MARK HALPERIN: Kamala battles to regain momentum after late-summer swoon

Before she became her party’s nominee for president, Kamala Harris had not made a substantial, discernable positive public impact during her nearly four years in the White House. She largely operated under the radar and fell short regarding some of her most high-profile assignments. 

She had not universally distinguished herself as a leader. She had not won over swaths of new fans. She had not fully earned her place as next in line. She was known more in Washington circles for her rocky relationships with her staff members and her sagging approval ratings than for anything she had actually accomplished.

To be sure, through the first few years of the Biden-Harris administration, the vice president received praise for assuming an outsize role in the fights for abortion and voting rights, and for building solid relationships with important foreign allies. Although mocked for her word salads and piercing guffaws, she did not overtly undercut the administration’s agenda. For those who saw her up close, she was impressive but not iconic, charismatic but not yet a superstar.

And on July 21, when Joe Biden stepped aside and Harris stepped in, she was good enough. Democrats and Never Trumpers had said it time and again. They just wanted someone healthy. Someone normal. Someone sane. Someone different. Someone not Biden, someone not Trump. Someone else.

I would vote for any functioning politician over Biden and Trump.

I would vote for that squirrel in that tree over Trump.

There’s no such thing as a perfect candidate.

The country needs to turn the page on tired, wacky, old men.

Harris is tolerable.

Maybe Harris will surprise us.

And surprise them she did.

On that sticky summer Sunday afternoon when Biden announced his decision to drop out of the presidential race and endorsed his number two to be the Democratic nominee for president, no one, not even Harris herself, knew what was going to happen.

A collective derecho-sized sigh of relief rose up from Democrats coast to coast, north to south, and every Blue enclave in between. 

President Biden’s disastrous June debate performance had exposed the extent of his decline and put a glaring and unequivocal spotlight on his limitations as a candidate and as a prospective second-term president. Democratic voters and staunch party loyalists, Trump detractors, Trump loathers, and Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers had all feared the worst: They were stuck with an acuity-compromised octogenarian who could not deliver the votes and would surely lose the election. And then, their unthinkable, impossible nightmare would occur—Donald Trump would return to the White House.

After several weeks of party pressure and serpentine political machinations the likes of which have rarely been seen in this country, Biden agreed to withdraw his reelection bid. Bypassing a Democratic Party nomination fight, he handed the torch to Harris. In a statement, Biden asserted that bringing in Harris as his vice president was ‘the best decision I’ve made,’ and offered ‘my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year.’

‘Democrats,’ he added, ‘it’s time to come together and beat Trump.’

This vigorous affirmation was standard but phony. Biden and his team, even members of the vice president’s office, had long thought Harris was not yet prepared to be president, and would be a weak candidate against Trump, maybe a doomed one. Some White House staff clung to the belief that Biden, with all his visible infirmity, remained the less risky option. Regarding their long-held view of Harris, they were as certain as they were worried.

Once Harris accepted the mantle from Biden, she seemingly became a political supernova overnight. She expanded, she leaned in, she improved. She showed charm and grit, confidence and swagger, grace and guts. She was, for the imperatives of the moment, great.

Democrats, once despondent over candidate Biden, now cheered as loudly as they had exhaled. The Dominant Media was euphoric—a fantastic story to cover, a Democratic heroine to bolster. The newspaper headlines and cable pontification surged beyond mere hagiography and well into farce. The blinders were firmly in place. The buzz words of summer were vibe shift and joy, and, of course, brat. 

Harris chose a running mate lickety-split, selecting Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz after a drastically abbreviated vetting process, and pulled off a strong convention in Chicago, which managed to be both dignified and buoyant. Harris was in command. Her polls were competitive, her fundraising boffo.

But vibes can’t sustain a presidential campaign, and supernovas, no matter how luminous and intense the explosion, fade within a few weeks. When the glow dissipated, voters were left with the same Kamala Harris they had before, the same Kamala Harris that always had been, the one about whom there were substantial doubts in her own camp. 

That Kamala Harris had no clear theory of the case for winning the race or governing, nor tested presidential-level skills. Reality set in. She began to stall.

By Labor Day, the brat summer had largely evaporated. The mood shift, it turned out, was not a national phenomenon at all, but rather a instinctive and manic reaction from the Democratic base.

By Labor Day, the brat summer had largely evaporated. The mood shift, it turned out, was not a national phenomenon at all, but rather a instinctive and manic reaction from the Democratic base.

