Vice President Kamala Harris knows how to create a honeymoon. Keeping the love going has been tougher.
Ms. Harris is surging in the presidential polling right now, taking a lead over former President Donald Trump as voters give her a first look now that she is the Democratic nominee for the November ballot.
Her campaign and the political pros watching it are well aware that she has been here before, in 2019, when she sought the Democratic presidential nomination. A July polling surge saw her double her share of support among primary voters, but she squandered it as she ran a cautious campaign amid a crowded field.
Avoiding that caution will be critical this time around, said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston.
“The lesson that Harris must learn from 2019 is to accelerate her momentum with methodical granular campaign operations — not assume her momentum is a wave she can easily ride indefinitely,” he told The Washington Times. “Her advisers may opt to protect a polling lead, but at some critical point in the next three months, she may have to follow her gut and abandon the advice of the older white guys who are currently consulting on her campaign.”
There are plenty of reasons why 2019 was different, and some of Ms. Harris’ collapse was because of the chaos of a lengthy and very particular Democratic race. She struggled to find her lane amid a primary field that offered voters several other minority candidates as well as ideological choices, from Sen. Bernard Sanders on the left to then-former Vice President Joseph R. Biden on the less left.
That won’t be an issue now, where she faces a three-month sprint to Election Day and faces just one opponent, Mr. Trump, in a race where she starts with a massive built-in level of support from committed Democrats. Her task now is to win — and hold — the middle-of-the-roaders.
In speaking to political operatives and analysts about her primary campaign, two themes emerged: She was too cautious and was ill-served by her campaign team, which didn’t have a national reach and was consumed by conflicts.
“The challenge is going to be internal rivalry and navigating the different elements of the Democratic party and what that looks like,” said David McCuan, a political scientist at Sonoma State University who has tracked Ms. Harris for years.
According to YouGov/Economist polling, Ms. Harris was hovering at about 7% support among Democratic primary voters in June 2019, squarely in the middle tier. Then came her big opening, a primary debate, where she zinged front-runner Joe Biden for his past support for segregationist policies that hurt Black children.
“That little girl was me,” she said, delivering a rare one-line gem.
By early July, she had doubled her polling to 14% and was suddenly in the top tier. By August she slid to 8% and kept dropping. She bottomed out at 4% in late November and withdrew from the race on Dec. 3, 2019, well before the first primaries.
“Harris’ July move was a blip and she did virtually nothing to coordinate/connect the progress she had made and to build on her momentum,” Mr. Paleologos said in an email. “In fact, she became more cautious and would equivocate on nearly every major issue frustrating Democratic voters who saw other Democrats who were articulating crisper messages.”
Republicans are expecting a repeat performance.
“Remember, in the 2020 Democrat Primary, Harris dropped out a month before the first vote was even cast,” Sen. J.D. Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, told supporters at a campaign rally in Nevada. “She was so unpopular she polled in the single digits even among Democrats her entire campaign.”
Mr. McCuan, though, said Republicans shouldn’t count on a collapse.
He said Ms. Harris has proved to be a remarkably resilient politician, winning San Francisco’s district attorney’s race in 2002 by ousting the incumbent. In 2010, she ran for attorney general, quickly cleared the field of some key Democratic opponents, then won a tough race against Republican Steve Cooley, who was district attorney in Los Angeles at the time.
She won California’s open Senate seat in 2016 and then stumbled in her presidential campaign before Mr. Biden revived her ambitions by picking her as his running mate. Last month, after Mr. Trump chased Mr. Biden from the race, he anointed her his successor.
“From attorney general to Senate, she learns on the fly how to be a better candidate,” Mr. McCuan said. “That gives her some momentum, some space, some visibility and some confidence.”
He also said the “short runway” of a three-month campaign gives her less time to coast and wear thin. Plus, she has had the chance to see what wasn’t working for Mr. Biden and to start fresh in some of those areas.
“That makes her really problematic if you’re Donald Trump and Republicans,” he said.
Mr. McCuan said he will watch to see how Ms. Harris handles looming flashpoints. She must be more nimble than the Biden team, he said.
He said she appears to have a good start with her early change of position on fracking.
In her ill-fated 2020 campaign, she supported the controversial oil extraction process. Now, according to her campaign, she has backed off the ban as she tries to court voters in swing-state Pennsylvania.
Ms. Harris also won plaudits from her party for her pick Tuesday of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running made. Democrats saw it as a safe move that had some appeal to all corners of the Democratic coalition.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.