Harris Faces Challenge of Translating Convention Joy to Fall Momentum

The problem with joy is that it arrives in the morning along with hangovers. The party in Chicago is over, the confetti is cleared, they have taken pictures and posted them to the page. But the real question as exuberant Democrats woke to their Friday was whether they dare turn the euphoria that the United Center exuded into days of 74 in a relentless march to the Election Day. 
 
Their vice-presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, got out of her nominating convention with a burst of momentum that Democrats hardly expected barely a month ago when they thought they would be stuck with a probably doomed re-election campaign of President Biden. She has somehow revived a previously depressive party and injected new hope in the Democrats who now find themselves within reach of a triumph. 
 
The real bummer, however, is that it is not all that easy to win the war as people are made to believe. The tens of thousands of enthusiastic partisans in the hall this week were not swing voters that Ms. Harris has to turn against former President Donald J. Trump. There is always the precedent where candidates are nominated at conventions and then go on to mobilise their base, only to fail in November. And whatever else he is, Mr. Trump knows that he is no soft touch . Ms. Harris can prepare for a blunt encounter in the next two and half months. 
 
She knows that, of course, and senior campaigners of previous quests like Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama ensured that the elated Democrats of this week are prepared for the realities on the ground. Ms. Harris is one of the few general election debut-making candidates in recent years who has done incredibly well with fundraising and the media but still struggles with polls within five percent. 
 
“The energy here though is electric,” So declared Representative Hillary Scholten, Democrat of Michigan, moments before Ms Harris’s acceptance speech on Thursday night. “But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I said I was now feeling confident in Michigan. We’re still underdogs, and it’s going to take some true Michigan spunk to convert this enthusiasm into activity and a Michigan victory. ” 
 
For source credibility Ms. Scholten knows of what she speaks. She won a seat long held by a republican in 2022, the first time it voted for a Democrat in 32 years. She knows how to win in a narrowly contested state that will likely be determinative for Ms. Harris. And she recalls when Mr. Trump shocked everyone by defeating Hillary Clinton, eight years ago. 
 
But Ms. Scholten said that getting comfortable was what happened in 2016, when she lost Michigan to Trump by less than 10,000 votes. “Trump is coming to Michigan again on Monday It’s clear he is not a practising quitter. We can’t afford to be. ” 
 
But Democrat of Wisconsin, Senator Tammy Baldwin, a candidate in another swing state, says she saw signs of enthusiasm extending beyond the cheering faithful within the hall. 
 
“Of course, the goal is to sustain this kind of energy and what I’m observing is that Democrats who are known core supporters are getting animated but there is this snowball effect that I have noticed,” she said. “The activists and supporters staying at home are tuning in to this convention and then texting or talking to friends and saying, ‘Oh my God, did you see this?’ 
 
Ms Harris’s 37-minute acceptance speech seemed to be meant for those people, staying at home, leaving behind the chanting, sign-waving, button-wearing supporters inside the arena. She formally presented herself to the nation as a daughter of a blended family that virtues of modern American civilization, a tough and professional prosecutor who fights for justice and a practical and moderate post-reformer. She reiterated that she would want to “be a president for all Americans,” while the Republicans concentrated on who was the real American. 
 
but for some calendar hitches that saw some of the speakers perform their acts after midnight, the newly anointed nominee could hardly have put up a better show at the convention. It was not the chaos, violence and mobs of the summertime Democratic convention of 1968 as some expected – but a picture of togetherness and enthusiasm. Opposition especially on the case of war in Gaza was also controlled. Demonstrations were mostly kept far away from the United Center, but a number of people were detained. 
 
What kind of convention bounce Ms. Harris may get will emerge over the next few days, but the bounciness of polls seems to have deteriorated in recent years. Since replacing Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris leads Mr Trump by 3. 6 per cent, which, as per an average of polls conducted by FiveThirtyEight, is the margin on which he can rely. Still, by the same juncture in 2016 and 2020, Mrs. Clinton was consistently ahead of Mr. Trump and he, Mr. Biden, was as well, and yet she failed to win and he clung on for dear life to triumph by a somewhat narrower margin. 
 
The ‘president of joy’ how Mr. Clinton referred to Ms. Harris, will need to sustain joy into the fall, and hope that is sufficient for victory. It certainly situates Ms. Harris in stark opposition to Mr. Trump, the scowling evangelist of a dark vision of America who wrote a fundraising email ahead of her address to supporters describing Ms. Harris as the senator who will “bring hell on this Earth tonight!” 
 
Of course, joy is not a bad thing at all to wield in politics although fear and loathing are not bad motivators at all from the old world political perspective, are they? The man most frequently identified with ‘happy warrior’ label, Hubert H. Humphrey, was also a runner-up who come to the presidency by virtue of his president’s withdrawal from the race, but was vanquished by Richard M. Nixon in 1968. 
 
Like Mr. Humphrey, Ms. Harris has the misfortune of being a sitting vice president who will be expected to account for events of the coming couple months in an administration headed by a different person. He was compromised by LBJ’s management of the Vietnam War and was far too slow to disengage himself from the administration. Ms. Harris does not have to bother about war expansion in the Middle East or a change of economic climate.

However, entering the general election, Ms. Harris has something that no other non-incumbent since the 1980’s had – no brutal primary fight among the Democrats that could hurt her and pull her further left. Still, now all of a sudden she is the youthful spirit this fall, turning the age card on Mr. Trump. 
 
She will claim that given that she will be 59 at the time of the debate, she is a part of the next generation compared to Mr. Trump, 78 years, and, albeit to a lesser extent, Mr. Biden, 81 years. She uttered the words ‘forward’ or ‘future’ at least eight times and said ‘we are not going back’ as her mantra. Although she belongs to the current administration she will campaign as a reformer, an angle that Mr. Trump shall challenge by painting her as a patron of the corrupt and ineffective system. 
 
The shift of Ms. Harris from Mr. Biden last month tore the generational crossing upside down. In New York Times/Siena College polls of the same universe this month, she performed 12 points better than he did among voters 30-44 years of age, and 15 points better among those who used TikTok at least weekly. She also spoke to communities that Mr. Biden didn’t address enlarging her sphere of victory and turning competitive once again the so-called Sun belt states that the Democrats were losing. 
 
“People are ready to move forward,” said Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, the former Democratic National Committee chairman. “She’s a generational change. I think folks are fired up for that. ” 
 
Even as it is the campaign already embodies a new epoch in American politics; it marks the first time in the nation’s electoral history that a presidential or vice-presidential candidate belonging to the Bush, Clinton, or Biden families will not be on the ballot. 
 
The last show of the convention introduced a number of perspectives Democratic up-and-comers including Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan; the Senate contenders Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Ruben Gallego of Arizona, and Colin Allred of Texas; and the Representatives Jason Crow of Colorado, and Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida. 
 
In one way or the other, history is going to be made in the next ten-week period. Either Ms. Harris will become the first woman president, or Mr. Trump will become the first ex-president in more than a century to be returned to office. I think this is why Mark McKinnon, a combative political strategist who advised the Bush family and John McCain, but does not like Trump in any way, has said, ‘Yes, historical analogies are tempting,’ but that is not necessarily the most productive way to proceed in this year. 
 
“This has all the characteristics of something that is not really related to anything that went before,” he said. And as I said, I do not know what it is yet, but, you know, just the circumstances, the timing, the compressed election, the nomination — it just feels, looks, smells like something different completely I do not know what it is We will see.