The race to define Kamala Harris, as Pelosi endorses her and no challengers emerge

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Kamala Harris may well be unstoppable as the Democratic nominee – no one has emerged to run against her – but an ugly brawl over defining her will not be so easily won.

The vice president has been a nationally known figure for nearly four years, but has never had to operate under the searing scrutiny of a presidential nominee, and with just a month to go before her party’s convention. Even with Joe Biden’s endorsement, she faces an uphill battle against Donald Trump, who’s just come off a hugely successful convention and the miraculous survival of an attempted assassination.  

The Trump narrative: Kamala is weird, with a strange laugh, an awkward speaking style and a foreign-sounding name (which some Republicans insist on mispronouncing, like Democrat Party).

She is a radical left-winger from San Francisco who makes Biden look like a raging moderate.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, July 22, 2024, during an event with NCAA college athletes. This is her first public appearance since President Joe Biden endorsed her to be the next presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Harris owns the failures of the Biden administration, especially at the border, where Biden nominally put her in charge. And she shares the blame for rising inflation.

She was complicit in a coverup of the president’s frailty and declining mental acuity, helping hide that from the public.

Harris ran an abysmal campaign in 2020, not even making it to Iowa, a true measure of her political incompetence.

The Harris narrative: She is a former prosecutor taking on a crook.

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(This is an actual example. I got an email from the Harris campaign – which has obviously taken over the Biden mailing list – saying "Kamala Harris stands up to fraudsters and criminals. Donald Trump is a convicted felon.")

The real issue is Trump, who is a danger to democracy, consumed by personal grievance and would return the White House to the days of constant chaos.

Harris would bring energy and vigor to the presidency. At 78, Trump, some Democrats are saying, perhaps with tongue in cheek, he’d be the oldest person ever elected to the White House.

Republican presidential candidate and former president, Donald Trump, speaks during the final day of the Republican National Convention Thursday, July 18, 2024, in Milwaukee.  (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Trump’s idea of dealing with a porous border was to cruelly separate children from their families. 

The former president could pull out of NATO and abandon Ukraine, boasts of his relationship with Vladimir Putin, and speaks admiringly of such authoritarians as Kim Jong-un and Viktor Orban. 

Harris has consistently been underestimated in her rise to the top of California politics.

My take: Kamala Harris is a bit odd, but that also makes her interesting.

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She is definitely to the left of Biden, having endorsed Medicare for All during the last campaign.

Harris did run a lousy campaign last time.

The rate of inflation has slowed, but people don’t perceive it that way, so the economy (remember Bidenomics?) does hurt her.

The airwaves will be filled with Harris’ circuitous "word salad" answers, but those are mostly from her first two years and she is sharper now, especially since she became the administration’s point person on abortion rights. Still, that first impression may prove indelible.

The question of whether she hid Biden’s infirmities from the public is definitely fair game, and undoubtedly true, but she can just say she was being a loyalist.

Trump would probably not leave NATO but would likely seek a quick settlement that would allow Russia to keep part of Ukraine. He almost never criticizes Putin.

He was convicted in that flimsy Stormy Daniels case, but has successfully portrayed all four indictments as the administration’s weaponization of law enforcement, which only boosted his poll numbers.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speak during a press conference at the NATO summit in Washington, on July 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Harris went to Wilmington yesterday to thank the campaign staff, and Biden called in with rambling remarks. I think that was a mistake.

When the vice president got around to going after Trump, she tied it to her record as a prosecutor.

Harris said she took on predators who abused women, and "Donald Trump was found guilty of sexual abuse.

"I took on the big banks," while Trump was found guilty of "34 counts of fraud."

She also took pains to lay out an agenda. "Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency," while Trump gave "huge tax cuts to big corporations….We are not going back." She spoke of the freedom to vote and to live safe from gun violence.

But Harris said some things that were either exaggerations or simply not true.

She said Trump put Social Security and Medicare "on the chopping block," whereas he said as early as 2015, in interviews with me and others, that he would protect those programs.

In talking about reproductive rights, she said Trump would "sign a national abortion ban." He’s specifically denied that and said under the Dobbs ruling it should be left to the states.

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi, who is more responsible than anyone for the leak campaign that led Biden to step aside, endorsed Harris yesterday, and the president remains furious with the former speaker.

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Joe Manchin also said yesterday he won’t get into the race. Gretchen Whitmer, who had been considered a possible contender because she runs Michigan, said yesterday she’ll be co-chair of the Harris campaign.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who would be the second Jewish nominee on a major-party ticket, and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear also backed the VP.

So who’s left to challenge her? What Democrats would want to risk their career for a likely loss, especially given the racial and sexist repercussions if the first black woman and first of Asian-American descent were to be passed over. One of the oldest sayings in politics is you can’t beat someone with no one.

That has shifted attention to the newest veepstakes, the search for Kamala’s running mate. It can’t be Gavin Newsom because they’re from the same state. The choice of Whitmer would ask voters to accept an all-female ticket, and she says she doesn’t want to be VP.

Besides, as Trump has told me and others, people vote for the top of the ticket. While it doesn’t hurt to have a No. 2 from Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin – Harris will be in Milwaukee today – it hardly guarantees a win in those make-or-break states.

A mere taste of the coming media environment comes from Axios:

"Harris' time as vice president has been occasionally rocky, defined in part by large staff turnover…Of the 47 Harris staffers listed in 2021, only five still worked for her as of this spring…

"Former Harris aides told Axios the high turnover is partly because of how the vice president treats her staff."

What Harris will probably do is generate more enthusiasm among black voters, many of whom had abandoned Biden, or among independent women who are wary of Trump. And her camp says she raised $81 million online in the 24 hours after the announcement.

But Harris fares about as well as Biden when matched against Trump, who still has to be considered a strong favorite.

Oddly, some on the right – including the editors of National Review – say if Biden is unfit to campaign for reelection, he shouldn’t be in charge of nuclear weapons now and should resign. That, of course, would give Harris a four-month head start as president.

Trump says he wants to move the planned September debate with Biden on ABC to a Kamala debate on Fox News, which I don’t see happening. But it may be that the VP sees no benefit at all to debating Trump.

It was a peculiar situation yesterday when Harris’ first event since the announcement was filling in for the Covid-stricken president at the annual honoring of collegiate sports champions. She dealt with the official event by praising Biden and his record of accomplishment.

Her team soon realized that wasn’t much of a reintroduction to America and quickly scheduled the Wilmington visit.

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Unsolicited advice: Kamala shouldn’t appear with Biden at all, except at the convention, because he’s very unpopular. She’s got to carve out her own identity over the next 105 days to get out of his shadow. It doesn’t matter how much she loves him, she’s at the top of the ticket now and has to stop deferring to him.

Kicker: Donald Trump donated $6,000 to Harris between 2011 and 2013, when she was state attorney general, USA Today reports. Trump said in 2016, "I’ve given to Democrats. I’ve given to Hillary. I’ve given to everybody! Because that was my job." Which is true.