Election 2024: Kamala Harris Makes Her Case to the Nation

Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic presidential nomination last night with a powerful, well-structured, and well-delivered speech. Her remarks elicited thunderous applause from the 4,000 delegates assembled at Chicago’s United Center and capped off a four-day gathering that showcased the Democratic Party’s unity rather than revealed its divisions.

Harris’s speech was heavy on her biography. That was by choice. While she is famous, most Americans know little about her, what she believes in, and what she intends to fight for. It is a truism of American politics that if you want to win votes you need to persuade voters that you understand their challenges and are willing to fight for them. By stressing her modest roots where her mother “kept a strict budget” and her work as a district attorney and then attorney general going after criminals who preyed on others, she did both.

She then turned her sights on Donald Trump. She recalled “the chaos and calamity when he was in office,” highlighted his role in instigating January 6, and pointed to his conviction on fraud charges “by a jury of everyday Americans, and separately…found liable for committing sexual abuse.” But her primary message to voters was even more cutting. Trump is not fighting for you. Instead, he is fighting “to serve the only client he has ever had: himself.” She returned to his theme repeatedly throughout the speech.

Harris laid down markers on the three major issues in the campaign: the economy, abortion, and immigration. In each case, she stressed that Trump is out of step with the rest of America. His proposed tax cuts won’t benefit the middle class but rather “himself and his billionaire friends.” His plans to curtail abortion and birth control show that he and his supporters “are out of their minds.” And on border security, “Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign, so he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal.”

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the night was Harris’s turn to foreign policy. She didn’t shrink from the subject or try to glide by it with a few anodyne comments. Knowing she had to pass what pundits like to call the “commander-in-chief test,” she leaned into the topic. She planted herself squarely in the tradition of U.S. presidents dating back to Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman—with Trump being the outlier—as believing in the importance of U.S. global leadership. There was no talk of America coming home. Rather, she committed herself to being “steadfast in advancing our security and values abroad.” And she pledged that “as commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” 

In laying out her foreign policy approach, Harris painted Trump as outside the mainstream with his disparagement of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen, his attacks on NATO, and his refusal to hold “autocrats accountable because he wants to be an autocrat himself.” To drive the point home, she vowed that “as president, I will never waver in defense of America’s security and ideals, because in the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand, and I know where the United States belongs.”

Harris also addressed the question of Gaza, looking to thread the needle by supporting Israel’s right to defend itself while recognizing the scale of Palestinian suffering. She offered no simple solution. None exists. But she pledged to work “to end this war, such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.”

Harris closed her speech by sketching her vision of what American can be:

I see an America where we hold fast to the fearless belief that built our nation and inspired the world. That here, in this country, anything is possible. That nothing is out of reach. An America where we care for one another, look out for one another and recognize that we have so much more in common than what separates us. That none of us—none of us has to fail for all of us to succeed.

The contrast here with Trump was implicit. He is running a campaign fueled by anger and resentment. She is running a campaign of “optimism and faith” that believes that “the greatest democracy in the history of the world” can become even better.

The big question now is what kind of “bounce” Harris will see in the polls. She trailed Trump by nearly two percentage points nationally at the start of August. She now leads him by a point-and-a-half. The convention attracted millions of viewers, drawing bigger audiences than the Republican National Convention did. Just as important, the convention was devoid of significant “off” moments that might have alienated persuadable voters.

That said, a big polling bounce seems unlikely. Undecided voters look to be in short supply. Seemingly everyone already belongs to Team Blue or Team Red. The Republicans held what was widely regarded as a successful national convention last month. However, Trump’s support rose by less than a percentage point in the ten days after the gathering adjourned. That was less than half the average post-convention bounce since 1968.

So the overall race will remain tight with the next potential inflection point the Harris-Trump debate on September 10. Pessimists can point to a long list of challenges that could derail Harris’s momentum. But Democrats have to be pleased that they are leaving Chicago with a clear and upbeat message for the country.

