In America’s divided political environment—when Democrats and Republicans cannot agree on many basic facts about public challenges, let alone policies to address them—viewers of last night’s debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will leave with very different conclusions.
But there is one thing that almost any witness will acknowledge: Harris is the candidate of change.
Entering the 2024 election cycle, Americans were exhausted. There was a sense that the same old debates were being rehashed by the same old men. And yet, because of their control over party apparatuses, it was Trump and President Biden at the top of the national ballot again. Voters wanted to consume something fresh, something new. And they were told to reheat leftovers from last week.
A person walking past stops to watch a screen displaying the presidential debate in Washington, DC, on Sept. 10.
ALLISON BAILEY/AFP via Getty Images)
In nominating Harris after Biden’s July 21 abdication, Democrats ran the risk that she was not enough of a break from the White House.
Despite her West Wing office, Harris has now left no doubt.
In Tuesday evening’s broadcast, the vice president deftly communicated that she embodied the refresh Americans yearned for—playing her greatest political advantage.
“You’re not running against Joe Biden,” Harris told Trump pointedly in one of their few direct exchanges. “You’re running against me.”
Revisiting the trauma of the Jan. 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, Harris urged, “Let’s turn the page on this. Let’s not go back. Let’s chart a course for the future and not go backwards to the past.”
In contrast to Trump’s “same old tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances, and name calling,” Harris said she offers “a new generation of leadership for our country.”
Tactically, Harris defined the November election as a referendum on Trump—an approach that has fueled Democrats’ success in the last three national election cycles. She persistently held Trump accountable for his support of “dictators and autocrats,” “abortion bans,” “tax cuts for billionaires,” and challenges to the peaceful transfer of power. When pressed about the White House’s economic performance since 2021, Harris put Democrats’ work into the context of a public health crisis, skyrocketing unemployment, and an attack on democracy. “What we have done is clean up Donald Trump’s mess,” she said.
Trump, who has enabled Democrats’ strategic pivot over the years by indulging in the spotlight, struggled to pin Harris to Biden. In fact, Harris’ first mention of Biden’s name came one hour into the program when she reminded Trump that Biden was no longer his opponent.
Trump was slow to recognize Harris’s approach. He was distracted by her references to his bêtes noires: boredom at Trump rallies, personal betrayals by former staff, and military and foreign leaders who find him weak and unserious.
Anytime he found himself uncomfortable, Trump abruptly turned the conversation to immigration with wild exaggerations and absurd stories about migrants violently taking over buildings and eating Americans’ pets. But Harris again shifted the lens to Trump’s record by citing his insistence that fellow Republicans reject a conservative bill to tighten border security earlier this year.
“Donald Trump got on the phone,” she said, “called up some folks in Congress, and said kill the bill. And you know why? Because he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”
With only a few minutes remaining, it dawned on him: “She’s trying to get away from Biden,” he said. “She is Biden.”
It was too late.
If there is a downside to Harris’ pivot to challenger status, it is that she spent less time telling her personal story. Voters seeking to learn more about the vice president will have added few new layers to their acquaintance with someone who would be America’s first female president. But Harris’s meteoric rise and momentum over the last 50 days has been underpinned by her modest acknowledgement that, for the universe of her potential supporters, this election is not actually about her.
Harris is counting on the logic that voters seeking a fresh start will tolerate some uncertainty in exchange for the promise of something new. And she assumes that, after the White House’s successful run of legislative achievements and a remarkable “soft landing” from a year of inflation spikes, the change people desire is more a change of directors than a change of direction.
Mere weeks before the Nov. 5 election, she has arrived.
Justin Gest (@_JustinGest) is a professor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, where he directs the Public Policy program. He is the author of six books on the politics of immigration and demographic change, including his newest, Majority Minority.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
