Harris gets her chance

Four years ago, when Kamala Harris was nominated as Joe Biden’s running mate, I summed up as follows:

Harris now becomes the heir presumptive to her party’s leadership. It’s been a long wait for the first female president, and it may still be a while to come, but there is now no doubt about who is favorite for the title.

Now, as Biden has bowed to the inevitable and ended his bid to seek re-election, Harris has her chance. Cliché it may be, but the stakes really could not be higher. With Donald Trump riding high in the polls and evidently set on dismantling American democracy, everything now depends on whether Harris can rise to the occasion.

The Democrats have promised that there will be a “transparent and orderly process” to choose the nominee, but there is little chance that Harris will face any serious opposition. Leading figures in the party have followed Biden’s lead and rushed to endorse her, including Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Pete Buttigieg, Adam Schiff, Bill and Hillary Clinton and many others. They know that disunity at this point would be a recipe for catastrophe; for all practical purposes, Harris is now the nominee.

Although not unexpected, Biden’s withdrawal changes the complexion of the race completely. A contest between two old men, neither of them liked by the public, now becomes an old white man against a younger woman of color. Harris can present herself as the candidate of a new generation, much the way Barack Obama did in 2008. As Nikki Haley remarked earlier this year, “The first party to retire its 80 year old candidate is going to be the one who wins this election.”

That’s no sure thing. Harris will arouse some determined, fanatical opposition. It may all end in disaster, but with Biden at the helm disaster loomed anyway; there is no real downside to shaking things up. Although it’s fair to say that Harris has not been a striking success as vice-president, it’s a difficult job in which to stand out. She now has a much bigger canvas to work on.

One thing she needs to do is to communicate to the public the fact that this is no ordinary election, and in particular no ordinary Democrat-Republican contest. She needs to rally as many anti-Trump Republicans as possible to her side; it seems to be too late for Haley, but Harris needs people like Liz Cheney, Chris Christie, Mike Pence, Mitt Romney and George W Bush, not just endorsing her but appearing on platforms with her and playing an integral part in the campaign.

The proper comparison is with the 1864 Civil War election, when Abraham Lincoln, elected four years earlier as a Republican, ran as the “National Union” candidate, with Democrat Andrew Johnson as his running mate. In one sense that ended badly – Johnson took over after Lincoln’s assassination and made a right mess of the job – but it helped to ensure victory for the ticket in the first place. With hindsight that might seem inevitable, but Lincoln certainly didn’t see it that way at the time.

I don’t think the Democrats will put a Republican on the ticket this time; someone like Pennsylvania’s Shapiro is a more likely bet. But they somehow need to convey the gravity of the occasion and the fact that, while Trump is most readily seen as a bad joke, the threat he poses is deadly serious.