U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris, delivers remarks to the women and men's National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Champion teams in her first public appearance since President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, on the South Lawn of the White House, Wash., U.S., on July 22.Nathan Howard/Reuters
No doubt recent weeks have been kind to Donald Trump’s Republicans. Mr. Trump drew sympathy for surviving an assassination attempt, and his party staged a triumphant convention; all the while the Democrats stalled, wondering what to do with their over-the-hill President.
The upshot sees the Republicans with freight-train momentum seemingly in command of the race. But don’t bet on the surge lasting. With Joe Biden having announced that he will drop out of the race, the Democrats are now well-positioned, with three-and-a-half months to go until election day, to turn this campaign around and win in November.
The reasons?
1. The Republicans just lost Joe Biden, their number-one vote getter. Mr. Trump very much hoped he’d stay in the race, as the President was positioned as the campaign’s bête noire. No such luck now.
2. The listing Democrats are suddenly turbocharged. Tens of millions in financial contributions poured in following the announcement of Mr. Biden’s departure. With the excitement and drama surrounding a new Democratic ticket, the party will be owning the airwaves. Mr. Trump, whose lifeblood is headlines, will hate it. Then comes the Democratic convention from Aug. 19 to 22, in Chicago. These pre-election propaganda bonanzas almost always provide a momentum rush.
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3. Mr. Trump blew a splendid opportunity to broaden his appeal beyond his troglodyte base at last week’s Republican convention. His interminable speech, featuring an avalanche of snake oil, appealed largely to red-meat eaters, not the independents he needs to win. In keeping with his rhetoric, he chose a hardline running mate in J.D. Vance who is likely to congeal the party’s appeal, rather than expand it.
4. As his track record illustrates, Mr. Trump is eminently vulnerable. The prevailing myth is that Trumpism is popular. Look again. After winning the 2016 election despite losing the popular vote, Trump-style populism lost in the 2018 midterms, lost in the 2020 general election, and had a dismal showing in the 2022 midterms. That’s three elections in a row and counting.
5. The Democrats have a potent get-out-the-vote issue on women’s reproductive rights. It was a major factor in their surprise showing in the midterms. With his shrill “drill baby drill” pronouncements at the Republican convention, Mr. Trump has energized anyone who cares about the climate crisis to beat a path to the voting booth. And unlike in 2020, Mr. Trump has put democracy on the ballot in big neon letters, this time owing to his spurious efforts to overturn that election result.
6. Though the Democrats have been battered by GOP disinformation, they have a good story to tell on the economy. Inflation is down to three per cent; the stock market is booming; unemployment is negligible; real wages are rising. The same is true for the crime rate, which has declined during the Biden years. Under Mr. Trump, it was far worse.
7. As a former prosecutor, Kamala Harris – the likely new Democratic standard bearer – knows how to attack more forcefully than Joe Biden. Though Mr. Trump was found liable last year of sexually abusing journalist E. Jean Carroll, Mr. Biden was hesitant to go after him because he had been accused of sexual misconduct himself. Ms. Harris, on the other hand, prosecuted sexual predators as California’s attorney-general from 2011 to 2017. She can hit him hard for his appalling treatment of Ms. Carroll and the many other women who have brought sexual-abuse allegations against him.
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8. The Democrats beat Donald Trump in 2020. Since then, he’s helped incite a mob attack on Capitol Hill; been convicted on 34 felony counts in a hush-money case involving a porn star; been indicted in several other criminal cases; and been pilloried as an incompetent ignoramus by numerous Republicans who worked for him during his administration.
9. If she’s the nominee, Kamala Harris comes with baggage. She was a bust as a presidential candidate before the 2020 election, she hasn’t made much of a mark as vice-president, she is vulnerable on the southern-border crisis, and she will be depicted by Trump reactionaries as a far-left coastal elitist. We don’t know how she will perform under immense pressure. She could wilt. But she’s been doing better than Joe Biden in polls, and her previous primary performance represents a small sample size. She has obvious appeal to voters of colour, and she’ll select a running mate who will help the Democrats in a key battleground state.
10. A majority of Americans have made clear in polls that they didn’t want either Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump running again in this election. In dropping Mr. Biden, Democrats have given them their wish. In sticking with Mr. Trump – even though Nikki Haley would have been a better candidate – the Republicans haven’t.