“Something surprisingly magical is in the air, isn’t it?” Former First Lady Michelle Obama said In his speech at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday. “A familiar feeling that has been buried too deep for too long.”
“You know what I’m talking about? It’s the contagious power of hope!” He said, adding: “America, hope is making a comeback.”
The phrase came back during Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign in 2008 — when Democrats ran on hope and change.
But when you think about it, it’s kind of cruel to the Democratic nominee as Kamala Harris’ predecessor. Michelle Obama was quite clear that the party and perhaps the country had lost hope under Joe Biden and it took Harris to restore that hope.
Few Democrats have publicly acknowledged how bad the vibes got. Even before Biden’s disastrous debate with Donald Trump in June, his polling had been pretty poor for nearly a year. More and more of the party began to see defeat as highly probable, if not inevitable. Since then, hope has indeed returned, but in this new era of good feelings, few Democrats have publicly discussed how bleak it was.
The speech crystallized something fascinating about how the presidential race has changed over the past month — namely, that Harris seems to have become the “change” candidate who can hold hope for the future, even though his administration currently runs Washington and he’s the incumbent vice president.
In part, that’s because Harris is young — not an octogenarian or even a septuagenarian — and because his election would be a demographic first.
But it’s also because his opponent, Donald Trump, has already served as president and has steadily dominated the country’s politics and mindset over the past decade. Not only has Trump been mired in controversy and outrage from his first term, but at this point he has too much of a political history to credibly promise that he can truly lead the country in a new direction.
When the public is disaffected, a new, lesser-known change candidate can be a real advantage. Such a candidate can be all things to all people without being in power; They may represent the hopes of the people, yet have not disappointed them.
Barack Obama felt it was important to his political rise, “I act as a blank screen,” he wrote in his 2006 book. The courage of hope“On which people of various political stripes express their own opinions.”
Harris has benefited from a similar dynamic. He gave Democrats, and voters in general, who were disillusioned or disillusioned under Biden a reason to hope that he would be as different as they like.
This was demonstrated on Tuesday, when Sen. Both Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and former American Express CEO Ken Chenault spoke effectively about Harris not straying too far from each other. It also became clear that protests over Biden’s Israel policy were far less of a factor in the conference than many expected. And it’s front and center in the campaign rhetoric that Harris wants to move forward, not back.
The risk of being a change candidate is that you’re less experienced, but being a responsible VP helps Harris with that. For now, he appears to be reaping the benefits of experience working under Biden without any shortage of accountability for his record.
The Trump team now very much wants to reconcile Harris and Biden – blaming him for the inflation, foreign crises and border chaos that have occurred over the past four years. In the face of this onslaught, Harris’ job is to make sure voters see him as a new and hopeful future rather than the past.
