On July 21, nearly a month after a disastrous debate performance, US President Joe Biden ended his campaign for a second term and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee. While Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s nominee, and his running-mate, J.D. Vance, fumed about the switch – which Vance called a “political sucker punch” – Harris spoke before electrified crowds, broke fundraising records, and clinched the support of more than enough delegates to be anointed at this month’s Democratic Convention in Chicago.

Now, observes Reed Galen of the pro-democracy coalition JoinTheUnion.us, a “rematch between two old, unpopular US presidential candidates” has become a “captivating contest for the future of America,” and it is Team Harris, not Team Trump, that is benefiting from “Big Mo” (momentum). If Harris manages to “build on that momentum” – by making a “clear, forceful, and enthusiastic case for entering a new post-Baby Boom political era” – she “may well get the chance to inflict a crushing defeat on Trump and the Republican Party.”

Georgetown University’s Charles A. Kupchan is similarly optimistic about Harris’s prospects, noting that surging support for her candidacy stems partly from “relief among Democrats that they now have a fighting chance,” but also from “widespread enthusiasm about her appeal, record, and qualifications.” Not only does Harris have “the experience needed to prevail” in November; by “locating herself in the political center,” Harris can win over “moderate voters in the swing states that will likely decide the outcome.”

Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations also sees reasons for hope that Harris can defeat Trump, from her “prosecutorial skills” to “the absence of a woman or a minority on the Republican ticket.” But Harris also faces a dilemma: “how to appear loyal and take credit for what was popular” about Biden’s presidency, such as the Inflation Reduction Act and military assistance to Ukraine, without being “weighed down” by unpopular policies, including a “Middle East policy seen by many Americans as too pro-Israel.”

Mark Leonard of the European Council on Foreign Relations highlights another key challenge for the Harris campaign: while Democrats “frame the US presidential election as an existential battle between democracy and authoritarianism,” Republicans are trying to convince voters that Trump is a “champion of the working class.” So, beyond attacking Trump and Vance for their “extreme views on abortion, the US Constitution, and Ukraine,” Harris and the Democrats must “work to dismantle the narrative” that Trump and Vance are using to appeal to blue-collar voters.

WASHINGTON, DC – Books will be written about the last month in American politics. In the space of just four weeks, the race for the US presidency has been twisted, turned, upended, and reset. Now, with just about 100 days to go until the election, Americans begin the race’s home stretch.

From the start of the campaign, voters’ top concern about President Joe Biden was his age. Already the oldest US president ever, Biden would be 86 at the end of a second four-year term. In both national and swing-state surveys, voters expressed serious doubts about his ability to maintain the mental acuity needed to run the country at such an advanced age.

Biden’s disastrous debate performance on June 27 seemed to vindicate voter concerns. His support dipped significantly, but not catastrophically, buoyed only by the profound unpopularity of his opponent, Donald Trump. If Trump was even a marginally more “normal” candidate, his gains may well have been far larger.

In the weeks that followed, while Biden, his family, and his inner circle wrestled with the question of whether he should drop out of the race, Trump went to ground, spending more time on the golf course than in the public eye. When he emerged for a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, America’s electoral saga grew more dramatic: while Trump was delivering his speech, shots rang out, and a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed his ear.

Even after the shooting – which Trump turned into a cunning photo-op, thrusting his fist into the air before the crowd, cheek smeared with blood – support for Trump didn’t surge. Nor did he gain much traction after the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where he officially accepted his nomination as the GOP’s presidential candidate with a rambling, incoherent, and divisive speech that defied his campaign’s calls for “unity” in the face of political violence.

How could all that drama fail to sway independents, undecided voters, or anti-Trump Republicans? Simply put, most Americans did not like either of their options. Biden is old, but at 78, Trump is not much younger. Trump is also chaotic, corrupt, irrational, and likely to implement policies that enjoy little support outside his narrow, extremist base.

The Democrats also made important strategic blunders. While Biden deliberated on whether to remain in the race, his campaign and the entire Democratic political apparatus should have been making the case against Trump and his newly announced, Kremlin-endorsed running mate, J.D. Vance. Instead, the Democrats stayed stuck in a kind of holding pattern – and not for the first time.

