It is a monumental task, but the early signs have bowled Democrats over and a fresh gust of elation has swept through the party
Just a week after the Republican convention ended on a note of triumph, a fresh gust of elation has swept through the Democratic PartyUS vice-president and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaking earlier this week during her first campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Harris has to convince the voting public that she has the stuff that makes enough people want to believe in her.
“A little sugar ... a couple of peppercorns, even do a slice of orange, somethin’ like that ... Oh yes, hi ... I’m here. Okay ... I’m gonna talk about a recipe while you are checking, is that okay? ... she’ll tell me if I’m annoying her ... okay ... so Nick ... if you’re ... a dry brine is easier ... 48 hours ... kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, maybe a little thyme ... oh, I have one minute ... do the salt and pepper all over, just lather that baby up ...
But what stood out was not so much what Harris said that evening as the striking contrast she made to what had been a dismayingly incoherent, embittered debate between the two elder figureheads of their respective parties. “It has been phenomenal. Normally the Democratic Party is full of splits, divisions and conflicts. You know the old cliche: Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line. Well, it has been reversed. You have the Democratic Party united in a way it hasn’t been for years. It is so far away from 1968 as to be unimaginable.
“The main attack will be the DEI thing and that is going to backfire,” predicts Smyth. “We’ve been through the Hillary campaign already, the electing-a-woman thing, but in my view Kamala has a charm and a credibility that is unusual in a political candidate. A sort of infectious energy that was hidden for a while, but is very apparent and natural now.
This radical reinvention of the Democratic campaign gives the republican convention the appearance of a distantly remembered event. All the speeches directed at attacking Biden, often in deeply personal terms, are instantly outdated. Harris’s campaign against Trump will be bruising.
It sounded like a message to her immediate opponent as much as to anyone else. Combating Trump’s aggressive, no-holds barred campaigning style will be just one of the challenges facing Harris. Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation expert, led a study four years ago on gender abuse and disinformation against female political candidates. They found some 336,000 pieces of abuse directed at 13 candidates over a two-month period – from both the Republican and Democratic parties. But 78 per cent of that figure was directed at Harris, much of it sexualised, some of it transphobic and the milder iterations attacking her as a DEI candidate.
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