CHICAGO – Over and over, from the massive stage in the electric convention hall, the Democrats this week predicted Kamala Harris would defeat Donald Trump. They described her as a historic figure, the embodiment of hope, “the president of joy.”
But amid the extraordinary optimism, former first lady Michelle Obama offered a sober warning: “No matter how good we feel tonight or tomorrow or the next day, this is going to be an uphill battle.”
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The word of caution was quickly drowned out by the excitement that overwhelmed the standing-room-only 17,000-person arena in downtown Chicago. But as activists, operatives and party leaders leave the Democratic National Convention and fan out across America, a stark reality exists: The real test for Harris has only just begun.
More than a month after President Joe Biden stepped aside and endorsed her, Harris has barely started to outline detailed plans she would pursue as president to address the nation's biggest challenges — immigration, crime and climate change, among them. She has yet to sit down for even one comprehensive media interview to face difficult questions about her flip-flops on policy in recent years, her leadership style and the focus on race and gender that looms over her historic candidacy.
“We can't put our heads in the sand. She’s a Black woman. The bar is going to be higher for everything,” said John Anzalone, a pollster who has served the last three Democratic presidential nominees. “And guess what? That means, even mistakes. Mistakes are going to be magnified.”
At the same time, Harris' allies acknowledge that she remains largely undefined in the minds of many voters, having operated in Biden's shadow for much of the last four years. The relative anonymity offers both opportunity and risk.
"The bad thing about vice presidents is that nobody knows who you are. The good thing about vice presidents is nobody knows who you are," said David Axelrod, who served as former President Barack Obama's chief strategist.
Preparing for the debate
Harris now has just over two weeks to prepare for what could be her only presidential debate against Trump, a Sept. 10 showdown that could dramatically shift the direction of the race. The first presidential debate, of course, effectively forced Biden to drop out of the race.
For now, Harris' team feels no urgency to roll out a comprehensive policy platform or sit for media interviews that might jeopardize the positive vibes that have defined her nascent campaign and produced a flood of campaign donations and a growing army of swing-state volunteers.
During a series of meetings throughout the convention week, her advisers cast her policy agenda as a continuation and expansion of Biden’s first-term achievements, particularly on economic matters, even if it may look and sound different in some cases.
Harris has notably dropped her opposition to fracking and her support for Medicare for All, which were defining features of her 2019 presidential campaign. Her aides insist her values remain the same, but she’s embraced more centrist policies out of pragmatism.
“She’s going to work to support and lead pragmatic common sense policies that are going to directly relate to improving the lives of Americans,” said senior campaign policy adviser Brian Nelson.
Meanwhile, Harris' allies believe it's only a matter of time before Trump settles on an effective line of attack.
Trump's kitchen-sink approach against Harris
In recent days, the Republican former president has adopted a kitchen-sink approach against Harris that includes attacks about her racial identity, her laugh, her record as vice president and her history as a “San Francisco liberal.”
“He’ll figure out how to get a message and land a political punch,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who delivered a prime-time convention speech this week, said of Trump. "I think what you’ve seen with her is an ability to absorb the criticism and just keep going. And that is a really, really important political trait.”
Others acknowledge that the spotlight will only burn brighter in the 74-day sprint to Election Day. And it's far from certain that the “Harris honeymoon,” as Trump's team has described this phase of the campaign, will last much longer.
“People ask this question: Will people vote for a Black woman? And I actually think that’s always the wrong question," said Sarah Longwell, a fierce Trump critic as leader of Republican Voters Against Trump. "I think the question is, Will they vote for Kamala Harris, with her particular set of both skills and baggage? The biggest problem for Kamala Harris is that people view her as too progressive, and that’s going to hurt her with these swing voters."
Shifting public views
Polling reveals that voters' views of Harris have shifted relatively rapidly in the month since Biden stepped aside and she became the de facto nominee.
In a June AP-NORC poll, just 39% of Americans said they had a favorable opinion of Harris and 12% said they didn’t know enough to say.
After Biden stepped aside, an August AP-NORC poll found that 48% of Americans had a favorable opinion of Harris with just 6% saying they didn’t know enough to have an opinion. The latest poll also showed that 27% of adults have a “very” favorable opinion of Harris, up from 14% in June.