Campaign Update

The Democratic Party released its party platform this week. The document was approved by the party’s Platform Committee before Joe Biden dropped out of the race last month, which explains the 271 references to “President Biden.” (“Vice President Harris,” in comparison, shows up twenty-five times.) Foreign policy is the focus of chapter nine, the report’s final chapter. It’s titled “Strengthening American Leadership Worldwide.” It’s impossible to say how different the platform’s foreign-policy planks would have been had they been written for Harris. But the fact that she okayed the release of the platform as is suggests that she doesn’t have any deep-seated disagreements with it. Her approach to foreign policy will track Biden’s general approach even if it doesn’t replicate it.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could end his third-party presidential bid as soon as today and endorse Trump. Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, who has been footing much of the bill for the campaign, signaled on Tuesday that their campaign might need to end to prevent a Kamala Harris presidency. Trump responded to the news by saying he would “be open” to naming Kennedy to a post in his administration. The two men spoke before the Republican National Convention last month about just that possibility, though nothing came of that conversation. Kennedy’s support in the polls has sagged since it hit double digits in the spring. It now stands at around 4 percent. His endorsement may not help Trump much. Kennedy’s support comes from voters who look to be less likely to vote than other Americans. Of course, if a race in a critical state is sufficiently tight, even a few additional voters could decide the outcome.

I noted last week that Trump had yet to appoint a transition team that would lay the policy and personnel foundation for his second term should he win in November.  As the post was going up, Trump announced the leaders of his transition team. Howard Lutnick, the chairman and CEO of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, and Linda McMahon, the head of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s presidency, will co-chair the Trump transition team. Trump’s two oldest sons, Donald Jr and Eric, will serve as honorary chairs. Political junkies are already assessing what the choice of transition team leaders means for the direction a second Trump presidency might take. But treat all such speculation with speculation. The last time around Trump fired his transition lead immediately after Election Day and then started over from scratch.

OpenAI announced late last week that Iran had attempted to use its generative artificial intelligence technologies to spread misinformation. The company said it closed the accounts before much harm was done. According to an OpenAI official: “We did not see signs that it was getting substantial engagement from real people at all.” In related news, U.S. intelligence agencies this week confirmed that Iran was behind the hack of the Trump presidential campaign.

One of the wildcards in Election 2024 is the impact of recently enacted laws around the country tightening voter requirements and expanding the powers of local election boards to question results. Those changes are likely to provoke legal challenges. Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Arizona to enact part of a law tightening voting requirements while striking down another part. Across the country, the Georgia State Election Board passed new rules giving local election boards expanded powers to delay certifying election results. The election board also called for a recount of the 2020 state presidential vote. The former move drew criticism from Georgia’s Secretary of State, while the latter move was rebuked by Georgia’s Attorney General.

Construction began this week of the platform on the west front of the Capitol Workers that will hold the presidential inauguration. The platform is being built with, among things, 110,000 linear feet of lumber and 1,363 sheets of plywood. The overall responsibility for planning and orchestrating presidential inaugurations lies with the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. Once the president is sworn in, lumber used to construct the platform is donated to local charities for housing projects.

What the Candidates Are Saying

At a rally on Saturday, Trump claimed that “a tariff is a tax on a foreign country. That’s the way it is whether you like it or not.” He didn’t stop there. He added: “It’s a tax that doesn’t affect our country.” 

Trump: A tariff is a tax on a foreign country. A lot of people like to say it’s a tax on us. No… It’s is a tax that doesn’t affect our country. pic.twitter.com/NNyNthZbKg

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 17, 2024

Sorry, but no. On both counts. Foreign producers do not send to their goods to the United States along with a check made out to the United States Treasury. Tariffs, or what are also called customs duties, are paid by U.S. firms or individuals who import goods. Full stop. And like any tax, tariffs affect the U.S. economy. The U.S. importer can choose to eat the cost of the tariff and sell their products at whatever the price would have been in the absence of the tariff. But that means, all other things being equal, lower profits, which is why importers will pass along as much of the cost of the tariff as they can to their customers. That means higher prices, which is why so many economists warn that Trump’s tariff plan would be inflationary. The consequences of tariffs don’t end there. Other countries may retaliate by levying their own tariffs, which will hurt U.S. exporters and their employees. The classic example is the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930. Although Smoot-Hawley didn’t create the Great Depression, it helped deepen it. If you prefer a more recent example, read about how Trump’s 2018 tariffs on imports of aluminum and steel affected the iconic motorcycle manufacturer Harley Davidson.

