Has Harris peaked or is her best yet to come?

The presidential election may turn on whether Vice President Kamala Harris is closer to her peak or her rise has only just begun.

By Monday night, Harris inched ahead of former President Donald Trump in the two-way national RealClearPolitics polling average for the first time. She has a somewhat larger lead in FiveThirtyEight’s average, though it is still small, about the size of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 popular vote margin, which did not translate into an Electoral College majority or the presidency.

Democrats hope this is a trend, whereby Harris rides a wave of favorable press coverage to an enduring lead, finally overtaking Trump. Republicans are hopeful that this is what Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio called the “Harris Honeymoon,” a temporary sugar high.

There are external events that could nudge the race in either direction. Harris is about to announce her running mate. Democrats will soon gather for their convention in Chicago. Then Trump will be sentenced in the New York hush money case in September.

At the same time, there are economic warning signs that could put the focus back on an issue where Trump still leads. There could be more war in the Middle East, further undercutting President Joe Biden’s promise to restore normalcy after a turbulent Trump term. A recent Wall Street Journal poll found that 51% approve of Trump’s time in the White House in retrospect. There are also new questions about what the border problems of most of the last four years mean for the risk of terrorism.

There are two ways to look at the race. One is that after weeks of euphoric coverage and renewed Democratic energy, Harris has effectively settled into a tie before Trump is done defining her for battleground state voters. The other is that Harris has managed to do in a little over two weeks what Biden was unable to do in months and the honeymoon could last long enough to see her through the election.

One Republican pollster told the Washington Examiner that it is actually good for the party to lose “the false sense of a landslide,” which is the word the Atlantic used to describe the kind of win Trump and his campaign believed they could secure against Biden before he dropped out.

“This is waking Republicans up,” the pollster said. “It’s not going to be a cakewalk. We have to work for it.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) complained of Republican “overconfidence” and the “air of celebration” at the GOP convention in Milwaukee, held before Democrats switched from Biden to Harris.

Biden was unable to sustain any positive momentum in his abortive reelection campaign. Democrats were worried about whether he or his team were up to the challenge of beating Trump before the June 27 debate. That disastrous encounter removed all doubt for many Democratic insiders, sparking an unprecedented revolt against the sitting president and presumptive nominee.

Enter Harris, an unpopular vice president whose first presidential campaign imploded in 2019. She has found herself having to jettison much of the platform she ran on during that bid, though unlike her initial pronouncements, the reversals have largely not come in her own voice. 

Harris’s entrance has nevertheless been good enough to make the race more competitive than it has seemed in months. Harris is a better communicator than the 81-year-old Biden. Because there are no questions about her age and mental acuity, Harris can stick to tightly scripted events without incurring political damage. And this campaign will be shorter than normal.

The Trump campaign has been surprisingly slow to find its footing against Harris, even though Biden was left teetering on the edge for nearly a month and she was the most obvious, and most favorable, replacement. Republicans could have in theory faced a pair of Rust Belt governors instead. But all that could change soon.

Even many Democratic operatives think this could just be “irrational exuberance.” Democrats lost hope in a close race in which Trump was slightly but consistently favored. Some progressive, black, and younger Democrats have come home, and nearly all of them are feeling better about their electoral prospects than when Biden was the candidate.

Whether “brat summer” is as good as it gets or is the beginning of Harris permanently resetting the race remains to be seen. Harris may be peaking too soon, but for Democrats, that still beats hitting rock bottom in late June.