The 2024 presidential election may come down to which of the two familiar candidates can make themselves new again to voters hungry for change.
Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is the incumbent vice president. Her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, served in the White House himself until early 2021.
Both have to make the argument that they somehow represent a break with the status quo in what could be a change election.
On paper, Harris would seem to have the more difficult argument. She is the second-ranking official in President Joe Biden’s administration. Biden trailed for months before a debate heightened concerns about his age, forcing him to drop out of the presidential race later than any previous major party candidate.
Unlike Biden, Harris isn’t 81. But the president’s age was only one of his problems. Voters were broadly dissatisfied with the current administration’s performance on a wide range of issues, including the economy, immigration, and foreign affairs. Harris had a hand in some of those policies. Nearly 65% believe the country is on the wrong track, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, compared to just under 26% who say it is headed in the right direction.
Yet from the moment Harris entered the race in relief of Biden through all four nights of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, there has been a concerted effort to make Harris new. Unlike Trump or Biden, she has never been president before. The influence of the vice president has always been limited and so, some voters think, should be her responsibility for what has happened under Biden.
Democratic convention speakers also reminded us that Harris represents change historically and demographically. She would be the first woman and only second nonwhite president. The campaign has certainly felt new since she replaced Biden, joy after the president’s increasingly maudlin and seemingly futile reelection campaign.
Borrowing a play from the Democrats’ most coveted celebrity endorser, this is Harris, Kamala’s version. With an electorate weary of Trump’s nine years on the national stage and Biden’s 52, it just might work.
Meanwhile, there have been polls suggesting a reappraisal of Trump’s tumultuous first term. He is now remembered more for pre-pandemic prosperity than his 2020 nadir. Inflation, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the pro-Hamas campus protests — these were all largely nonissues during his presidency.
That may qualify as nostalgia. But Trump has hinted he might want to represent a bigger change from the Democratic administration than he did in 2017. One example is the choice of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) as his running mate. Vance is both the youngest person on either ticket and represents a doubling down on populism rather than a bridge to the pre-Trump GOP, the role played by former Vice President Mike Pence and others who were key figures from the first term. Out are Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner; in their place are more MAGA family members like Donald Trump Jr. and Lara Trump.
In other words, Donald Trump is running to ratify changes in the Republican Party that make it more blue collar and working class. These are voters who are notoriously difficult to turn out or even to get to respond to pollsters, but perhaps Trump-Vance can do so this year. With Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent White House bid in its terminal phase, there is an opening to consolidate the most disengaged voters.
Harris has gained in the polls, expanded the electoral map to make competitive Sunbelt states that looked lost to Biden, and jump-started Democratic enthusiasm. Nevertheless, even after an extended Harris honeymoon period that stretched nearly a month from Biden’s exit to the end of the Chicago convention, the race is still within the margin of error both nationally and within the top battleground states.
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Donald Trump and his allies have to do everything they can to tie Harris to what has happened since Biden took office, reminding voters how they have felt about these last few years. They also must highlight her own past progressive positions that she took in public, in her own words, and on camera but mostly reversed through aides on background to the press.
Unless vibes prevail, Harris could be limited to the Richard Pryor defense: “Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying vibes?”