In fact, in my nearly five years working alongside the Democratic Party apparatus, I have seen firsthand how an unwillingness or inability to act quickly and decisively has left the party overly dependent on external factors to strengthen its position. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization – the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case which established a constitutional right to abortion – is a case in point. The Democrats could have cemented Roe by federal statute in 2009, when they controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. But President Barack Obama decided that abortion rights were not a high priority.

So, perhaps we should not be surprised that so little happened on the Democrats’ side between the June debate debacle and the Biden campaign’s announcement, nearly a month later, that he was stepping aside as the party’s presumptive nominee and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris. What was previously a rematch between two old, unpopular candidates has become a captivating contest for the future of the United States.

The twenty-first century has brought many firsts in American politics: the first African-American president, followed by the first would-be authoritarian president, the first election conducted amid a global pandemic, and now a major party candidate leaving the race after winning his party’s primary.

Soon there may be another first: if Harris wins in November, she will be America’s first female president. That prospect has proved invigorating. In just over 24 hours, donors shelled out a record-breaking $81 million for the Harris campaign, and her first appearances have featured roaring crowds. The Democratic Party – from its leaders to its donors – has done what it needed to do, expressing unreserved support for its new candidate.

The Trump team’s response has been entirely predictable. Trump argued that he should get a refund for the millions of dollars he spent campaigning against Biden, and claimed that anointing Harris amounted to a “coup.” Several Republican members of Congress have referred to Harris as a “DEI” (diversity, equity, and inclusion) candidate, suggesting that she was chosen for her identity, not her record. The GOP is throwing everything it can at Harris, but so far, nothing has stuck.

Over the next 100 days, the contrast between the two candidates will continue to sharpen. Standing beside the young, energetic Harris, the nearly 80-year-old Trump will look even more decrepit. Whereas Harris has the wind at her back, Trump’s lack of broad appeal will continue to drag him down. And as Harris (one hopes) makes a clear, forceful, and enthusiastic case for entering a new post-Baby Boom political era, Trump, inept and retrograde, will continue to lean on ugly rhetoric and scare tactics.

As the late President George H.W. Bush suggested, in politics, one should bet on the team with “Big Mo” (momentum). And, right now, that is Team Harris. If she manages to build on that momentum – to raise enthusiasm for her campaign to fever pitch – she may well get the chance to inflict a crushing defeat on Trump and the Republican Party.

WASHINGTON, DC – Kamala Harris can win the US presidency. Yes, Donald Trump is a formidable candidate, whose campaign was bolstered by his defiant reaction to the July 13 attempt on his life. But Harris has emerged as the presumptive Democratic nominee with stunning speed following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal; within a matter of days, she clinched the support of more delegates than needed to secure the nomination at next month’s party convention in Chicago.

Minutes after Biden stepped aside, Harris was making calls and corralling backers. Biden’s campaign apparatus got behind its new candidate without a hitch. Within 48 hours, Harris had raised $100 million and had effective access to the war chest that Biden had already amassed. An overwhelming 70% of Democrats were in favor of rallying behind Harris rather than holding an open competition. Polls show Harris and Trump in a virtual tie, making clear that Harris has quickly closed the widening lead that Trump had built over Biden.

This surge in support for Harris stems in part from relief among Democrats that they now have a fighting chance, but it also reflects widespread enthusiasm about her appeal, record, and qualifications. With an Indian mother, a Jamaican father, and a Jewish husband, Harris’s multicultural credentials will help her rally enthusiasm among younger, more progressive voters and non-whites – groups Biden struggled to reach. She engages intently on domestic issues that are high priorities for these cohorts, including racial and gender equity, reproductive rights, immigration, and climate change.

Harris’s position on the Gaza war also appeals to progressives. In March, she called for “an immediate ceasefire” and told Binyamin Netanyahu last Thursday that she “will not be silent” on Palestinian suffering.

