Faster than you can say Donald Trump is a convicted felon, Democrats rushed to choose Kamala Harris, the one-time DA, as their nominee to prosecute the case.
I’ve been on record for weeks calling for a contested mini-primary as the best way to choose a nominee to replace Joe Biden — I still think that was the Democrats’ best option — but that turned out to be a political junkie’s pipe dream.
In real life, you could look at the Harris coronation as an end run by the Democratic establishment, in respectful consideration of Biden’s brave, if belated, decision to step down. Or you could look at it as Harris, the candidate, quickly and skillfully locking down the nomination before any potential rival could gather momentum to challenge her.
In any case, she is the presumptive nominee. And for anyone hoping for Donald Trump’s defeat, the question is no longer whether Harris is sufficiently electable — and the jury, as they say, is still very much out — but how she can win.
At this point, Dem strategists are hoping that this is her time in the way that four years before, during her disappointing presidential run in the 2020 primary, it clearly was not.
It’s worth taking a brief look back at the race to see what happened to Harris, who entered the primary season with what seemed to be unending potential. As a Black woman of South Asian descent, she was being described as a logical heir to the Obama coalition.
Then it all slipped away.
Some of the blame goes to a disorganized campaign, more of it to a candidate who, when she stumbled, couldn’t find a way to pick herself back up. As you’ll recall, after early promise, she dropped out of the race before a single vote was cast.
Want early access to
Mike’s columns?
Subscribe to get an
exclusive first look at
his columns twice a week.
Part of the issue for Harris may have been timing, or at least that’s what Democrats are hoping. “Kamala is a cop” became a meme in 2020, and not in a good way, back when being a cop — Harris was a San Francisco DA and California attorney general who called herself “top cop” — was hardly in fashion in progressive circles, even before the death of George Floyd and the nationwide protests that followed.
For that and other reasons, she never gained much trust or enthusiasm from much of the Black community, the same community that lifted Biden, after his disastrous primary start, to the nomination. Not only that, Harris could never find a lane she could comfortably run in. She had Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to the left, Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar claiming the center. She stumbled badly during debates over universal health care, changing her position several times.
Whatever else Harris has, she definitely has a lane this year.
Being the top cop when you’re running against a convicted felon has a different feel. In her first major speech as a candidate, she spoke about her work prosecuting “predators who abused women,” with Trump as the clear target.
”Believe me when I say,” she said, “I know Donald Trump’s type.”
She repeated the line Wednesday to huge cheers at a Wisconsin rally that offered something new in this year’s Democratic presidential politics — lots of enthusiasm.
The “type” line works on a number of levels. Trump, you’ll recall, said he couldn’t possibly have sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll, because she wasn’t his type.
We know what Trump describes as his “type” from a conviction for fixing the books to cover up an affair with a porn star. We know, too, that Trump is the type to denigrate women, and we’ll expect a full-on misogynistic blast — also no shortage of racist commentary — for the rest of his campaign.
Trump is also the type who thought he could get away with sexual abuse. Hundreds of millions of dollars in civil suits later, he might have a different idea.
And I’m hardly the first to note the direct line Harris can walk from prosecuting the case against a man who abuses and denigrates women to prosecuting the case against a president who, with his three nominees to the Supreme Court, set the stage for the shocking overturn of Roe v. Wade.
Harris has a strong record on abortion rights, which, in the post-Dobbs world, is obviously the Democrats’ strongest issue. Biden sometimes had trouble articulating the Democratic take on the issue. Harris may carry much of the baggage from a Biden administration, but this is one problem she won’t have.
We can think back to her time on the Senate Judiciary Committee during Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Like most on the Democratic side, she was having trouble pinning him down. But as Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse writes, Harris subtly changed the argument.
Hesse takes us through the key part of the exchange:
“Can you think of any laws,” she asked the nominee, “that give the government the right to make decisions about the male body?”
“Um,” Kavanaugh replied, furrowing his brow. “I am happy to answer a more specific question, but — ”
“Male versus female,” Harris offered, smiling, and when Kavanaugh still expressed confusion, she repeated her 19-word question: “Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?”
Kavanaugh responded, “I am not thinking of any right now.”
We still can’t think of any. But we’ve seen a post-Dobbs world in which red states have rushed to make even more decisions on women’s bodies. Every ominous prediction following the overturn of Roe seems to have come true — and, in some cases, even worse than imagined.
In 14 states, abortions are essentially banned in nearly all cases. In three other states, abortions are banned in nearly all cases after six weeks of pregnancy.
And we’ve seen states where women, facing critical medical needs, have been airlifted from emergency rooms to states where abortion is still legal. We’ve seen cases where doctors are simply too afraid to treat a pregnant woman.
It has gotten to the point that Trump is now trying to downplay the abortion issue, which has been central to Republicans for approximately forever. It was barely mentioned at all at the Republican National Convention. But it’s not an issue they can bury.
I’m still not sure Harris is the best candidate Democrats could have chosen. But there’s every reason to believe she can effectively make the case on abortion rights. It’s the case she’s making now, with weeks yet to get to the Democratic National Convention. It is the case she has made many times before.
And as you’ll be hearing in every Harris rally from now on, she knows the type of person she is up against and how to handle him.
Now the former DA just has to make her case before the voters.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy. Learn how to submit a column. Reach the opinion editor at opinion@coloradosun.com.
Follow Colorado Sun Opinion on Facebook.