Vice President Kamala Harris gave a ringing speech that fired Democrats up to close the Democratic convention and this more or less picture-perfect convention came to an end. Harris will likely continue to strengthen in the polls as is typical after a convention and there is no doubt that the Democrats are in better shape now than they were if they had kept with President Joe Biden as their candidate.
More than anything, what Harris has done was to bring back core Democratic constituencies including Black voters, young voters, women and elites and this returned the race to at least even.
The second thing that the convention did was to make it appear that former President Donald Trump was the incumbent president responsible for the last four years and not the Biden-Harris team. The future is Harris, and the past is Trump in their messaging, and there was little to no attempt to justify the last four years — they simply didn’t exist.
Perhaps the surprise of the night was Harris’ clear statement that she would defend Israel and would be prepared to defend against Iran. These elements had been missing from virtually every speech at the convention and were absent from Biden’s remarks.
The huge, feared protests against Israel did not materialize and in their place were a few thousand extremists whose leaders called for the destruction of Israel and who should never have been dignified by Biden. Harris did not repeat that mistake.
For all the pounding that Trump takes every time he criticizes Harris, the vice president and most of the major speeches attacked Trump in highly personal terms, and frequently distorted his views. The speech called for national unity and then slashed away.
Trump is not for a national ban on abortion, nor did the Supreme Court issue one. Nor did he support Project 2025. The immigration bill that Trump opposed would allow 5,000 migrants to cross into the United States a day before shutting down the border or allow about 2 million entries a year into the United States, which is about the same as now.
Other than promising lower prices, Harris did not outline any real plan for dealing with inflation or the economy. Earlier in the day, her campaign said she backed all the Biden tax increases in the budget and then some, which would be the largest tax increase in history, eliminating the capital gains tax, taxing unrealized gains, and moving top federal rates to about 45% with combined rates in big states nearing 60%.
These massive increases could essentially kill innovation and capital markets, discouraging investments of all types and tanking 401(k)s.
Harris avoided the issue of energy altogether and left open whether she continues to support the green new deal. She stayed away from divisive social issues, though she clearly rallied women around reproductive freedom.
‘Coach’ Tim Walz turned out to be more of a liability than an asset as questions about his military record and how far left he really is have emerged to underscore that she likely would have been better off with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, but vice presidents rarely matter that much.
Trump called into Fox News after the speech, ignoring the rule in politics that you don’t answer artillery with a pop gun, and it underscored the challenge he is facing to get through.
Just a few weeks ago, the Democrats were facing a death spiral, and Trump was consolidating support nationally. The Democrats have turned it around and installed a new team, new messaging and revived their chances.
The challenges for the Trump campaign are to define differences in issues and leadership that matter to voters in their everyday lives when it comes to war and peace, inflation, taxes, crime and immigration and to pin Harris as equally responsible for four unhappy years.
Almost two-thirds of the voters believe the country has been headed in the wrong direction, and oppose open borders, want tougher laws on crime, and believe the administration was responsible for the inflation that is in effect a huge tax increase on all Americans. Nevertheless, the Harris bandwagon rolls on.