Vice President Kamala Harris can’t win the presidency by continuing to surf the good vibes that swelled when she replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.
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Vibes, like hope, are not a strategy.
Instead, her goal at the Democratic National Convention, which begins Monday in Chicago, is to introduce herself to voters and explain what she would do as president and how she differs from Biden.
She may have been vice president for 3½ years, but most voters outside of California don’t know much about her apart from being Biden’s faithful No. 2.
And while she has pulled into a virtual tie with Donald Trump in battleground state Wisconsin in a survey out this month, a lot of that is due to the fact that “she’s not Joe Biden at this point, because I don’t believe people have a strong view of who Kamala Harris is,” said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll.
Harris outshines Biden in their first joint appearance since his exit
Harris started to introduce herself and her policies Friday when she rolled out part of her economic plan. That will start to answer the questions that Harris needs to respond to by the time the balloons drop at the end of her speech to close the convention Thursday night.
Among them:
Who is Kamala Harris?
It is the age-old question for anyone who has followed Harris’ career since she was elected San Francisco’s district attorney in 2003 and tried to pin a political identity on her. The left has at times kept Harris at arm’s length because she’s a prosecutor. Meanwhile, conservatives believe she’s too progressive.
Trump’s campaign has leaned into the latter, tagging her as a “Marxist,” “socialist” and “radical.” She’s hardly any of those. Just ask progressive critics of her policies as district attorney that penalized parents of truant students or cannabis users.
Meanwhile, her campaign has leaned into her prosecutorial career in the hopes of framing the campaign as the prosecutor versus the convicted felon. In May, Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts as part of an attempt to illegally influence the 2016 election.
Well – we don’t refer to her as Chameleon Harris without good reason!!!!