U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign event at the United Auto Workers local in Wayne, Mich. on Aug. 8.Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
Between the ages of 12 and 18, Kamala Harris’s home was Canada.
When her parents divorced and her cancer-researcher mom got a job at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital, the future vice-president of the United States moved to Montreal. She stayed for six years, living at least part of the time on shady Grosvenor Avenue. She attended École Notre-Dame-des-Neiges elementary school, then the English-language FACES arts school, followed by three years at Westmount High and one year of CEGEP – the equivalent of Grade 12 – at Vanier College.
In her 300-plus page autobiography, published in 2019 as part of her short campaign that year for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Ms. Harris devoted just six thin paragraphs to her time in Montreal. She does not name three of the four schools she attended. She mentions no friends, no teachers, no social life. The only thing she says about high school is that she worried whether her estranged parents could be civil enough to attend her graduation, and was relieved when they did.
The book contains 20 photos from birth to age 18. A third of that time was spent in Montreal, but not a single photo is from Montreal.
Ms. Harris’s autobiography portrayed it all as a (very) brief intermission between her American childhood and her American career. It’s not hard to understand why. You don’t want voters dwelling on how your formative years’ experiences may differ from theirs. You might seem, to borrow a line, weird.
Ms. Harris’s autobiography was an attempt to craft a political brand, and give her life story a clear arrow: Child of the civil rights movement; child of Berkeley activism; inspired by those values to become a lawyer, prosecutor and politician. The teen years in Montreal don’t fit. So down the memory hole they went.
I say all this not to condemn Ms. Harris. She’s a politician. Politics is marketing, and political autobiographies are marketing materials. Baggage that does not conform to electoral carry-on limits is shed.
Ms. Harris once performed the minor feat of minimizing her Canadian baggage. To get elected president, she is going to have to do something on a far larger scale with parts of her political record.
So far, so good.
Ms. Harris has spent the last five years suffering from a low public profile, a thin political resumé and the sense of holding weak policy views subject to swift reinvention. It’s why a lot of Democrats wondered if President Joe Biden needed to replace her as vice-president – until it became clear that Mr. Biden was the one who needed to be replaced, and then many Democrats worried that Ms. Harris would be a poor candidate. She was seen as something of an empty vessel.
That quality has suddenly become a powerful political attribute.
Over the last three weeks, a moribund Democratic electoral campaign has been re-energized. Ms. Harris’s arrival has been the reverse of the “vibecession” that the U.S. has been in for a couple of years, where Americans’ feelings about the economy are worse than the actual economy. The Harris campaign has been a three-week vibes high. Even without new policies or promises, a lot of voters feel like everything has changed.
For Donald Trump and the Republicans, it has been a confusing time. They were preparing to run partly on substance – yes, really – namely Mr. Biden’s record, or at least their characterization of it. The fact that Ms. Harris is largely new and unknown to most voters is a benefit to her, and a problem for Mr. Trump.
There’s also the fact that, unlike Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris is energetic, Barack Obama-level photogenic and great at winding up supporters at rallies.
However, despite spending the better part of a month at the top of the ticket, Ms. Harris has yet to give a single interview. As a journalist, I’m appalled; as an analyst of politics, I get it. Interviews and press conferences mean questions about policies past and future, including views she expressed during her 2019 campaign – and now wants to forget – on everything from the border to policing. It would be a real buzz kill.
The Harris campaign is rising without having to get into the policy weeds. Up next, the Aug. 19-22 Democratic convention will be a four-day advertorial for Ms. Harris, with a sugar high that will linger past Labour Day.
Then there’s the Harris-Trump debate on Sept 10. Ms. Harris has a history of being unsteady on her feet when discussing policy, but debating Mr. Trump is a test of strength, not substance. It will be a contest of confidence, will and scripted put-downs. Ms. Harris is good at all of that, and Mr. Trump may come off looking shallow and slow.
And then? Election day is Nov. 5, but early voting starts weeks earlier in most states, including on Sept. 16 in the key swing state of Pennsylvania.
All of which means the Trump campaign is already running out of time. They need Ms. Harris away from the teleprompter and facing as many questions as possible, in debates and interviews. It’s their best shot, maybe their only shot, at altering the path of this election – which appears to be on course for a Harris win.