As one, they have lined up behind Kamala Harris. Forget the bickering between progressives and moderates, the Democrats have buried the hatchet with a single goal in mind: to beat Donald Trump in the November 2024 presidential election. Since Joe Biden withdrew from the race for the White House, his vice president and his team have been thinking hard to avoid the rout of the 2019 campaign, when Kamala Harris was running for her party’s presidential primary.
“On paper, she was perfect,” recalls Lauric Henneton, a lecturer at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin. At 55, she was younger than many of her competitors, she had all the theoretical qualities on the identity side: a woman – many said that the time for a female president had come – of Indo-Jamaican origin. Her career as a prosecutor allowed her to tone down her image as a left-wing Californian from San Francisco… Except that none of that ever took off!”
The rising star of the Democratic Party, at the time senator of the largest state in the country – California, the fifth largest economy in the world – was nevertheless leading the polls at the beginning of her campaign. And bang! “Time and again, Ms. Harris and her closest advisers made the wrong decisions about which states to focus on, which issues to highlight and which opponents to target, while refusing to make difficult personnel choices to impose order in a campaign that was complicated to manage,” laments the New York Times at the end of November 2019, a few days before the candidate officially threw in the towel.
Immigration, its Achilles heel
Four years later, Kamala Harris has no room for error. In this race of a completely different dimension – since this time it is a question of seducing Democrats of all sides, moderate Republicans and the undecided – many obstacles remain in her path. Her record on migration is one of them, and not the least. “The main mission that Joe Biden had entrusted to her was to manage the migration crisis at the Mexican border, and she did not succeed in doing so, notes Françoise Coste, professor of American civilization at the University of Toulouse Jean-Jaurès. Now, immigration is Trump’s number one issue. So Republicans will campaign on this issue, they won’t budge!”
For once, they will be able to rely on figures – real ones! – that are not very flattering for the vice president. In fiscal year 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents processed more than 2.1 million migrant arrivals, a historic record well beyond the previous one, set in 2021, at 1.7 million.
“His initial role in the Biden administration’s immigration policy was to try to improve life in the countries of origin – El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala – so that migrants wouldn’t leave them,” explains Charles Kupchan, a professor at Georgetown University. A policy not so far removed from that of the European Union in Africa. “In addition, the administration – not just Kamala Harris, but first Joe Biden – had committed to introducing a more humane immigration policy than Donald Trump’s,” continues this former adviser to Barack Obama. “So he went back to larger quotas, reintroduced a normal asylum procedure, created this new app so that asylum seekers in Mexico could arrange interviews at ports of entry. So he did the right thing morally, but it led to an influx of people at the border.”
Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump and his followers take great pleasure in pressing on this weak point. In a television advert released on Tuesday 30 July, the Grand Old Party (GOP) declares in a martial tone: “She is America’s border czar, and she has betrayed us!” “Kamala Harris. Failed. Weak. Dangerously liberal,” concludes the spot.
“Kamala the cop”
To convince centrist Republican voters and independents, Kamala Harris will have to find the right angle of attack on this thorny subject. Her past as “California’s top cop” could help her. District attorney for San Francisco from 2004 to 2011, then for California from 2011 to 2017, Kamala Harris was often criticized by the left wing of her party for her firmness in these functions. Progressives then nicknamed her “Kamala the Cop”. “She was considered too far to the right on the security-judicial file, confirms Lauric Henneton. Which could suit her today, because it can please moderate Republicans, centrists and not-too-radical Democrats.” The problem is that Kamala Harris cannot afford to lose left-wing Democrats. “Her problem is that she is perceived as “too firm for progressives and too progressive for moderates because of his very left-wing positions on taxation,” summarizes Alexis Buisson, independent journalist based in the United States, author of Kamala Harris, the heiress (Ed. L’Archipel, 2023).
Here again, her failed 2019 campaign is the anti-model par excellence. The candidate had changed her mind several times on issues dear to Americans, such as health care reform. This time, she will have to build a stronger image, and quickly. Before the “Trump machine” steals this opportunity from her, hammering out her slogans on television and on social media. On the latter, the vice president has her aficionados. The “KHive” – ”the Kamala hive” – tens of thousands of fans who flood TikTok, X and Instagram with pro-Kamala Harris content.
However, it will take more than that to win over key sections of the electorate. Because of her very urban profile, coming from a privileged Californian background, a whole section of rural America – won over to the GOP since the 1980s – has difficulty identifying with her. An aggravating circumstance is that Kamala Harris is not known for her ease in “getting into the arena”, unlike Joe Biden in the past. “There is no recipe, she has to go shake hands at Taco Bell, take selfies, believes Lauric Henneton. We have to see what type of campaign she runs and the reactions she provokes: does it work or does she seem fake?”
“No running mate ticks all the boxes”
The choice of the vice president will also be crucial to counterbalance the weaknesses of the Democratic Party candidate. The name of Mark Kelly is circulating more and more. This former military man and NASA astronaut, very popular, is today a senator of Arizona, a state bordering Mexico. His speech, firmer than that of many Democrats on immigration, could be an asset for Kamala Harris. “The problem with Mark Kelly is that if he becomes vice president, he will vacate his senatorial seat, leaving room for an ordinary Democratic candidate, certainly less popular, for the congressional elections in 2026, continues Lauric Henneton. However, the Democrats, who risk losing the Senate in November 2024, cannot do even worse in 2026. That would be suicidal!”
Furthermore, Mark Kelly is not the right profile to help Kamala Harris win a swing state. Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, one of those swing states that can swing to either side, is the favorite in this arena. To speak to rural populations, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear or Minnesota Governor Tim Walz are certainly the best placed.
“No candidate for the role of running mate ticks all the boxes. They all have qualities, they can all help to win something, but they also all have flaws,” concludes Lauric Henneton. This time, Kamala Harris will have to make the right choices, starting with the best ticket for the White House. The vice president has three months to convince.
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