The sharp shift raises the possibility that public opinion could change again as voters learn more.
It also raises the possibility that Harris’ momentum has less to do with her candidacy than a sense of relief among Democrats that Biden stepped aside. Shortly before he left the race, an AP-NORC poll found that nearly two-thirds of Democrats said they didn’t want Biden to run again, and about half said they’d be dissatisfied if he was the nominee.
Young Democrats of America president Quentin Wathum-Ocama said his enthusiasm is based on a combination of relief that Biden stepped aside and excitement about Harris. Given her relatively low profile over the last four years, he conceded that even he does not know much about her governing plans.
As a public school teacher, he said he’d like to hear more about her education policy, for example.
“Do people know her? People are aware of her," Wathum-Ocama said. “I can be excited, but I still want more.”
He may be waiting a while.
A policy-lite campaign?
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, which has endorsed Harris, is a self-described policy geek. But she said that past Democratic efforts to outline detailed policy agendas failed to garner much traction with voters. She and various other Harris allies this week insisted that what matters most are the candidate's values.
The party's 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton, for example, produced more than two dozen policy papers exceeding 50,000 words with hundreds of detailed footnotes. Trump had virtually no detailed agenda that year. And Clinton lost.
“We used to do 10-point plans, they weren’t even satisfied with five-point plans,” Weingarten said. “I think that that’s not where Americans are."
Harris so far has released only a taste of the plans she would pursue as president. Convention delegates did not update the party's formal platform to reflect her wishes. In some cases, the document still references “Biden's second term.”
But some details have begun to come out.
Last week, Harris outlined a plan for her first 100 days to send Congress proposed federal limits on price increases for food producers and grocers. She also pledged to make permanent a $3,600 per child tax credit approved through 2025 for eligible families, while offering a new $6,000 tax credit for those with newborn children.
And she’s calling for the construction of 3 million new housing units over four years, along with expanding a Biden administration plan providing $25,000 in potential down payment assistance to help some renters buy a home.
Additionally, Harris wants to speed up a Biden administration effort that allowed Medicare and other federal programs to negotiate with drugmakers to lower the cost of prescription medications, aiming to cut the price tags of some of the most expensive and most commonly used drugs by roughly 40% to 80% starting in 2026.
Trump's campaign has been focusing on the lack of specifics from Harris' campaign and her refusal to sit for media interviews. They're also paying close attention to her momentum.
At Trump's rally in Asheboro, North Carolina, this week, 69-year-old assistant plant manager Jerry Zimmerman broke into a smile when asked about the Republican nominee's prospects for November. But he also predicted it would be “a lot harder” to defeat Harris than Biden.
He said it's possible that she wins.
“If they can prove that everything went fair, I’ll be cool with it," Zimmerman said of a potential Harris victory. “I think a lot of people will be cool with the outcome.”
There's little time to change course
Meanwhile, the compressed election timeline gives both candidates little time to dramatically change course.
Early voting begins in Pennsylvania, arguably the nation's most important swing state, on Sept. 16. By the end of September, voting will be underway in North Carolina, Minnesota and Illinois. The final votes will be cast on Election Day, Nov. 5.
Television ad space has already been booked as well.
Between Friday and Election Day, Republicans will spend more than $120 million on television advertising in the presidential contest, according to data compiled by the media tracker AdImpact. Much of the investment will focus on attacking Harris.
Democrats, for now, are on pace to spend more than twice that amount through Election Day, however. Harris and her allies have reserved more than $270 million in television ads in the 73 days from Friday through Nov. 5.
Still, Michelle Obama predicted it could be a rocky road to Election Day. Warning that Harris' team is sure to make mistakes, she encouraged Democrats to remain focused on the work needed to defeat Trump.
“The minute something goes wrong, the minute a lie takes hold, folks, we cannot start wringing our hands,” the former first lady said in her prime-time convention address this week. “We cannot get a Goldilocks complex about whether everything is just right. And we cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala, instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected.”
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AP writers Josh Boak in Chicago and Michelle L. Price in Asheboro, North Carolina, contributed.