'The Reintroduction of Kamala Harris'

<https://time.com/7009317/reintroduction-of-kamala-harris/>

'The soundtrack suggested a Beyoncé concert. The light-up bracelets
evoked the Eras Tour. And the exuberant crowd—more than 14,000 strong,
lining up in the rain—resembled the early days of Barack Obama. Inside a
Philadelphia arena on Aug. 6, Vice President Kamala Harris was greeted
with a kind of reception a Democratic presidential candidate hasn’t
gotten in years. Fans packed into overflow spaces, waving homemade signs
made of glitter and glue as drumlines roared. When Harris introduced her
new running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the cheering lasted more
than a minute.

If you’d predicted this scene a month ago to anyone following the race,
they would never have believed you. But Harris has pulled off the
swiftest vibe shift in modern political history. A contest that revolved
around the cognitive decline of a geriatric President has been
transformed: Joe Biden is out, Harris is in, and a second Donald Trump
presidency no longer seems inevitable. Democrats resigned to a “grim
death march” toward certain defeat, as one national organizer put it,
felt their gloom replaced by a jolt of hope. Harris smashed fundraising
records, raking in $310 million in July. She packed stadiums and
dominated TikTok, offering a fresh message focused on the future over
the past. Volunteers signed up in droves. Trump’s widening leads across
the battleground states evaporated. Over the span of a few weeks in late
July and early August, Harris became a political phenomenon. “Our
campaign is not just a fight against Donald Trump,” she told the
cheering crowd in Philadelphia. “Our campaign is a fight for the
future.”

Kamala Harris Her Moment Time magazine cover
Photo-illustration by Neil Jamieson for TIME (Source Photos: Harris:
Andrew Harnik—Getty Images; Getty Images (2))
Where has this Kamala Harris been all along? For years, Democratic
officials questioned her political chops, pundits mocked her word
salads, and her polling suggested limited appeal. Her performance in the
2020 presidential primary was wooden, and her turn as Biden’s No. 2 did
little to inspire confidence. Even this summer, as party insiders
chattered about possible replacements if Biden stepped aside, “it was
explicit from some of the major donors that she can’t win,” says Amanda
Litman, the co-founder of Run for Something, an organization that trains
young Democrats to run for office. “They didn’t think people were ready
to elect someone like her.”

Read More: A Guide to Kamala Harris’ Views on Abortion, the Economy, and
More

Judging from the past few weeks, Harris’ own party underestimated her.
Maybe the crowded 2020 primary just wasn’t the right race for Harris to
showcase her talents; maybe the vice presidency wasn’t the right role.
Suddenly, she seems matched to the moment: a former prosecutor running
against a convicted felon, a defender of abortion rights running against
the man who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, a next-generation Democrat
running against a 78-year-old Republican. Perhaps above all, she has
given Americans the one thing they overwhelmingly told pollsters they
wanted: a credible alternative to the two unpopular old men who have
held the job for the past eight long years.

Harris may still be the underdog. Trump has arguably the clearer path to
270 electoral votes and an edge on the issues that voters say are most
important to them. Harris will have to answer for the Biden
Administration’s record, including on inflation and border security.
Republicans are casting her as a coastal elite, pointing to positions
she took in the 2020 primary—arguing for gun buybacks, a ban on
fracking, and an overhaul of the health-insurance system—that may indeed
be too liberal to win over many of the swing voters who decide
elections. Harris has yet to do a single substantive interview or to
explain her policy shifts. (Her campaign denied a request for an
interview for this story.) She has to repair ruptures in the party
coalition, galvanizing the Black, Hispanic, Arab American, and young
voters who migrated away from Biden. Though her early polling numbers
are far better than Biden’s were, she lags his 2020 support with some
key demographic groups she needs to win.

Harris has less than 90 days to prove that she can convert the momentum
of her successful launch into a tough, smart operation capable of
beating a former President with a dedicated base of support and a knack
for commanding the stage. She inherited a campaign infrastructure and
policy record from her predecessor, but the energy is all hers. Picking
Walz as a running mate over more conventional choices signals a belief
that this race is as much about feelings as it is about fundamentals.
Harris’ brand shift—the happy-warrior attitude, the viral memes, the eye
roll at Republican “weirdos”—has already done what no Trump opponent has
ever been able to do: snatch the spotlight away from him.

Read More: The 7 States That Will Decide the Election

She may seem like an overnight sensation, but Harris’ moment was years
in the making. Quietly, her small team of top aides had been laying the
groundwork for a future presidential run. After the Supreme Court’s
Dobbs decision, the Vice President added reproductive rights to her
portfolio. Abortion was never a comfortable issue for Biden, a devout
Catholic, but it was a natural fit for his No. 2. Harris believed that
with Roe gone, Republicans would turn their sights to restricting both
birth control and IVF. In the months after Dobbs, she traveled the U.S.,
talking about abortion rights as a matter of “reproductive freedom.” As
far back as the 2022 midterms, aides say, she argued for making this the
core of the party’s national message, even as the White House focused on
jobs and the economy.

