook’s editor Amy Walter detailed the poll’s findings, saying “I think we have a reset race, where the Democratic nominee has now re-energized the Biden 2020 coalition, or at least reconstituted it, not completely, but it’s much more united than it was when Biden was at the top of the ticket.”
Biden won the White House in 2020 with strong support from Black, Hispanic and young American voters, but their enthusiasm for him was far less this time around.
He finally stepped down on July 21, under pressure from longtime allies and senior Democratic leaders, amid growing concerns about his mental acuity and his chances of defeating Trump.
Biden endorsed Harris, and she soon won the party’s support. The shift quickly transformed the race, giving Democrats a boost and leaving Trump’s campaign team scrambling to find a new battle plan.
A Monmouth University poll released Wednesday found a substantial increase in enthusiasm among registered Democratic voters, and a substantial increase among independent voters as well.
In June, only 46% of registered Democrats said they were excited about a Biden-Trump rematch — that rose to 85% in the latest Monmouth survey conducted earlier this month.
Enthusiasm among independents rose from 34% in June to 53% in the latest survey.
Still, Walter said concerns over immigration and the economy are helping Trump this time around, since he lost his 2020 election to Biden.
“It’s like a coin flip,” he said of the race between Harris and Trump.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
