Democrats have obvious concerns about whether VP Harris will appeal to voters in key battleground states, even as they have rallied behind her candidacy in the six days since President Biden dropped out of the race.
Those concerns are overshadowed by growing euphoria for Harris within the party, who is widely seen as a much better candidate than Biden.
With a growing number of Democratic lawmakers endorsing Harris and polls showing a surge in her approval ratings and political donations, the party is hopeful that its base will mobilize and bring back younger voters.
At the same time, Democrats are concerned about how strong Harris is in key northern states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, three states that she would find very difficult to win without. Win the Electoral College.
“She’s done a great job not just uniting but exciting her base, but the key question now is whether she can appeal to the voters that Democrats have always needed to win,” one Democratic strategist said. “I think there’s still some concern about whether she can do that.”
A poll released Thursday by Emerson College Polling and The Hill showed Harris trailing former President Trump in both Pennsylvania and Michigan, but tied in Wisconsin.
There was no guarantee that Biden would win those three states, as Trump was leading Biden in the polls before he decided to drop out of the race.
But there have long been concerns within the party about Ms Harris’s strength, given the demographics of her states, which is one reason why Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (Democrat) is seen as the leading candidate to be her running mate.
“We need to keep that enthusiasm going, especially among young people, but we must never forget that we probably can’t win the election without Pennsylvania, and we can’t win Pennsylvania unless we do well in western Pennsylvania,” Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., said Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“We also need to appeal to hunters in Western Pennsylvania who hate Donald Trump. We need to be aware of the fact that our job is to expand the coalition, not, by and large, to say or do things that will pique their interest. I would hate to leave the union-minded, blue-collar Midwesterners alone.”
A New York Times/Siena poll released Thursday brought a lot of good news for Harris, showing her dramatically closing the gap between her and Trump and seeing her approval rating soar among voters.
The question is where those voters are and how that will translate into the Electoral College. Democrats have lost two presidential elections since 2000, when they won the popular vote, and the Times, in its political newsletter, questioned whether it was possible for Harris to win the popular vote but lose in the Electoral College.
Republican strategists believe Harris will have a hard time appealing to swing voters in “blue wall” states.
“There’s a pretty big gulf between the brand profiles of Joe from Scranton and Kamala from San Francisco,” said Kevin Madden, a veteran Republican strategist who served as a senior adviser to Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential campaign.
Major Democratic donors have acknowledged they have concerns about whether Ms Harris can win over working-class white voters, one reason some had called for an open convention in the weeks before Mr Biden’s withdrawal.
At the same time, these donors saw Biden lacking enthusiasm from his base and declining support among black and Hispanic men.
“Now there’s a new problem: She’s got what Biden lacked in terms of inspiring her base, but now she has to get what Biden had,” said one Democratic donor. “Biden was popular among older white men, she’s not. So there’s a lot of work to do. This is going to be a fight for moderates and independents – Nikki Haley supporters.”
The donor acknowledged that Harris has made “a fantastic showing.”
“We’ve been through hell and now we’re back on our feet,” the donor said. “But right now I don’t know what her argument is or how she’s going to attract voters.”
Matt Gorman, a Republican activist who has been a part of three presidential campaigns, said Harris “needs to prove she can win the support of as many white men as Biden.”
“She’ll push back and say she thinks she can get a higher percentage of minority voters, but it’s like a see-saw,” Gorman said. “We need to keep Biden balanced.”
Over the next 100 tough days, Harris must amplify her story and solidify her message to attract those voters. Democrats say if she does this effectively, she will attract enough voters to ensure victory in November’s election.
“Even in this short window, the vice president has time to reintroduce herself to voters and redefine what people think of her,” said Democratic strategist Rodell Molineaux. “If she talks more about her vision and her record as attorney general, senator and vice president, some voters will be drawn to her.”
“Remember, this is not a referendum on the vice president,” Molyneaux said. “This is a compare and contrast.”
Over the next few days, Harris will spend more time in key battleground states with campaign surrogates, with second-place candidate Doug Emhoff heading to Wisconsin on Saturday for a campaign launch.
People close to the campaign said they expect Harris to spend a significant amount of time in the coming weeks increasing her visits to key Rust Belt states.
On Wednesday, for example, Harris traveled to Milwaukee to hold her biggest campaign event to date in front of a crowd of more than 3,500 people, marking her fifth visit to the state.
Campaign staffers praised Harris for her longstanding work with workers in California and said reproductive rights, an issue she has championed in recent months, will be a key issue in the key state.
“In the days and weeks ahead, she will carry that message across the battleground and leverage the historic infrastructure the Campaign has built over the past year to help voters understand their choice, wherever they are,” Harris campaign representative Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a memo Wednesday. “The VP is poised to strengthen the Biden-Harris 2020 coalition while Trump has not grown his support.”
Amid all the excitement among their base over Harris, Democrats have quietly drawn parallels between Trump and another woman who found herself in a similar situation: Hillary Clinton.
In 2016, Clinton ended up losing the election, partly due to a failure to win the support of voters in states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
But this time around, Democrats claim they have learned those lessons.
“I don’t think anyone took seriously the disconnect between voters and candidates,” Molineaux said. “In 2016, the parties and the media failed to understand the breadth of dissatisfaction that many voters had with the political status quo, which led them to underestimate the influence of Donald Trump.”
“I think that’s the difference between 2016 and 2024,” he added. “And I fully expect the vice president to do that job over the next 100 days and make sure that voters are on her side on Election Day. … She doesn’t have to have the support of every voter. She has to have the support of most voters.”
