CHICAGO ― When then-California Sen. Kamala Harris dropped out of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, fizzling out after a hot start amid fundraising shortages and behind-the-scenes infighting, a main reason for her struggles was Democrats’ belief she simply could not defeat President Donald Trump.
A poll released the week before Harris’ decision to end her campaign found just 17% of Americans believed she would beat Trump, while 53% said she would likely lose. Even among Democrats, only a third believed she could oust the then-Republican incumbent.
Harris, at the time, was seen as an imperfect fit for the battle against Trump: She was Black, at a time when the party was obsessed with winning back the white working class; a former prosecutor, at a time when criminal justice reform was in vogue and Republicans were trying to use past tough-on-crime rhetoric to discourage Black turnout; and a woman, immediately after Trump had blocked Hillary Clinton’s attempts to shatter the glass ceiling.
Joe Biden, ultimately, was seen as the safe choice, acceptable to white working-class and conservative-leaning swing voters, even if he was less likely to inspire young people or marginal Black and Latino voters. It was a strategy to win back the “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and run up margins in Sun Belt suburbs. And it worked.
Four years later, as it appeared Biden would drop out of the race, the New York Times surveyed its columnists on the options to replace him. They collectively rated Harris as one of the least electable of ten options, saying she “has no demonstrated appeal to swing voters,” a “mediocre politician from a deep-blue state” and a “fundamentally weak candidate.”
Even Trump appeared to agree, caught on video ranting while sitting in a golf cart about his successes against Biden and projecting confidence in a race against Harris.
“She’s so bad,” he said. “She’s so pathetic.”
Instead, swapping out Biden for Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket turned a Democratic National Convention that could have felt like a gathering of family members keeping watch over a frail relative into a highly energized, patriotic celebration of a miraculous recovery.
The turnaround should provide a humbling lesson in the limits of what Democrats and the media know about candidates’ electability — not to mention how rapidly that electability can change — and put to bed ideas about the inability of women or Black candidates to run against candidates like Trump. And while it is generally helpful for general election candidates to be seen as moderate, Harris has surged in the polling even as much of the public sees her as substantially more liberal than Biden — a perception her campaign is trying to change.
As Harris pitches herself as a way to break out of the Trump era of American politics and aggressively attacks the Republican on abortion rights, it shows electability is as much about the stories a candidate can tell and the messages they can push.
It’s difficult to overstate how remarkable the rebound has been. Chauncey McLean, a top official at the major Democratic super PAC Future Forward, told a crowd on Monday their analytics had placed Biden’s percentage chances of winning the election in the single digits following his disastrous debate in late June.
Polling finds Harris is improving with almost every conceivable voter, with the gains biggest among Black and Latino voters and young voters — all core parts of the Democratic base that had significantly soured on Biden. She’s also bypassing the diploma divide, gaining about equally with college-educated and non-college-educated voters.
Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, the president of the youth-focused progressive group NextGen America, said her group felt the Harris jolt immediately, with college students suddenly coming up to campus organizers rather than having to be literally chased down, and noted a 300% spike in volunteer sign-ups. The group’s polling was so positive Ramirez did not believe it at first. As Harris pulled in $300 million in her first month as a candidate, Ramirez’s experience was repeated by leaders of Democratic and progressive groups across the country.
“Anywhere that had been a black spot became a light spot,” she said.
The race in front of Harris is likely tougher than the one Biden won in 2020. At the time, Trump’s response to COVID-19 was seen as a disaster. But since then, Democrats have been in charge during an era of sky-high inflation, and Trump is more popular in public surveys than ever.
Incumbent parties of all ideological stripes around the world have been losing elections as the long hangover from the pandemic and global inflation continues. Even optimistic Democrats still see the race as little more than a coin flip.
“Our numbers are much less rosy than what you’re seeing in the public,” McLean told the crowd.
Still, it’s clear the party has far more faith in Harris’ ability to win. On the final night of the convention, the Democratic candidates in five of the country’s most crucial Senate races — Sens. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, along with Reps. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Colin Allred of Texas — all spoke ahead of Harris, a display of support that it’s difficult to imagine Biden receiving if he were still the nominee.
“We will protect reproductive freedom. We will secure our border. We will protect Medicare and Social Security. And we’ll turn the page and write a new chapter for this country and elect Kamala Harris to be the next president,” Allred said in his speech shortly before leaving the stage to chants of “Beat Ted Cruz!” — his Republican opponent in November.
Harris’ speech on Thursday showcased how traits that were vulnerabilities for her in 2020 became relative strengths in 2024.
Her record as a prosecutor? Front and center as concerns about crime are higher, even as crime rates have dropped from a pandemic peak.
“As a young courtroom prosecutor in Oakland, I stood up for women and children against predators who abused them,” she said.
Her gender? She’s a far better messenger on abortion rights than Biden, whose Catholic faith made him uneasy about championing what’s become a signature Democratic issue.
“Let’s be clear about how we got here: Donald Trump hand-picked members of the United States Supreme Court to take away reproductive freedom. And now he brags about it,” she said.
Her race? It’s now part of her liberal patriotism pitch, a way for her to portray her election as ushering in a new day in America. And it helps her relate to the swing voters of 2024, who are younger and more diverse than their counterparts in 2016 and 2020.
None of this means Republicans will not try to use Harris’ race or gender or record against her, but right now, those things appear surmountable.
“I think we’d be putting our heads in the sand to say that her being a Black woman does not have any impact on how people view her,” said John Anzalone, a Democratic strategist who served as the lead pollster for Biden’s 2020 campaign. “We’re still in a really racially tense environment. That’s why Republicans do a lot on the border. That’s why they do a lot on crime.”
All of this is why, in one of the standout speeches of the convention, former first lady Michelle Obama told voters to ignore the pesky question: “Can she win?”
“We cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected,” Obama said.