Harris faces challenge of translating convention joy to fall momentum

CHICAGO — Joy cometh in the morning, but so do hangovers. The party in Chicago is done, the confetti has been swept up, the pictures have been posted to social media. But the real question as exuberant Democrats woke up Friday was whether they could channel the sheer intoxication of the United Center into a sustained, 74-day sprint to Election Day.

Vice President Kamala Harris emerged from her nominating convention with a burst of momentum that Democrats hardly expected barely a month ago, when they thought they would be tethered to a possibly doomed reelection bid by President Joe Biden. She has rejuvenated a once demoralized party and given a jolt of optimism to Democrats who now see victory in reach.

The buzzkill reality, however, is that victory is anything but assured. The thousands of jubilant delegates in the hall this week were not representative of the swing voters that Harris needs to defeat former President Donald Trump. History is littered with presidential candidates who roused their partisans at conventions only to fall short come November. And whatever else he is, Trump is no pushover. Harris can expect a bruising battle over the next 2 1/2 months.

She knows that, of course, and veterans of past campaigns, including former President Bill Clinton and the former first lady Michelle Obama, made a point of warning ecstatic Democrats this week to temper their heady expectations. Harris has had one of the most impressive debuts of any general election candidate in recent times, yet she still faces polls within the margin of error.

“The energy here is electric,” Rep Hillary Scholten, D-Mich., said minutes before Harris’ acceptance speech Thursday night. “But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I said I was now feeling confident in Michigan. We’re still the underdog, and it’s going to take some true Michigan grit to turn this energy into action and secure a Michigan win.”

Scholten knows of what she speaks. She captured a Republican seat in 2022 that had not gone to a Democrat in 32 years. She understands what it takes to win in a closely divided battleground state that may be critical to victory for Harris. And she remembers when Trump surprised the world by overcoming Hillary Clinton eight years ago.

“Getting comfortable is what happened in 2016, when we lost Michigan to Trump by less than 10,000 votes,” Scholten said. “Trump is coming to Michigan again on Monday. He’s clearly not giving up on Michigan. We can’t either.”

But Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., from another swing state, said she thought the convention had generated excitement beyond the already converted in the hall.

“Obviously, we want to keep this momentum going, and we’re seeing loyal Democrats getting really excited, but there’s this sort of snowball effect that I’m seeing,” she said. “There are people at home who aren’t at this convention who are watching and then communicating with their friends and saying, ‘Oh my God, did you see this?’”

Harris’ 37-minute acceptance speech appeared aimed at just those people watching at home, more than at the chanting, sign-waving, button-wearing supporters jammed into the arena. She introduced herself to the nation as a product of a modern American blended family, a prosecutor who championed justice and a pragmatic leader who would avoid extremes. She emphasized that she would “be a president for all Americans,” in contrast to the Republican convention, where speakers focused on whom they called “real Americans.”

The newly anointed nominee delivered a convention that, aside from schedule glitches that pushed some featured speakers past prime time, could hardly have gone better. Rather than a repeat of the tumultuous, violent 1968 Chicago convention, as some forecast, it was a tableau of unity and infectious spirit. Dissent, particularly over the war in the Gaza Strip, was effectively suppressed. Protests were mostly exiled well away from the United Center, although dozens of people were arrested.

What kind of convention bump Harris may get will become clear in the coming days, although recent history has shown that polls do not move as elastically as they once did. Since stepping in for Biden, Harris has surged ahead of Trump by 3.6 percentage points, according to an average of polls by the website FiveThirtyEight. But Hillary Clinton and Biden were both further ahead of Trump at the same stage in 2016 and 2020, and she still lost and he hung on to win by a much closer margin.

The “president of joy,” as Bill Clinton called Harris, faces the challenge of maintaining that joy through the fall and seeing if that is enough to win. It certainly establishes a sharp contrast with Trump, the glowering apostle of a dystopian view of America who warned in an email fundraising solicitation before her speech that Harris would “unleash hell on Earth tonight!”

At 59, she will argue that she represents a new generation compared with Trump, 78, and (more implicitly) to Biden, 81. In her speech, she used the words “forward” or “future” eight times and made “we are not going back” her signature phrase. While she is part of the incumbent administration, she will present herself as the change agent, a posture that Trump will contest by portraying her as a defender of a corrupt and incompetent status quo.

The switch to Harris from Biden last month scrambled the generational dynamics. She did 12 percentage points better than he did among voters ages 30 to 44 and 15 points better among regular TikTok users, according to New York Times/Siena College polls in battleground states this month. She also appeals more to groups that Biden did not, expanding her electoral map and making competitive again Sun Belt states that once seemed to be slipping away.

“People are ready to move forward,” said Terry McAuliffe, a former Democratic National Committee chair and former governor of Virginia. “She’s a generational change. I think folks are fired up for that.”

As it is, the campaign already represents a new era in American politics, the first time since 1976 that a national election will not have a Bush, a Clinton or a Biden on the ballot for president or vice president.

The convention’s final night featured a panoply of next-generation Democratic rising stars like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan; Senate candidates Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Colin Allred of Texas; and Reps. Jason Crow of Colorado and Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida.

One way or the other, history will be made in 10 weeks. Either Harris will be the first woman elected president, or Trump will be the first defeated president returned to office in more than a century. Mark McKinnon, a political strategist who advised President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain but is no fan of Trump, said “it’s seductive to look for historical parallels,” but that may not be all that helpful this year.

“This feels like something completely different is happening,” he said. “And I don’t know what it is yet, but, you know, just the circumstances, the timing, the compressed election, the nomination — it just feels, looks and smells like something completely different. I don’t know what it is. That’s the problem. We’ll see.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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