The Democrat National Convention in Chicago had a fantastic achievements, full of stars, shouts, unity, and excitement.
But Kamala Harris faces a much more challenging task as she battles her way through the final 72 days of what will be a harsh but nail-biting campaign to get elected president of the United States on November 5. And unlike last week, she wo n’t have any influence over the election narrative.
Even so, we should not underrate her ( and her party’s ) achievement. Harris has quickly risen from the opponent to the frontrunner after just one month since she withdrew as the Democratic Party’s candidate and having struggled for three and a half years as his vice-president due to low public approval ratings.
She is away of Donald Trump both in national opinion surveys and in the key state that will probably decide the election, especially Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Her guide is very low to inspire confidence, unless fresh polls show a remarkable change following the Democratic National Convention.
It is less powerful than Hillary Clinton’s result, which was held at the same time the 2016 presidential election. Harris’s direct has room to grow, but this still looks likely to be a strong challenge.
Last year, at the agreement, she and her group had to achieve three main things:
- Initially, they had to avoid discord over Harris’s election or, more precisely, over the Biden administration’s major foreign-policy horror, the war in Gaza.
- They had to begin to establish what she and the group believe in terms of both domestic and international affairs.
- Above all, they had to demonstrate that Harris and her running-mate Tim Walz, the chancellor of Minnesota, are a reliable team to hold the White House for the next four decades.
On the first job, the agreement was more powerful than most observers had anticipated a month ago. There were some protests against Gaza, but they were insufficient to distract attention and show no signs of gathering unity.
Events in the Middle East are uncertain enough that they could also cause Harris headaches in the run-up to the vote, but her remarks about how the “scale of human enduring” in the fight is “heartbreaking” established the right tone.
On the other side of the equation, voters rarely make up their minds in presidential elections based on particular policy positions. It is all too technical, abstract and probably tendentious for most people: some wo n’t understand policy stances, others wo n’t believe them.
What’s likely to matter is what these stances convey about the candidates ‘ fundamental attitudes and the apparent coherence of their thinking.
When analyzed in that way, the team has probably succeeded in conveying the idea that the primary Harris-Walz concerns will be the government will be the most, even though many proposals were at best half-baked.
- lowering the cost of living for regular people,
- curbing the excessive power of big, quasi-monopolistic corporations, and
- restoring fundamental rights, particularly those over abortion.
No one will be persuaded that illegal immigration is their magic formula, and many people are likely to be unsure whether or not they will succeed. Their best chance at resolving the border security issue will be to neutralize it, removing any advantages Trump might think he has.
Foreign affairs are infamously a sideshow in American elections. When I was at , The Economist , we would lament every four years about how little time and attention was given to America’s huge global role.
In terms of specific policy positions and countries, this year will be exactly the same. However, it does promise to be unusual in terms of the significant role that foreign affairs may play in defining the character of the opposing candidates, and it is likely that voters ‘ perceptions of character and behavior will determine the outcome.
By their words and performances over the past month, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have succeeded in presenting themselves as positive, optimistic and, in American terms, “normal” – all of which are key electoral attributes.
Their message that Donald Trump and his running-mate JD Vance are “weird”, “unserious”, deeply negative and in a variety of senses dangerous has proved to be both powerful and convincing.
Democrats have succeeded in capturing a word that is typically owned by Republicans, namely “freedom,” by focusing on the threat to reproductive rights, personal liberty, and democracy itself.
That should provide a solid foundation for the fierce combat of the upcoming seven weeks. What it has n’t yet done is to firmly and convincingly state that the Harris-Walz team is likely to provide strong leadership and credibility in the face of the unavoidable crises that will arise during any administration.
Harris addressed this by addressing the country’s difficult stance she would adopt toward China and Russia in her acceptance speech, as well as by bringing up Trump’s friendships with brutal dictators like Kim Jong-un in North Korea.
By doing so, she was attempting to demonstrate that she would be a strong, determined leader when she was sitting behind the president’s official desk, which is known as” the Resolute desk,” not because its user necessarily qualifies it as such, but because it was constructed in 1880 from the timbers of a British naval ship, the , HMS Resolute.
Using strong, even resolute words will not, however, be enough. Harris now must show that she can be strong and resolute when under daily fire from the Trump team, when questioned by journalists, and, in particular, in the one face-to-face TV debate that the two sides have so far agreed to hold, on ABC on September 10.
If I had to choose who will win on November 5, I would undoubtedly wager on Tim Walz and Kamala Harris, as well as on a vote for freedom, normality, and optimism. However, I would n’t want to take a chance too much on that outcome. There is plenty of room for new upsets and earthquakes along the way, and the race is expected to be close and tense.
Formerly editor-in-chief of The Economist, Bill Emmott is currently chairman of the , Japan Society of the UK, the , International Institute for Strategic Studies , and the , International Trade Institute.
Previously published on his Substack, Bill Emmott’s Global View, this is the English original of an article published on August 25 in Italian by La Stampa. It is republished here with kind permission.