Trump has labeled Harris a “radical left person,” but she is in fact a pragmatic centrist. During her bid for the 2020 presidential nomination, Harris did veer toward the progressive camp on some issues – particularly climate change. But throughout her career she has generally aligned with her party’s moderates. As a prosecutor in California, she faced criticism from the left for being too tough on crime. As a US senator and now as vice president, her views on most issues have been broadly in line with the centrist policies pursued by Biden. On the economic front, those policies have contributed to a robust post-pandemic recovery.

According to Trump, Harris is the “bum” responsible for the influx of migrants across the southern border while she served as vice president. Biden’s administration admittedly struggled to reduce illegal immigration. But Harris was not the “border czar” that Republicans make her out to be. Her main role was to lead the administration’s effort to tackle the root causes of migrant flows by fighting corruption and improving economic opportunity in the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America – El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

Such efforts take years to pay off. In the meantime, Harris has been delivering a tough message. “Do not come,” she warned Guatemalans in 2021, adding, “If you come to our border, you will be turned back.”

After Republicans – at Trump’s prompting – sank an ambitious, bipartisan immigration reform bill in June, Biden issued an executive order to clamp down on illegal border crossings. Help from Mexican authorities, as well as the introduction of an app that allows asylum seekers in Mexico to schedule an appointment at a US port of entry, has helped stem the flow. These policies – hardly the work of radical leftists – have reduced unauthorized border crossings to a lower level than when Trump’s first presidential term ended in 2021.

Harris’s pragmatic centrism should broaden her appeal among moderates in the swing states – Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – that will likely determine the result in November. Trump was already having difficulty garnering support among independents and moderate Republicans, and he only made it harder for himself by picking US Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate.

By choosing Vance, Trump doubled down on energizing his base – whites without a college education, who represent just over 40% of the electorate. But Trump cannot win just by rallying this sizable base, which is why he may come to regret choosing a running mate who fails to broaden the electoral appeal of the Republican ticket. Furthermore, Ohio is already a reliably Republican state, so picking an Ohioan does little to boost Trump’s prospects.

By locating herself in the political center, Harris has a crucial opportunity to win over moderate swing-state voters. To that end, she is likely to choose as her running mate a prominent swing-state politician. Moreover, Harris should be able to gain traction among moderate women voters in suburban communities, many of whom have trouble tolerating Republican positions on abortion rights as well as Trump’s sordid past, crude rhetoric, and chronic legal problems.

Harris has the experience needed to prevail. Her background as a prosecutor should serve her well when she debates a convicted felon who sought to overturn the 2020 election without a shred of supporting evidence. And whereas most recent presidents, including Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump entered office without any meaningful experience in US foreign policy, Harris has spent almost four years benefiting from the mentorship of Biden, one of America’s most seasoned statesmen.

Harris has met over 100 world leaders and traveled to virtually every corner of the globe. She has been at the forefront of efforts to address emerging challenges, including artificial-intelligence safety and US strategy toward both commercial and national-security activities in outer space. Serving as vice president also gave her the opportunity to master the policymaking process, a notable asset in view of the chaos that characterized Trump’s White House.

Now that she is in the spotlight, Harris is effectively re-introducing herself to many Americans. Her recent public appearances have the more natural feel that she needs to make an authentic connection to the electorate and build on the excitement and momentum that have so quickly materialized.

Harris and Trump are in a dead heat, and the stakes could not be higher. Biden made that clear in his Oval Office address on July 24: “Whether we keep our republic is now in your hands.” Harris is the right person at the right time to achieve that goal.

NEW YORK – US President Joe Biden’s decision to step aside as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate this fall has transformed American politics. It caps a historic July in the United States, one defined by far-reaching Supreme Court decisions and the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on the eve of the Republican Convention.

Biden’s decision, urged by many Democratic Party officials and donors and favored by many voters, was the right choice. In the wake of a debate widely viewed as a debacle for Biden, his age had made it all but impossible for him to make the case to the American people that he deserved another four years – and was making it impossible for him to make the case that Trump did not.

It is too soon to write about Biden’s legacy, if for no other reason than his presidency still has some six months left. But by stepping aside he has gone a long way toward eliminating the potential critique that by staying in the race he paved the way for a successor who shared little of his commitment to American democracy and the country’s role in the world. Indeed, had Trump defeated Biden in November, as polls were forecasting, this would have largely overshadowed Biden’s accomplishments as president.

