Harris embarks on race to reintroduce herself before Trump defines her

Long caricatured by Republicans, Vice President Kamala Harris is hoping to reintroduce herself to the public as she seeks the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination and takes over President Joe Biden‘s reelection campaign apparatus.

Although some members of the public have been familiar with her since her unsuccessful 2020 Democratic primary campaign or know about her shaky start to her vice presidency, Harris and her aides are looking to steady her and the Democratic Party after Biden upended this year’s election by announcing last weekend he was stepping down as their nominee.

Almost 100 days before this November’s election, should Harris, 59, secure the Democratic nomination, it could change the dynamics of the contest against former President Donald Trump because it creates opportunities for Democrats to reconnect with the party’s base, particularly young and minority voters who have become disenchanted with Biden due to his age and foreign policy.

“I was a courtroom prosecutor,” Harris said Monday during her first in-person political appearance at her campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware. “In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds: predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type.”

With the Trump campaign rethinking its strategy considering the former president’s own problems appealing to women, Trump and his team have underscored Biden and Harris’s shared record, especially regarding the southern border, in addition to her weakness with white voters and those without a college degree in the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

“Just as Donald Trump fired Joe Biden, he will demonstrate to the world he can fire dangerously liberal Kamala as well,” Trump campaign co-managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles wrote in a memo Monday. “It’s a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to defeat not just one Democrat nominee for president, but two — in the same year!

“Border Czar Kamala Harris owns the border invasion,” the pair added.

The Trump campaign also recirculated an ad it cut after the debate, tying Harris to Biden and arguing that she was part of a Democratic cover-up protecting Biden, that the process of her likely nomination has been undemocratic, and that she has California liberal positions on the border, Black Lives Matter, the Green New Deal, and Medicare for All.

While past polls surveying a Trump-Harris head-to-head matchup were hypothetical, they found the former president was ahead of the vice president in the so-called blue wall states but routinely by a smaller margin than Biden.

Franklin & Marshall College Center for Opinion Research Director Berwood Yost, who is based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, repeated Biden “was really struggling among the state’s voters” despite his working-class “Scranton Joe” persona.

“The state was slipping away from Biden, and his decision to drop out resets the race,” Yost told the Washington Examiner. “I still think Trump has an advantage here, but it is probably a smaller advantage.

“Perhaps the most important change is that Harris’s elevation might help the Democrats consolidate their base, given Biden’s many troubles energizing those voters,” he said. “That would go a long way in helping Democrats carry PA in the fall.”

Yost added, “What is true here is probably true in the other battleground states.”

To that end, after weeks of Democratic disillusionment following Biden’s debate, the Biden-turned-Harris campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and their joint fundraising committees raised $81 million during the 24 hours after Biden endorsed Harris as his successor, according to staff.

“That includes more than 888,000 donors, 60% of whom are first-time donors this cycle,” Harris campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz wrote.

“We’re seeing a surge in organizing, with more than 28,000 individuals signing up to volunteer with the campaign who had not volunteered before,” Munoz added. “That is more than 100 times an average day for the campaign.”

Among the Harris campaign’s first moves was an overture to young voters, embracing Generation Z terminology and internet memes to amplify a future-focused message as it contends Trump, now the oldest presidential nominee in history, is fixated on the past. As the first black-South Asian female vice president, black women have welcomed her promotion, but it remains to be seen how well she will be received by black men who have become enamored with Trump.

It additionally remains to be seen how the Harris campaign will be different from its Biden counterpart in terms of policy and personnel as Republicans pledge legal challenges to her candidacy, though she announced she was retaining campaign Chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon and manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez on Monday. Harris, too, may be able to distinguish herself from Biden on the Israel–Hamas war thanks to her more pro-Palestinian rhetoric, choosing not to attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s address to Congress this week, and second gentleman Doug Emhoff being the first Jewish second spouse.

“Voters are craving authenticity right now and Kamala has an opportunity to reintroduce herself to the American people,” Democratic strategist Mike Nellis told the Washington Examiner. “If she shows up, listens, and speaks to people’s concerns on the issues that matter, she can win anybody over. I’ve seen it firsthand.

“She needs to introduce her own vision and plan for the economy, which is something I don’t think Donald Trump has done,” Nellis, who consulted on Harris’s 2020 campaign, said. “If we remind people how disastrous Trump’s economy was for the middle class and small businesses, we can overcome the legitimate concerns people have about the current economy. There’s a lot of work to do, but there’s only one candidate in this race who actually cares about everyday Americans and it’s not Donald Trump. He only cares about himself.”

As the Harris campaign races to reintroduce the vice president, producing signs, websites, and ads, before Trump can undermine her using the same, outside pro-Biden groups, such as EMILYs List and the Lincoln Project, paid for new spots on her behalf.

“Harris is the warrior America needs to soundly defeat Donald Trump and Project 2025,” the Lincoln Project wrote. “While we thank President Biden for his outstanding presidency and tenure of service, it’s time to turn a new leaf and re-energize voters towards achieving the goal Lincoln Project has held from Day 1–stop MAGA once-and-for-all at the ballot box this November.”