Can Kamala Harris Be the Symbol of a New Political Era?

A new day, and not just for Democrats. Photo: Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

When Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential contest and endorsed his vice-president as his successor, Kamala Harris enjoyed as quick and thorough a coronation to become party nominee as anyone could have imagined. All the talk of an “open convention” or a “blitz primary” that would find some ideal candidate without Harris’s perceived shortcomings vanished almost instantly as every party faction and every interest and constituency group dutifully, and soon enough joyfully, embraced the long-time heir apparent. All the comparisons of Biden’s situation to that of Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 fell apart upon the realization that totally unlike LBJ’s veep, Hubert Humphrey, Harris would be in an unassailable position going into her party’s convention. And in addition to a united party, she inherited Biden’s formidable campaign organization and sizable treasury.

But it has gotten even better than that for Harris: Because Biden’s age and deteriorating vigor and communication skills had become an even bigger problem than dissatisfaction with his record or policy platform, the substitution of Harris for the 78-year-old president felt like the arrival of a fresh breeze, and not just to Democrats worried about a loss to Donald Trump. A grim rematch between two unpopular old white men, which much of the country seemed to dread, was reset overnight by this relatively young, multiracial woman who offers a very different option.

Or does she? Harris isn’t an AOC or a Pete Buttigieg, signaling a millennial wave finally sweeping away boomer pathologies. She’s 59 years old, and this is her seventh race for public office (she’s climbed from district attorney to state attorney general to U.S. senator to vice-president). Her refreshing running mate, Tim Walz, is another boomer, a year older than her and often described as everyone’s favorite grandpa. Neither Harris nor Walz has been a conspicuous dissenter from any of Biden’s policy decisions or issue positions; indeed, Harris has been universally praised for the intense loyalty she displayed toward Biden as he slowly came to recognize the need to pack it in.

So potentially the Harris-Walz ticket can enjoy the best of two worlds, leading a united incumbent party without all of the baggage of the incumbent president. More importantly, Harris can offer something Biden obviously could not: a way out of the political era symbolized by both Trump and Biden, for which there was a sizable constituency just waiting to be mobilized. It was an absolutely poisonous symptom of Biden’s basic problem that for the first time in living memory, Democrats were hoping for a low-turnout election while seeking to blow-torch non-major-party options like the independent candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to which voters unhappy with the Biden-Trump choice might resort. And much as Kennedy’s own claim that Democrats and Republicans are an indistinguishable “uniparty” is completely absurd and dangerous, there’s not much question that voters were becoming equally tired of the octogenarian leadership of both major parties. It’s probably not a coincidence that Harris’s advent has been accompanied by a decline in support for Kennedy.

Republicans may grumble that Harris cannot avoid responsibility for the unpopular aspects of Biden’s record, particularly on issues like immigration and inflation where voters mistakenly but clearly think Trump had the more successful presidency. But Harris’s sudden appearance at the top of the Democratic ticket is presenting them with a real dilemma: Do they simply treat her as Biden 2.0 and continue the 2024 campaign as originally planned (without all the references to a senile or puppetlike opponent), or do they acknowledge Harris’s distinct persona by focusing on politically vulnerable positions she took during her brief 2020 presidential campaign, or in the Senate, or as a state official in wicked California? It’s looking more and more as though they will take the bait and depict Harris as far more of a radical leftist than Biden, if only they could get their own candidate to lay off the blatant racism and sexism and nursing of stupid grievances long enough to point at Harris and yell: “Communist!”

Perhaps this old-school McCarthyism will work once again to distract persuadable voters from Trump’s and the GOP’s own extremism. But it could also help free Harris from Biden’s shadow and allow her to stand for a political future full of possibilities that Trump would destroy instantly in a self-absorbed second term dominated by vengeance. It certainly looks like the Harris-Walz campaign glimpses a big opportunity here:

If we hear more and more about “the future” in Harris’s communications going forward, it will be clear she’s aiming at voters who are less interested in “making America great again” than in putting the past firmly in the rearview mirror. Her novelty as a presidential candidate has already turned around a Democratic campaign that was floundering on the very edge of viability. If she can take shrewd steps to avoid being McCarthyized (which she will be free to do given her party’s unified determination to take down Trump) and take advantage of the fresh start she has come to represent, then she can win over voters who had written off Joe Biden entirely. And what was looking to be a teeth-grinding effort to convince the country that anyone would be preferable to a vindicated 45th president could remain joyful and upbeat right up to and beyond November 5.