The odds are strong that Vice President Kamala Harris will be the Democratic nominee. Biden’s endorsement will help her. But it does not settle matters, because Biden only has the authority to release party delegates committed to him, not to require them to support someone else.

So, the Democratic Convention in Chicago this August will be an open one, and the four weeks between now and then could go a long way toward determining what happens there. Harris could essentially run for the nomination unopposed, or one or more challengers might emerge. Assuming she prevails, the latter scenario might actually be to her advantage, as the process would further hone her political skills, help her be seen as a winner, and allow her to get out from under the shadow of an unpopular president.

The process would also shine a spotlight on the Democratic Party at a time when it needs to reintroduce itself to the electorate. This is essential, as Trump and Senator J.D. Vance, his pick for vice president, promise to be formidable campaigners. And even if Harris were to run and lose to them, polls suggest that she would outperform Biden, improving Democrats’ chances of winning the House of Representatives (keeping control of the Senate appears out of reach) and thus preventing Republicans from controlling the entire federal government.

Trump is slightly ahead of Harris in polls, but she could well get a boost in the next month as she steps into the spotlight. Harris’s prosecutorial skills, which she honed as a prosecutor and later as California’s attorney general, would serve her well in a campaign. She is well-positioned to take on the extreme anti-abortion stance of this Supreme Court as well as Vance. And she would benefit from the absence of a woman or a minority on the Republican ticket.

One unavoidable challenge, however, is what might be described as the Hubert Humphrey dilemma. In 1968, Humphrey, who was vice president at the time, won the Democratic nomination after the incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson, chose not to run for re-election. The words in Biden’s withdrawal letter echoed many used by Johnson 56 years ago, the principal difference being that Biden put out his statement on X and Johnson appeared on national television.

The dilemma is this: how to appear loyal and take credit for what was popular about a presidency without being weighed down by policies that were unpopular. In 1968, it was the Vietnam War that complicated Humphrey’s run, as he found it hard to distance himself from a policy that he had been associated with and from a boss who had little tolerance for disloyalty.

No single issue dominates public debate today, but there is still a need to differentiate the Democratic nominee from Biden, as incumbency has become a burden at a time when many seek change. Anyone doubting this only needs to look at recent election results in South Africa, India, the United Kingdom, and France.

This means that the Democratic nominee, whether Harris or someone else, would do well to embrace the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, efforts to combat climate change and defend democracy, access to abortion and birth control, and military assistance to Ukraine. But it also suggests that the candidate might want to distance themselves from a Middle East policy seen by many Americans as too pro-Israel, and from policies on the border and crime viewed by many as too lax.

If Harris is the Democratic choice, her selection of a running mate will matter. Several Midwestern states are likely to be decisive in November’s election, and there is a large pool of independent voters to be won over. Governors Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, and Roy Cooper of North Carolina would presumably be considered, as would several members of Biden’s cabinet.

Perhaps the only thing that is certain is that less is certain after Biden’s stunning announcement. One thing is clear, though: the outcome of the presidential election will matter enormously for the US and the rest of the world. This is not normally the case, as the candidates’ similarities tend to outweigh their differences. Not so this time. The differences are profound, making it difficult to exaggerate just how much is at stake when Americans vote this November.

WASHINGTON, DC – July 2024 will go down in history as one of the most momentous months in American politics. Between the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, US President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race, and the rise of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, it is hard to keep up with the frantic pace of political events. While some may look to the past for guidance or reassurance, it is unclear if any historical comparison can truly match the sheer drama of recent weeks.

Since it became clear that Trump would once again be the Republican Party’s nominee, Democrats have framed the election as an existential battle between democracy and authoritarianism. Biden is portrayed as a Winston Churchill-like leader who will not only protect democratic institutions and values in the United States, but also defend Europe’s freedom, by supporting Ukraine. By contrast, Trump is often depicted as “America’s Hitler” – as his own running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, once called him – bent on turning the country into an autocratic dystopia. This was the Biden campaign’s narrative, and if her early remarks are any indication, it will also be Harris’s.

