How Harris Took Over The Campaign, Surged, And Still Faces A Tough Fight Against Trump 

Democrats might be forgiven for experiencing a slight touch of PTSD as they watch Kamala Harris’ soaring and sudden ascent to the party’s presidential nomination seem to stall. The scene could be seen as reminiscent of Harris 2020 primary campaign, where she entered the race to great fanfare and, at one point, surged in the polls before ultimately crashing out before the first votes were even cast. 

However, there are many ways this race is already a much different one for Harris. 

I chronicled Harris’ ill-fated 2020 bid and her rocky early years as vice president along with Luppe B. Luppen in our book, The Truce, which came out in January. While our reporting clearly captured struggles, it also showed early signs that she was beginning to hit her stride. That has continued to be evident in a race that features more favorable dynamics for her, both on the national stage and behind the scenes. 

When Harris kicked off her first campaign for president, she waded into a Democratic primary field that was largely still defined by the progressive-versus-centrist split that emerged in the bitter 2016 race. Those battle lines thrust a spotlight on Harris’ initial support for Medicare For All and subsequent retreat from that policy. The divide in the party also fueled attacks on Harris from activists on the left who pointed to her record as a prosecutor, dubbing her “a cop.” 

Four years and change later, as I’ve covered here at TPM and in the Truce, President Joe Biden and Harris have worked extensively to build a bridge to the left wing of their party from the White House. In the months since Biden abandoned his own re-election bid, Harris has made a focus on the middle class a core part of her campaign. Harris’ selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate also helped shore up her support among progressives. 

And perhaps the greatest asset Harris and the Democrats have had in promoting party unity is their omnipresent opponent, former President Donald Trump, who has, among other things, promised a wave of “bloody” mass deportations and suggested he would jail political rivals if he regains power. While Harris might face critiques from the left in a primary setting, she is unquestionably more progressive than Trump on the basic level of preserving democratic order and on key policy issues including eliminating tax breaks for the rich, support for labor unions, and the war in Gaza. Meanwhile, Trump’s own legal issues, many of which stem from his effort to stay in power after losing the 2020 race, have allowed Harris to cast her experience as a prosecutor in a new light. 

In her keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention last month, Harris highlighted her “decades in law enforcement” while she framed Trump as a would-be “autocrat” who is eager to “be immune from criminal prosecution.” The speech, fine-tuned for the grim reality of the 2024 campaign, was in many ways a throwback to the messaging Harris used earlier in her career as she rose from San Francisco District Attorney to one of California’s U.S. Senate seats. 

Harris’ leaning on her prosecutorial bonafides isn’t the only element of her current campaign that hearkens back to the strategies that worked for her in the past. On the campaign trail, Harris has blended populism and a type of centrism that sees her getting behind moderated versions of the left’s policy priorities. Rather than supporting Medicare For All, she has talked about expanding the Affordable Care Act and taking measures to lower the cost of prescription drugs. She has called for cutting taxes for the middle class and raising them for billionaires while proposing more modest increases to the capital gains tax for investors than Biden and other Democrats. 

Similar efforts to simultaneously appeal to progressives and the center have been a hallmark of Harris’ style. In her own memoirs and on campaign web pages for her prosecutorial races, Harris cast herself as a “progressive prosecutor” but also as someone who wanted to “move beyond the false choice of being ‘tough’ or ‘weak’ on crime” to instead be “smart on crime.” For our book, we spoke to a longtime Harris adviser who noted she has always rejected the binary branding.

“Most of the conversations throughout the years with her have never really focused on ‘progressive’ or ‘moderate,’” that adviser said when asked how Harris viewed her agenda.

Instead, the adviser told us Harris tends to take a more “pragmatic” view and that, rather than ideology, she focuses on values and broader policy goals. 

“She’ll often say in a briefing with her team, ‘What is the value statement we are all in agreement about?’ ” the adviser continued, paraphrasing Harris. “And it’s an exercise for all of us to be like, ‘Okay, we believe there should be … economic security for families.’ Then working backwards from that, you can build in different policies.” 

That approach is clearly echoed in the focus on “an opportunity economy where everyone has the chance to compete and a chance to succeed” that Harris has made the centerpiece of her current campaign. A former aide who worked for Harris in the vice president’s office observed that these strategies, drawn from earlier in her career, are better suited to the 2024 general election than they were to the 2020 Democratic primary — both because of the ways in which the political moment has shifted, and the inherent difference between primaries and general elections.

“When your audience is the entire country, from red states to blue states to purple states, her message resonates,” said the aide, who requested anonymity to discuss the campaign. “Sometimes, because of how the Democratic Party has moved over time … being a prosecutor isn’t always seen as being a positive thing in certain circles.”

And while the former aide said it is clear that Trump is a “unifying figure” for Democrats who offers a clear “contrast” with Harris, this person noted that that fact alone hasn’t always been enough to defeat him in the past. 

“It didn’t work in ‘16,” the former Harris aide said, adding, “It’s not just Trump.”

Rather, the aide suggested Harris’ background as a prosecutor and her attempts to transcend political divides make her uniquely suited for this race — both with Democrats and more independent voters. 

