Kamala Harris: who is the Democrat’s new candidate for the 2024 presidency?
Harris has frequently made the news in the days since Biden’s withdrawal, but what exactly is she promising in order to win back voters?
Known for her liberal policies and tough-on-crime approach to governance, Kamala Harris’ ’whirlwind campaign’ according to NPR, has raised more than $200 million so far and dominated recent political news. But what does her political past look like, and how does she plan to go head-to-head with Trump, one of the most polarising candidates in history, for the 2024 presidency?
Past career:
Kamala Harris began her career as a courtroom prosecutor, introducing herself as ‘for the people’, which later became her 2019 presidential campaign slogan.
As she progressed to becoming the District Attorney of San Francisco and later Attorney General of California and United States Senator, Harris reframed her tough on crime notoriety to being ‘smart’ on crime, positioning her more in the centre of the political spectrum. Whilst her policies were not typically progressive in the sense of reducing incarceration, she has been a champion of alternatives to incarceration for non-violent first-time offenders, such as her ‘Back on Track’ job training program.
However, her 2019 presidential bid was largely unsuccessful due to a combination of harsh scrutiny of her past criminal justice record and opposition to her race and gender from political opponents.
Despite this, Harris soon became the running mate of Joe Biden and as of January 2021 was elected Vice President – not only the first woman to hold this position, but first black American and first South Asian American as well. This is significant as it represents her long-time advocacy for increased representation of women and people of colour at all levels of government.
2024 presidential strategy:
Her anti-crime approach is clearly positioning herself as the antithesis to Trump, who is now a convicted felon. Where Trump supports tight abortion bans, Harris vows to reinstate ‘the protections for reproductive freedom’ (despite not yet detailing how she plans to do so). Where Trump is a convicted felon on 34 counts, Harris is a former tough-on-crime court prosecutor.
So far, this strategy of leaning into a prosecutor vs felon narrative appears very successful - a recent Tiktok video of her now famous speech “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” currently sits at over 3.6 million views.
But is this ‘lesser of two evils’ strategy going to be effective enough to win her the election? Dustin Siggins, PR consultant and former political journalist, suggests ‘it will really depend upon how effective the Trump campaign is about getting those negative stories out there’.
Currently, ‘Harris's candidacy is met with equal measures of hope and doubt within the United States. On one hand, supporters appreciate her progressive stance on issues such as criminal justice reform, healthcare and environmental conservation. However, due to her background as a prosecutor, she has also received backlash from both sides of the political divide’, according to Chuck Warren, US politics expert and host of the Breaking Battlegrounds politics podcast.
‘I think there is a percentage of the middle that just isn’t quite sure what to think, because again, they just haven’t looked deeply into her and her policies’ adds Siggins. ‘There is a lot of contradiction in her very recent, last 6-8 years, of her political history, that I think will shape how she’s viewed by the wider public’.
Did Harris take over the Democrat campaign at the right time?
Several influential figures in the Democratic realm ‘clearly wanted Biden to withdraw- when you have that kind of fighting going on, the faster you can eliminate that, the better. So from that perspective, it was the right time’.
However, her sudden assumption of the Democratic party nomination without a primary vote by the public has led to backlash from groups such as Black Lives Matter, who labelled the new campaign ‘undemocratic’ in a statement on 23 July and reiterated concerns that ‘we have no idea where Kamala Harris stands on the issues, now that she has assumed Joe Biden’s place, and we have no idea of the record of her potential vice president because we don’t even know who it is yet’ . The group went on to say ‘black people have been loyal Democratic voters, but time and again, the party has taken our votes for granted and prioritized political theatrics over our real needs’. In this way, Siggins argued, ‘it does look a bit problematic for a party that’s proclaiming itself to be pro-democracy’.
He added ‘all in all I think it's a net positive because clearly Biden was going to create more strife than support and unity within the party. So I think it's a net positive, but not by as much as it might otherwise have been.’
How is Harris perceived in the political realm? Does she provide serious competition for Trump?
Referring to the now- infamous CNN debate between Trump and Biden, Siggins suggested ‘it was the first time the public was able to get a window into Joe Biden’s cognitive difficulties’, therefore Harris assuming this heightened leadership role automatically ‘evened out the race’. This is reflected in the most recent approval ratings from ABC News, which show her approval rising to 43%, compared to Trump’s 36%.
Despite this, according to Warren, Harris’ campaign will still concentrate on maintaining the Biden administration’s key stances on ‘economic disparities, access to healthcare and action on climate change’ in order to maintain the stability of support from her predecessor’s own base. However, Harris is currently at a crucial point in her campaign during which she must quickly forge her own separate identity, which she has begun to accomplish by focusing on the issues that matter most to liberal voters, such as reproductive rights.
To improve her approval ratings and secure more voters, Harris needs to maintain a charismatic, approachable persona in order to appear relatable to the wider public. So far, Harris has opted to achieve this goal by targeting a younger Gen-Z demographic via the Kamala HQ TikTok account, in an innovative approach to connect with the public via memes and trending sounds. Similar to the UK’s General Election earlier this summer, this is the first time in American politics that we are seeing mass engagement with candidates in such a parasocial way. If Labour’s landslide is anything to go by, then Harris too could have victory on her horizons.
So why should Britain care? How important is this election, really?
Every four years, we see the same repeated message that this presidential election is the most important one ever, with an emphasis on how the United States’ political outcome will impact foreign policy with Britain and the world.
‘Is this really the most important one, or just the one that’s the most online?’ questions Siggins.
However, considering the United States’ growing crises of mass misinformation and distrust in authority, combined with the immediacy of social media, the outcome of this election is extremely important for the future of public trust. This election is less about economic policy and has instead arguably been reduced to Trump vs. not-Trump, a race which has now been turned upside down by the introduction of Kamala Harris.
Where did you get the quote from our host, Chuck Warren? He did not say "Harris's candidacy is met with equal measures of hope and doubt within the United States. On one hand, supporters appreciate her progressive stance on issues such as criminal justice reform, healthcare and environmental conservation. However, due to her background as a prosecutor, she has also received backlash from both sides of the political divide"