Kamala Harris oversees a discussion on reproductive rights in 2022
The Vice President oversees a discussion on reproductive rights in
2022Anna Moneymaker—Getty Images
During those travels, Harris’ team assembled a spreadsheet of allies,
power brokers, and potential delegates to tap if and when the time came.
Every photo line, every VIP invitation, every clutch with labor leaders,
every meeting with key constituencies was filed away. The goal, advisers
say, was to ensure there would be allies on every delegate slate in
every state in the nation. “We had a list,” says one top aide, “and we
checked it twice.”

The list was intended for 2028. But when Biden dropped out on July 21
and quickly endorsed Harris, it was instantly pressed into service. The
Vice President—clad in a Howard University sweatshirt, munching pizza
with anchovies—spent the next 10 hours on the phone, dialing delegates
and wrangling endorsements. A day later, the nomination was all but
hers. Even though other presidential hopefuls had ties to swing states
or big donors, “the list was the thing that we had that they didn’t,”
says a top aide. “It wasn’t a fairy godmother waving a magic wand.”

Harris’ ability to sew up the nomination so quickly was a triumph of
work ethic and political dexterity that foreshadowed what was to come.
“To consolidate the Democratic Party in a matter of hours, to do as many
visible events and establish that presence without putting a foot wrong,
is a feat,” says Pete Buttigieg, the Transportation Secretary who ran
against Harris for the 2020 nomination and was a finalist to become her
running mate. “I don’t think anybody expected her to be so flawless.”

With Biden no longer atop the ticket, the moribund Democratic grassroots
came to life. Harris was capable of delivering a message that never felt
quite right under Clinton or Biden: that theirs was the party of the
future, and Trump was of the past. Her campaign raised $200 million in
the first week, in what it said was the best 24 hours of any candidate
in presidential-campaign history. More than 38,000 people registered on
Vote.org in the 48 hours after she became the presumptive nominee,
eclipsing the voter-registration surge encouraged by Taylor Swift last
year. Within a week, Harris erased Trump’s polling dominance in key
states, turning a burgeoning landslide into a dead heat.

“Elections come down to vibes, and Kamala has got the vibes right now,”
says David Hogg, co-founder of the Gen Z political organization Leaders
We Deserve. After spending his entire political career organizing
against Trump and his allies, Hogg explains, it felt good to finally
have someone to vote for. “People are feeling the type of energy they
felt during the Obama campaign,” says Michigan state senator Darrin
Camilleri, who spends his weekends door-knocking in his competitive
district south of Detroit. “It feels different than with Hillary,
different than with Biden.”

Celebrities like Charli XCX and Megan Thee Stallion came out in support
of Harris. Speaking in a packed airplane hangar in Detroit, UAW
president Shawn Fain called her a “badass woman.” The campaign’s new
Harris-Walz camo hats sold out within half an hour. Grassroots groups
are seeing an explosion in fundraising and volunteer sign-ups. “My
niece, who called Biden ‘Genocide Joe,’ called me to say, ‘Auntie, I
want to do something,’” recalls LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black
Voters Matter.

On 13 Aug 2024, John Smyth <smythlejon2@hotmail.com> posted some
news:mermbjdemk5p17c20gjjfvfa9h4u5v0ue2@4ax.com:

>
> 'The Reintroduction of Kamala Harris'
>
><https://time.com/7009317/reintroduction-of-kamala-harris/>
>
> 'The soundtrack suggested a Beyonc� concert. The light-up bracelets
> evoked the Eras Tour. And the exuberant crowd�more than 14,000 strong,
> lining up in the rain�resembled the early days of Barack Obama.

It only takes one black light to attract many insects. That is what these
kinds of people are.

> Whether Harris can sustain her early success is an open question. What�s
> clear is that she has changed the trajectory of the election. �The whole
> vibe just shifted. We were looking at two candidates nobody was that
> excited about,� explains Leanne Weiner, 39, who wore a �Childless Cat
> Ladies for Harris� T-shirt as she waited in line for chicken fingers at
> the massive Philadelphia rally in front of another fan in a �Blasians
> for Harris� shirt. �Now there�s a new energy, a new force, an ability to
> pull in people who might be unsure.�

It's quite possibly having the opposite effect by confirming the idiocy of
the Democrat candidates and removing the uncertainty of decision making.
Who in their right mind would vote for either of these two idiots?