“She is this perfect storm in this moment in terms of her experience, her record, and her message,” the former aide said. 

The national conversation isn’t the only way the current presidential campaign seems more favorable for Harris than the last one. Her unique path to the Democratic nomination allowed her to avoid internecine policy debates. It also helped sidestep the toxic narratives and hand-wringing about “electability” that have dogged other women and people of color as they seek office. 

There have also been key changes behind the scenes that have given Harris a smoother path. Harris’ 2020 bid was plagued by organizational issues. In our book, we reported on how ex-Harris aides said her team was effectively “splintered” between consultants allied with Bearstar, a political strategy firm that was essential to her rise in California, and her sister, Maya Harris, who served as the campaign’s chairperson. Leaks about the dysfunction and discord spilled into the headlines. 

Even after Biden and Harris won, she continued to face staff turnover and turmoil. The turbulence fueled doubts about Harris from within Biden’s West Wing. As we reported in our book, one senior Biden White House aide dismissed Harris as “not ready for prime time.”

“She ain’t made for this,” the senior White House aide said. 

As with her prior campaign, the atmosphere led to leaks including from Harris aides and allies who felt Biden and his team shouldered some of the blame for her public image. As a key item in her portfolio, Harris was given the politically fraught task of addressing the migrant surge from Central America. Apart from that assignment, which has fueled inaccurate and oversimplified attacks from Trump that she was Biden’s “border czar,” many in Harris’ circle felt she was sidelined. 

According to multiple sources close to Harris, during her first years as vice president, friends and allies encouraged her to build out her own team. One source, who requested anonymity to discuss internal matters, dubbed it a “break glass in case of emergency” operation. Harris ultimately emerged as a key voice pressing Biden and the Democrats to make reproductive rights an essential element of their case to voters following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade. 

“I think that issue was completely underestimated,” the former Harris aide told TPM. “Everywhere abortion was on the ballot, abortion rights won and she deserves a lot of credit for that. She deserves a lot of credit for rallying the party, getting people to the polls, carving such a powerful message on it … framing it as an issue of ‘freedom.’”

That strategy was a key driver in the party’s surprising success in the 2022 midterm races, and reproductive rights are now a central element of Harris’ presidential campaign. And, while the former Harris aide argued reports of tensions between her and Biden were exaggerated, this person said her leadership on the abortion issue helped build trust between them. 

“I don’t think it was nearly as bad as the reporting,” the former Harris aide said of the vice president’s relationship with Biden, adding, “Everything definitely improved as time went on and, I think, especially when she started leading on Roe. … In my experience, just like it wasn’t the drama that people would describe.”

There is other evidence of Harris and her political operation beginning to hit its stride. One high-level Democratic Party source who spoke to TPM pointed to Harris’ handling of the delicate moments when Biden was being pressured to leave the race as evidence of “agility” that had many prior doubters excited. Harris and her team also deftly coalesced the party behind her during what became a rapidfire nomination process.

And, since grabbing the reins of Biden’s campaign, Harris has integrated new voices like her longtime adviser Rohini Kosoglu and her brother-in-law Tony West with the existing infrastructure in a way that has avoided the split power centers and drama of her last campaign. Kosoglu, West, and the Harris campaign did not respond to requests for comment on this story. The former Harris aide said the vice president found success by choosing to “supplement people at the top level” rather than doing a more wholesale restructuring of the campaign. 

“It was smart for her to not start from square one, to absorb the Biden infrastructure, because it was a good team that had been working really hard for a long time. … If she came in and there were mass layoffs happening, which happens on campaigns all the time, I think it would’ve been much more difficult,” the former Harris aide said. 

While Harris may have overcome some doubters within the West Wing, her prior stumbles have fueled questions about her campaign from the pundit class. That analysis seems out of touch in a race where both the political climate and staff dynamics all look far better for Harris. 

That doesn’t mean beating Trump will be easy. Though Harris’ positioning has improved, there are signs in recent polls that the heady early momentum she enjoyed since taking over from Biden has slowed. Harris’ race against Trump is clearly an excruciatingly tight one. After the shocking replacement on the Democratic ticket, the race between Harris and Trump is now beginning in earnest with a short sprint to the finish line that will likely be defined by a few key events including tonight’s debate. 

Still, in July, people at various levels of the party were staring at numbers that convinced them Biden — whose age in particular was a crippling liability — had no chance to win against Trump. One Democrat working for a pro-Harris PAC, who requested anonymity to candidly discuss the race, described the vice president’s early momentum as something of an illusion. For this Democrat operative, it isn’t a question of Harris surging or stalling so much as the race starting anew without Biden and his baggage. 

“The gains she made weren’t really gains,” the Harris backer said. “They were just level-setting of where we should have been anyway if it was anybody but Biden.” 

That view is echoed by other Democrats who have spoken to TPM in recent days. Essentially, Harris may be in a better position than ever before, but a close race to the finish has begun. 

“It was always going to be tight,” the Harris backer said. “All of the excitement and momentum made it feel a certain way, but when you get down to it, of course it’s going to be tight.”