Commentary: 6 reasons Kamala Harris has better odds than Clinton against Trump
By: ArcaMax
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Commentary: 6 reasons Kamala Harris has better odds than Clinton against Trump
Candy Woodall, The Baltimore Sun on Jul 24, 2024
Almost as quickly as Democrats took a sigh of relief after President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign, many also started holding their breath.
There was relief because a diminished, doubted 81-year-old candidate stepped aside and endorsed his 59-year-old Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee. After weeks of criticism and calls for the president to pass the torch, Biden was instantly loved and praised for his patriotism and selflessness in dropping out of the race.
But then the panic set in. Will the country elect a woman, let alone a woman of color, as president?
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.9 million in 2016 but not the Electoral College. Donald Trump claimed three blue wall states in 2016: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He lost them to Biden in 2020. Potentially facing a woman again on the ballot in 2024, could Trump win those swaths of the Rust Belt again?
While some voters spiraled into anxiety and what-ifs, a group of Black women got to work. Win With Black Women, founded by strategist Jotaka Eaddy, had a record 40,000 participants on a weekly Sunday Zoom call. Angela Alsobrooks, the Prince George's County Executive and Democratic Senate candidate, was among the callers. Together, the women raised more than $1.5 million in a few hours.
There were about as many people on that one Sunday call as there were votes lost to Trump in Pennsylvania in 2016. That quick mobilization and turnout are among the reasons Harris, if she's the nominee, is not a repeat of Clinton in 2016. Here are some other big reasons:
Roe v. Wade was overturned
When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned 50 years of settled law, they sent women to the polls across the country. Urban and suburban voters, Democrats and Republicans alike voted to protect abortion rights in their states, including in ruby-red places like Kansas. It ensured the "red wave" never came to fruition in the 2022 midterms, as voters still angry about the conservative-leaning court's decision elected Democrats up and down the ballot. Republicans gained a narrow lead in the House, but it was clear that the economy didn't drive people to the polls more than Roe did.
Harris has spent two years campaigning on this issue across the country. Don't be surprised if she successfully makes it a galvanizing issue in this general election. Even Republicans aren't underestimating reproductive rights, with Trump softening his position and trying to mute the issue during the recent Republican National Convention.
Mail-in voting
Clinton lost to Trump partly because she didn't attract the turnout Barack Obama had in 2012, especially in Philadelphia and Detroit. Democrats seemed to learn from that mistake in 2020. There's also a mail-in voting option in multiple states now, making it easier to cast a ballot without going to the polls on Election Day, including in battleground Pennsylvania.
Voters know how Trump governs
In 2016, Trump benefited from independents and moderates looking for a change. He was untested in national office and known mainly for his TV celebrity and ability to transform a rally into a reality show. But now voters have seen how he handles foreign and domestic policy, a global pandemic, the transfer of power, legal cases, and more. Unlike 2016, he'll be running on a record.
Women have grown into a powerful voting bloc
Clinton made history with her candidacy in 2016 as the first woman to serve as the presidential nominee of a major party. Though she lost to Trump in 2016, her movement did not end. Women across the country gained more determination to run for office at all levels of local and federal government, sending a record number of women to Congress in 2018. Two years later, suburban women played a consequential role in sending Biden and Harris to the White House.
Trump is still Trump
The former president had a massive opportunity at the RNC to punctuate his comeback from political pariah to a strong, sympathetic shooting victim. But the 30 minutes he spent on unity was overshadowed by an hour of his not-so-greatest hits. Trump spent a half hour trying to appeal to the moderates and independents he will need to win swing states and an hour throwing red meat to his base. Strategically, it didn't make sense.
His base has proven they will be with him no matter what. If he's going to double down on his brand of name-calling, fear-mongering, unsubstantiated claims of a stolen election, and bizarre musings about the "late, great Hannibal Lecter," he will not attract any more voters than he did in 2020. He will shrink his support, and that will help the Democratic nominee.
No Comey surprise
There's unlikely to be an October surprise from the FBI director this year. It's wise to never say never in politics, especially with more than 14 weeks until the general election. Still, it seems improbable that there will be a last-minute move against the Democratic candidate, as we saw with former FBI Director James Comey in 2016. When he described how Clinton and her aides were "extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information," many Democrats felt he swung the election in Trump's favor.
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Candy Woodall is the opinion editor at The Baltimore Sun. She wants to know how you feel about Kamala Harris as the potential nominee and can be reached at cwoodall@baltsun.com.
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Trump has a ceiling that can be readily overcome. Harris just has to run a strong confident campaign.
Vance couldn’t have made their panic more obvious when he claimed that Harris would be “a million times worse” than Biden. For an accomplished author, he sure hasn’t been choosing his words very carefully.
Harris was chosen to be Biden's VP because of identity politics....that she is a woman of color. That kind of thinking will likely persist as she starts to campaign, ignoring the issues that are important to most of the electorate. Her problem is that she is forever tied to Joe Biden's performance and policies....she went along to get along. So there's that.
Even more worrisome for her campaign is her record and remarks as a Senator. She has the distinction of being the most radically liberal Senator in Congress, even to the left of Bernie Sanders....look it up. Everything she has said and done in politics is going to be under the microscope, and the reveal won't be pretty. And yes, she would turn out to be much worse than Biden.