Kamala Harris has four days left of her astonishing honeymoon with the US electorate. By the time the United Center’s cleaning staff are popping the previous night’s balloons and sweeping up the placards and streamers on Friday morning, she will have set the template for the remaining 75 days of the campaign. Having spent five, often surreal, days in Milwaukee at the Republican National Convention last month, I have no doubt that Chicago will offer a study in contrasts. The race has changed beyond recognition in the few weeks since Milwaukee — and to a degree nobody that I know, or know about, had anticipated. The mood in the convention hall reflected a rising sense of excitement that Donald Trump was on course to win, possibly by a large margin.
As I wrote then, Republicans were delighted to have Joe Biden as their opponent and wanted things to stay that way. Two days after Milwaukee, Biden stepped down. Since then, America has felt like another country. Harris has trademarked the “joy”, picked a relatable and cheerful running mate in Tim Walz (a near polar opposite to JD Vance), cornered that intangible power of momentum and shifted the poll numbers. The law of gravity suggested this cannot go on indefinitely. The manner in which Harris presents herself to the American public this week will determine whether she emerges with a traditional convention boost that can be sustained, or finds herself in an all-too-familiar 50-50 race that has Democrats asking their pharmacists for Xanax refills.
I strongly recommend this Atlantic essay by the always excellent Ron Brownstein on why Harris has far greater scope than most nominees to define herself afresh. In a nutshell, Harris is one of the least known presidential candidates in modern times. She had the good fortune of avoiding a messy and revealing primary campaign and has unusual capacity to tell her story in the way that she wants to. Brownstein suggests Bill Clinton’s 1992 convention as the model Harris should emulate. Clinton was perceived by much of the country as a draft-dodging, Ivy League-educated baby boomer brat. In New York, the boy from Hope unveiled his hardscrabble Arkansas upbringing. This came as a surprise to many Americans. Clinton also meshed his biographical story well with his economic message for America’s middle class.
It is of course the then vice-president Hubert Humphrey’s nightmare Chicago convention in 1968 that Brownstein urges Harris to avoid. Much of that will be out of her hands. Much like 1968 was derailed by the battle between Mayor Richard J Daley’s cops and the counterculture anti-Vietnam war protesters, the “March on DNC” group of pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist and anti-war groups say they are expecting as many as 40,000 demonstrators in Chicago this week. It would not take much to go wrong for a sense of chaos to enshroud the DNC. In the hopes of avoiding Chicago’s history, Harris has sensibly promised to give the anti-war voices a hearing inside the convention hall. But she cannot control what happens on the streets outside.
We already have a foretaste of what Harris will unveil. In her first big economic speech in North Carolina on Friday, Harris vowed to go to war with corporate “price gougers”, tackle so-called greedflation and offered a generous $25,000 subsidy for first-time home buyers. These were the controversial bits. Swampians will be unsurprised to hear that I do not admire the economics behind these proposals. The bureaucratic price controls that Harris is offering have a bad history of leading to unintended distortions, including higher prices.
For anyone who needs a refresher on price interventions, see New York and San Francisco’s Kafkaesque rent controls, which restrict supply and raise prices. My generous side tells me that Harris is playing smart politics and will modify the bad economics if she gets elected. We shall see. I am more impressed by her vows to expand the so-called care economy, which would bring US paid family and sickness leave up to western standards. She would also aim to dent poverty by renewing the child tax credit and giving $6,000 to parents with newborns. We have yet to be told how Harris would pay for all this. But her broader goal is laudable. America is a massively rich country with a scandalously large precariat. The disparity in life opportunities in America is deeply unfair and economically counter-productive. Broad-based growth is the right goal.
Lauren, you were also in Milwaukee and I much look forward to seeing you in Chicago this week. My question to you is what does Harris need to do to sustain her auspicious opening phase? Can it last? What should be her minimum goal in Chicago?
Latino voters were once considered a reliable bet for Democrats. But with each passing election, Republicans are making more inroads with them. The FT’s Houston correspondent Myles McCormick unpacks this shift on the Swamp Notes podcast.
Recommended reading
-
I went back on the road last week to visit Pennsylvania’s Lehigh and Northampton counties, and the city of Allentown, which are traditional bellwethers for this must-win swing state. There I found a surging Harris presence on the ground and the Trump campaign’s strange absence, particularly among Hispanics, which could be the decisive vote in November. Pennsylvania is slipping from Trump’s grasp.
-
Do read my colleague Emma Agyemang’s seminal Big Read on how the super-wealthy are leaving the UK and the Netherlands for more favourable non-dom treatment elsewhere. Beneficiaries include Switzerland (no surprise), Monaco (ditto), Dubai, Singapore and Italy. Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government is right to redress a system that is skewed to a ridiculous degree towards plutocrats. But there is a price to be paid for fairness.
-
Talking of billionaires, do also read my colleague Pilita Clark on why Elon Musk’s far-right trolling is doing great harm to Tesla’s brand among consumers in the UK and among his natural carbon-virtuous liberal market in America. As I wrote last week, Musk is a dangerous figure and people are starting to pay closer attention.
-
Finally, The Washington Post’s George Will offers a sobering and bleak reminder that Democrats do not have a stellar record of running big cities — in this case Chicago. Swampians of the liberal variety should read Will’s piece and tell me where he’s wrong. To my surprise, I agree with him.
Lauren Fedor responds
Ed, it is hard to believe it has only been a month since we were in Milwaukee, watching Donald Trump accept his party’s nomination in a rambling, 92-minute speech that struggled to hold the attention of even his most enthusiastic supporters.
As you say, so much has changed since then, in ways none of us could have anticipated. I admit to being surprised by just how successful Kamala Harris has been at launching her eleventh-hour campaign — and how quickly the polls have shifted in her favour. The energy on the ground at rallies I have attended in recent weeks has been electric, and I expect we are going to find a lot of fired-up Democrats this week in Chicago.
But Harris still has her work cut out for her, particularly if she is going to capitalise on the opportunity to reintroduce herself to tens of millions of Americans who are likely to tune in to the convention from home.
On the campaign trail, I have been struck by how relatively little Harris has said. Her speeches clock in at under half an hour, and she has shied away from media interviews and press conferences — all part of a tightly managed messaging strategy that, at least for now, seems to be working.
However, while I would not advise Harris go on for 92 minutes when she accepts her party’s nomination on Thursday, the vice-president also has a once-in-a-lifetime chance here to define herself in the eyes of the electorate — one she cannot afford to squander if she is hoping to ride the wave of this month’s momentum into November.
Her speech will be preceded earlier in the week by a valedictory address from Joe Biden and remarks from both Clintons and Barack Obama that risk stealing the spotlight. It will be interesting to see how Harris follows their acts — and whether she can take a page from her party’s more skilled orators and weave her personal story with a distinct political message.
Your feedback
And now a word from our Swampians . . .
In response to “Memo from Europe: what would a Kamala Harris presidency mean?”:
“The US is running a deficit that will be impossible to sustain . . . . Whichever candidate wins the presidency, they are going to be looking for a drawdown of military commitments to Europe. The Asia Pacific will be the priority for the US going forward. And would a Harris presidency push Congress to pass another aid bill for Ukraine on the scale they have recently succeeded in doing after such an epic struggle? The optics will be kinder with Harris in charge, but the pressure to increase the share for defence spending on Europe won’t go away.” — FT commenter sun carriage
Read the full article here
