As we’ve noted a few times, we’re now in the midst of a race for each campaign to define Kamala Harris. What focus groups have shown in recent weeks is that many swing voters or marginal voters have vaguely negative impressions of Harris but basically know little about her. So she’s largely a blank slate for these and actually many other voters. That was always going to be very different for Biden and Trump. Voters know who they are and tend to have very fixed opinions about them. Not so for Harris.
The Trump campaign – actually one of its allied SuperPacs, as far as I can tell – went on the air last night with a series of attack ads in the Blue Wall states. (They’re probably appearing in other places too. But that’s where I have direct reports of their appearing.) They focus on what I believe is Harris’s key vulnerability. (Ed.Note: I’ve subsequently heard these ads may only be running in the Philly and Detroit metros – more information on that as I learn more.)
During the 2020 primary campaign, Harris quasi-embraced a number of positions championed by the progressive wing of the party. A key example was her slightly modified version of Medicare for All. She also dipped into the push to end mass incarceration, activism against police abuses, etc. This is actually what soured me on her in 2020, after going into the primaries thinking she was the one. It wasn’t the positions precisely. She had a tendency to jump on to the flavor of the moment within the Democratic or progressive activist world without looking four or five steps ahead to see the liabilities of those positions in a general election or even in actual Democratic primaries. So yes, Medicare for All sounds awesome. And if you poll it strictly on the terms of its own advocacy it polls well. But when you tell people they’ll lose their current insurance plan or maybe won’t be able to see the same doctor – support basically collapses. This was Biden’s key strength. Whether from canniness or the muscle memory of half a century in politics he was more cautious in that political moment.
All the ads I’ve seen overnight focus on clips of Harris from the 2020 primaries. Most of the statements are vaguer than the ads suggest. But in the context of rapid fire 30 second ads they’re close enough to get pushed into the bucket of ending private health insurance, defunding the police, prisoners voting, etc. etc. Again, 30 seconds ads aren’t fair. That’s how it works. You need to grapple with them on their own terms.
I actually think these are attacks the Harris campaign can neutralize pretty effectively based on the specifics of her career. Harris was District Attorney for eight years and then Attorney General for eight years, with a record which by today’s standard can read as more “tough on crime” than many Democrats are comfortable with. If you’re getting attacked as soft on crime that’s a great asset to have in your back pocket. Later she was Biden’s deputy. So she can hug all of Biden’s policy record. In other words, the 2020 stuff is sandwiched by lots of material that tells a very different story. The key is you have to rebut this stuff pretty much in real time. So presumably, hopefully, the Harris campaign will go on air quickly with ads inoculating her on those fronts.
To the best of my knowledges ads like that aren’t up yet. It’s a brand new campaign that only launched three days ago. But it’s actually the renamed Biden campaign. Like literally renamed. Not just the personnel but the actual legal entity simply changed its name on Sunday afternoon or evening.
At least for now, all the leadership, all the teams, all the state operations are in place. So they should be able to act quickly. The key is that a lot of the future of the campaign is going to play out over the next couple weeks on the airwaves in key states, quite apart from the elite conversation within DC and on places like Twitter. So that’s where to watch, to the extent we’re able to.
