Good morning. We're covering Kamala Harris's path to electoral victory — as well as Evan Gershkovich, Venezuela and Taylor Swift.
The Harris electorate
Kamala Harris inherited a Democratic coalition that was badly frayed. In polls, young, Black and Hispanic voters abandoned President Biden in droves. And for the first time in years, more Americans said they leaned Republican than Democratic. To win, the vice president will need to win back the deserters without alienating the anti-Trump moderates who put Democrats over the top in 2020. It won't be easy. Although it's still early, polls suggest she has already made some progress. But while she's running ahead of where Biden stood when he left the race, she's still short of hitting traditional Democratic benchmarks. Young, Black and Hispanic votersDemocrats have long assumed overwhelming support from young, Black and Hispanic voters. For many strategists, the only question was whether these voters would vote, not whom they'd vote for. This year, though, enough of them lost faith to give Donald Trump the lead in national and battleground state polls. And it raised questions about why, exactly, Biden was so weak.
Already, recent polls signal that Harris is not so weak. It's too soon to tell how strong she really is among young and nonwhite voters. Some polls — like New York Times/Siena College polling last week — find her running far ahead of Biden, while others show little change. But either way, even her best tallies still fall short of typical Democratic margins over the last 15 years. She doesn't even fare as well as Biden did in 2020, and his performance among these groups was relatively weak for a Democratic presidential candidate. With the Harris campaign barely one week old, it would be a mistake to assume that her early gains will be her only gains. Her candidacy has already generated a lot of enthusiasm. But her ability to exceed Biden's last performance might depend on why, exactly, he was doing so poorly. Biden had so many problems that it's hard to say what was really behind the collapse in his support. Was it that young voters were more bothered by his appearance than older voters? Was it the rising cost of living and housing? Was it a new social media environment and fading memories of Trump's conduct? Was it an unmet desire for change? Or was it something bigger — the belated extension of Trump's breakthrough among white working-class voters to populist anti-establishment voters of all races? The Times/Siena data offered evidence to support all of these possibilities, but almost nothing to untangle their relative import. Depending on the exact answer, Harris might find additional gains easy, or stubbornly hard.
Older white moderatesTo win, Harris will also need to reassure older and white voters, especially those without college degrees. This group has been the source of Democratic successes in the Trump era. It was enough — in many congressional and presidential races — to overcome a decline in support among voters of color. Harris hasn't won over this group in polls since Biden's exit. In a way, it's not surprising that Harris — a 59-year-old Black and Asian American woman from California — polls worse among older, white working-class voters than an 81-year-old who describes himself as "middle class Joe" from Scranton. But there's a deeper challenge. Harris is not the kind of candidate Democrats have nominated to great success during the Trump era. She has a lengthy progressive record. In the 2020 primary, she embraced Medicare for all and opposed fracking, and she now has to defend the administration's record on the border. Will anti-Trump moderate and conservative voters come around to this kind of candidate? That simply hasn't been tested. So far, the Harris campaign seems to understand its task: reassure these people while focusing them on Trump's liabilities. She's backed away from her earlier positions on fracking, the border and Medicare for all. Her emphasis on her experience as a prosecutor might work. Her vice-presidential selection could help, too. On the other hand, reassuring classic swing voters risks a possible trade-off with re-energizing young, Black and Hispanic voters. When Democrats could take young, nonwhite and progressive voters for granted, it was much easier to run to the center. Now, Harris will have to pull off a delicate balancing act. That's the challenge when coalitions fray. More on the election
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