Trading out President Joe Biden for Vice President Kamala Harris might help the Democrats retain the White House, but anyone who believes Harris is a strong candidate should consult the 2020 election cycle.
The 2020 Democratic primary was the most progressive presidential primary in American history. All candidates, including moderates like Biden, ran to the left of former President Barack Obama. After Biden won the primary, the COVID-19 pandemic and unrest following the murder of George Floyd rocked the nation. This chaos led to an especially heated general election cycle.
During her brief primary run, Harris failed to appeal to Democratic voters. Lacking any sort of policy vision, she tried to ride the fence between the centrist and progressive candidates in the primary. Despite starting with massive media and donor support, she failed miserably, dropping out before the Iowa caucuses.
Her most notable moment was when she attacked Biden’s opposition to federally mandated school busing. Harris used her own experience of benefiting from school busing in California to criticize Biden. These comments later became awkward for Harris as she ended up joining Biden on the Democratic ticket.
The moment fit into a pattern for Harris: The heavily racialized politics of the day shaped Harris’s rhetoric, as seen following the shooting of Jacob Blake by police officers in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Blake had fought with officers prior to the shooting and was armed with a knife when shot. These factors led prosecutors not to charge the officers involved. Despite these circumstances, Harris said, “We also see pain, hurt, and destruction in the aftermath of yet another black man shot by police. … The shots fired at Mr. Blake pierced the soul of our nation. It is sickening to watch. It is all too familiar. And it must end.”
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While these comments were electorally on key for 2020, the country has changed since then. There has been a shift to the right nationally since the excited days of 2020. The narratives that worked then are unlikely to succeed now. Instead, the 2024 election is shaping up to be a race to the middle, as seen in former President Donald Trump’s rhetorical shift toward unity and the new GOP platform.
Her positioning to the left of Biden during the 2020 Democratic primary and her progressive remarks throughout the election will provide easy fodder for attack ads by the Trump campaign. On top of this, her past as a prosecutor will make her less appealing to progressive voters. She’s riding high now, as she did early in the 2020 primaries — but we all know how that ended.