Trump and Vance spoke on Wednesday in Asheboro, North Carolina, in what was billed as remarks focused on national security. Trump had trouble staying on topic. At points he complained about what Barack Obama and Michelle Obama had said about him at the Democratic National Convention the night before, asking rally goers, “Do I have to stick to policy?”

When Trump did discuss national security, he focused primarily on the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying that he would demand the resignation of every senior military officer involved in the withdrawal still on active duty. He also railed against a woke military and vowed to get “critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our U.S. armed forces.” And he mocked Harris for being an inept diplomat:

Remember when Biden sent Kamala to Europe to stop the war in Ukraine. She met with Putin, and then three days later, he attacked. How did she do? Do you think she did a good job? She met with Putin to tell him, ‘Don’t do it.’ And three days later, he attacked. That’s when the attack started.

There is a problem with what Trump said. It’s not true. Harris didn’t meet with Putin on the eve of Russia’s invasion. In fact, she has never met him. What she did do in February 2022 was attend the Munich Security Conference where she met with U.S. allies. That didn’t prevent Trump from repeating the falsehood on Fox News yesterday morning.

What the Pundits Are Saying

Robert Kelly argued in Foreign Policy that Trump will disappoint supporters who think he will take a hardline in dealing with China. In Kelly’s view, “Realist hopes for Trump and Vance assume an intellectual discipline that both men lack and elevate geopolitical trade-offs that are less acute than realists admit. Trump is lazy, unread, venal, easily bought, susceptible to autocrats’ flattery, captive to the ideological fixations of his domestic coalition, ignorant of U.S. strategic interests, and dismissive of alliances that amplify U.S. power. Vance is ostensibly more clear-eyed, but he is a foreign-policy neophyte in the pocket of Silicon Valley donors, including his mentor Peter Thiel. He has been a senator for less than two years, before which he was a financier and author whose interests were local.”

Abdelhalim Abdelrahman argued in Foreign Policy that the Biden administration’s support for Israel is alienating Palestinian-American voters. He warned that “Despite polls currently projecting Harris to win Michigan, the vice president should not get comfortable too quickly. Her lead is still slim, and she would be wise not to underestimate Arab American voters.” 

Foreign Policy’s Michael Hirsch wrote that Harris has been shaped by serving as Joe Biden’s vice president but is fashioning her own, distinct approach to foreign policy. In Hirsch’s view, Harris “represents the next generation of national security experts steeped in newer, high-tech threats that the Cold War generation represented by Biden is less familiar with. These encompass an array of ​​cyber threats, including election hacking and surveillance from abroad, allegedly including from state-run companies such as China’s Huawei; threats from space, such as reported Russian or Chinese plots to disable GPS systems; and over-the-horizon risks from artificial intelligence and quantum computing.”

What the Polls Show

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs this week released the results of poll questions it asked Americans in late June about Ukraine. Seventy percent of Americans think that a likely or somewhat likely consequence of a Russian victory in Ukraine would be “a military confrontation between Russia and NATO allies in Eastern Europe.” Despite loose talk about Americans turning inward to escape problems overseas, the Chicago Council found that “only a quarter of Americans (26%) say the United States should withdraw its support for Ukraine entirely. The remainder prefer to maintain current levels of support for Ukraine indefinitely (47%) or take a more activist approach and support the United States intervening militarily to quickly end the war in Ukraine’s favor (24%).”

The Campaign Schedule

The second presidential debate is in eighteen days (September 10, 2024).

Donald Trump’s sentencing hearing on his New York felony convictions is in twenty-six days (September 18, 2024).

The first in-person absentee voting in the nation begins in Minnesota and South Dakota in four weeks (September 20, 2024).

Election Day is seventy-four days away.

Inauguration Day is 150 days away.

Olivia Doran assisted in the preparation of this post.