Not surprisingly, Republicans see things differently. In a private conversation, one adviser to the Trump-Vance campaign used an unexpected historical analogy. Instead of comparing the US to the United Kingdom during World War II, he drew parallels with postwar Britain, which was, in his view, victorious but overburdened. In WWII’s aftermath, the UK’s primary political battle was internal, with the UK’s Conservative Party, which stood for the elites and the British Empire, facing off against the worker-friendly Labour Party, which focused on winning the peace at home.

My interlocutor said that today’s Democrats remind him of the Conservatives, who represented the upper class, embodied the political establishment, and sought to maintain the trappings of a global empire during a period of retrenchment. Trump and Vance’s pro-worker agenda, he claimed, more closely mirrors that of the postwar Labour Party.

After WWII, the Labour Party held particular appeal for the working class, who felt that they had borne more than their fair share of the burden of WWII, suffered the consequences of internationalist foreign policies, and been generally “left behind.” Similarly, Trump and Vance claim to speak for “forgotten” Americans, and the key focus of their campaign is reinventing the Republican Party’s class base.

Trump and his supporters often point out that the Democratic Party is now the party of Wall Street, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley. Now, GOP advisers are seeking to rebrand “country-club Republicans” as “working-class Republicans.” When Vance said he hoped to celebrate his mother’s ten years of sobriety in the White House, he was speaking to a very specific audience of working-class Americans struggling in places “blown out by globalization,” as one Republican strategist put it to me.

Moreover, just as the postwar British left railed against the pernicious influence of upper-class elites, Trump and Vance are targeting the Washington establishment. In his iconic 1941 essay “The Lion and the Unicorn,” George Orwell – a fervent Labour supporter – called for replacing the UK’s out-of-touch mandarinate. The MAGA movement is similarly suspicious of the national-security establishment, military leadership, and Big Business, all of which today’s Republicans associate with the Democratic Party. As part of its Project 2025 agenda, the Heritage Foundation advocates firing the 50,000 federal civil servants who comprise the administrative state and replacing them with a new leadership class – a step Vance has enthusiastically endorsed.

But for my interlocutor, the most relevant parallel between today’s US Republican Party and the postwar UK Labour Party lies in their stances on their respective countries’ global role. After WWII, Britain faced the choice either to maintain its empire or – as Labour advocated – to focus on improving welfare at home. According to Trump’s strategists, the US now faces a similar choice.

At his rallies, Trump often criticizes what he views as US strategic overreach, noting that, as president, he did not start a major war or initiate any foreign interventions. Electing him, he argues, would bring both greater peace and a renewed focus on domestic prosperity. Vance’s vision – which focuses on raising the minimum wage, expanding social protections, and bolstering corporate regulation – has a quasi-social-democratic quality.

To be sure, my Democratic friends – much like most reputable historians of postwar Britain – will see the comparison to Labour as absurd. After all, Trump’s first term focused more on courting plutocrats and cutting taxes for the rich than on building a welfare state. The Biden administration, for its part, has done a lot to help left-behind voters, especially through major policy initiatives like the Inflation Reduction Act. But, if the Trump-Vance campaign gets its way, voters will not recognize that.

In the lead-up to November’s presidential election, Democrats will undoubtedly attack Trump and Vance for their extreme views on abortion, the US Constitution, and Ukraine – views that do not align with mainstream public opinion. But they must also work to dismantle the narrative that Trump and Vance are champions of the working class.

In a sense, postwar Britain does carry an important lesson for Democrats today. Churchill was widely expected to win the 1945 general election, but the majority of British voters ultimately embraced the Labour Party’s agenda of trading imperial glory for rebuilding the domestic economy. Trump, Vance, and their strategists hope that their promise to Make America Great Again will resonate in a similar way.

Consequently, Harris will need to devote as much effort to countering Republicans’ cultural and policy-based appeals to workers as she does to addressing the threats to reproductive rights and the Constitution. To defeat Trump in November, Democrats must convince voters that they are the true party of the American working class.