Independents, double haters, and undecided voters, meanwhile, had taken a pause and paid attention, waiting to learn more about Harris’ positions and policy plans. But Harris didn’t set forth a rationale for her presidency, beyond blocking a second Trump term. By Labor Day, Harris had not challenged herself by sitting for a tough interview, nor offered consistent straight answers about her intentions once in office, nor reached out to Red America. She had not risked the customary ‘What my party has gotten wrong’ concession on anything, eschewing a way to show boldness and political self-awareness which every elected president since Bill Clinton had made a core part of their pitch.

Harris supporters enjoyed a fresh burst of adrenaline on Sept. 9 when Harris and Trump faced off in the presidential debate. Harris was performatively strong, but the debate ironically only highlighted her fundamental problem. She looked and sounded good, appeared relaxed and unflinching, and brilliantly manipulated Trump’s ego, but in front of a huge audience of engaged citizens, she neglected to hammer any hard facts or clarify her own agenda. It was a chillingly short-sighted example of style over substance, and an egregious wasted opportunity.

It was time for Harris to stop coasting on vibes and parables and start doing the work.

But could she?

Her professional history indicated that the arduous task of crafting a message and headlining a full-blown campaign might be an uphill climb. Biden and many White House operatives still feared Harris could not beat Trump, and their failed efforts to prepare her both for the presidency and the race remained still fresh in their minds.

Even those with short memories know that Harris had not in the past shown she was adept at assembling the basic building blocks of a viable national candidacy. During her extensive and prominent career in California, Harris made as many foes as friends, with a significant number of local Democrats, both political operatives and regular citizens, declining to support her enthusiastically or, in some cases, under any circumstances.  

Nor had Harris been a particularly distinguished or popular member of the Senate, unable to impress many colleagues on either side of the aisle. Indeed, some of her biggest detractors to date have been fellow senators who worked with her in the Capitol, although to be fair, she barely had time to establish herself in the position before moving out and up to the vice presidency. 

The presidential bid she launched in January 2019 ended before the year was up; she failed to convey a winning message or gain any traction, and she ran out of money before a single ballot was cast.  Postmortems on her campaign emphasized her apparent lack of decisiveness, authenticity, direction, and guiding principles.

The various criticisms that have threaded throughout Harris’ professional rise are intertwined with the weak filaments of her current campaign. For most of the fall, it has been difficult for her to drive a message. She has struggled to produce a winning soundbite from an interview or rally. Despite a freshly honed oratorical style, Harris has been too vague and cautious in her rhetoric to spark a crystallizing moment, a revelation of the soul. Her travel schedule for almost the entirety of the campaign has been curiously light, with few rallies, no coast-to-coast blitzes, and a lack of interconnection within her organization, the calendar and the polls.

The feeling remains strong, even among some Democrats who desperately want her to win, that the Harris who was on offer before her ascendancy to the nomination is the one too often on display now.  These Democrats see someone who is living in the moment rather than rising to the occasion.

If Harris loses on Nov. 5, it should be no surprise to anyone who has watched her political path these past several decades. The signs were all there. 

However, if Harris triumphs, sending Donald Trump once and for all into political retirement, at this point, it will be something somewhat short of a shock.

With less than three weeks to go, Harris is demonstrating new signs of life, hitting her stride and having more fun. Her latest anti-Trump tagline—unhinged, unstable, and unchecked—seems to have some resonance. She is emitting refreshing flashes of authenticity, as she pivots from something in which her heart seems divided (shredding her previously held liberal positions) to something she relishes (cheeky denunciations of Trump’s fitness for office).

Democrats are fired up, and the country is primed for a reset.  Harris has millions of supporters who are champing to vote for her, and not merely because they dislike Trump, or want to cast a ballot for a woman, or are true-blue Democrats. These citizens are voting for Harris herself now, because they have an appreciation for her accomplishments. Harris’ resume has always been solid and hard-earned—one must demonstrate true skill, stamina, and determination to become a United States senator and vice president. Despite the odd confluence of events that presented her with the Democratic nomination, Harris is now holding her own, in it to be sure, and with the potential to win it.

Even as the country hurtles towards Election Day, Harris still has time to meld her summer vibes with the steely gladiator focus that was on display this past week. Going up against Trump, one of the most formidable, most original, most agile campaigners of the modern era, is no simple feat. Among every other variable at issue in presidential campaigns, candidate quality matters a lot, perhaps most of all.

And no one ever said that winning the White House would be easy, even for a candidate – especially for a candidate, perhaps – who was given her party’s nomination without a fight.