The two words that Donald Trump did not say in Milwaukee when accepting the Republican presidential nomination? Kamala Harris. Republicans are now developing a plan in a hurry to beat her in November.
After running against President Biden in 2020 and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016, Trump will now face a third Democrat in 2024 in his attempt to win back the White House. Biden quickly endorsed Vice President Harris after pulling out of the race. Harris said she plans to win the nomination at the Democratic National Convention. Trump insists that whoever he runs against “will just be more of the same.”
In a strange twist, Republicans wanted to run against Biden for the same reason Democrats wanted Trump to be the GOP nominee: They had a plan to exploit his weakness. But a GOP operative close to the Trump campaign said that it wasn’t a mistake for the former president to focus on Biden all last week. “He couldn’t let off the gas,” they told RealClearPolitics.
And it wasn’t as if Harris was an oversight. Convention speakers were directed by the Trump campaign “to weave Kamala’s name as much as possible” into their speeches “and not just mention Joe Biden,” according to communications reviewed by RCP.
Now Harris will become the focus, and after Biden abruptly announced he would not seek a second term, the GOP is tailoring its blueprint to defeat her.
Step One: Tie Harris to Biden, then argue she is more radical.
Putting a brave face on things, Republicans say that this task is easy enough, given that she was running on the same ticket as the president. “Harris has been the Enabler in Chief for Crooked Joe this entire time,” said Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, Trump’s two lead advisers, in a statement. “They own each other’s records, and there is no distance between the two. Harris must defend the failed Biden Administration AND her liberal, weak-on-crime record in [California].”
“There’s no way for her to distance herself from her boss and the failures of the last three and a half years,” said Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager and an adviser to the RNC. “She can try and put lipstick on a pig,” Lewandowski told RCP. “But it’s still a pig.”
Step Two: Argue that Harris was dishonest with the American public about Biden’s health.
The pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again was up and running within an hour and a half of Biden’s announcement with a new 30-second ad that will run in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. The headline: “Kamala Harris Was in On It.” Alex Pfeiffer, a spokesman for the PAC, said she “lied for years now about Joe Biden's mental condition and America suffered for it.”
Step Three: Reprocess Democrats’ arguments about “saving democracy” against Harris.
A scramble is now on to decide who will become the Democratic standard-bearer, and while Harris is the odds-on favorite to win, Republicans aren’t going to miss an opportunity to try and throw a wrench into the Democratic machine.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio told RCP last week that while he had “no idea what Democrats will do,” it seemed “pretty undemocratic for Obama, Pelosi, and Schumer to force President Biden out of the race after Democrats already voted.”
Added Trump pollster John McLaughlin in an interview with RCP, “Let the bosses decide in the backroom in Chicago? That’s not very democratic.”
Republicans met the news that Biden was stepping aside with a mix of glee, trepidation, and disappointment. Glee that their chief rival had just lost the confidence of his party. Trepidation, given that Harris is both figuratively and literally a more energetic opponent. Disappointment, as Trump relayed in a post on Truth Social, that after Biden “we have to start all over again.”
The race now
“It is a different campaign for sure, but it’s not good news for Democrats that the spotlight remains on them,” one Republican operative close to the Trump campaign told RCP. Another official close to the former president’s operation urged calm saying, “Kamala is a bad candidate, and a lot of Republicans are currently trying to talk themselves out of that for some reason today.”
There is reason for optimism among Republicans. According to the Trump campaign’s internal numbers, he was leading Biden by two points in June. Against Harris, he is leading by five. Harris did not make it past Iowa in 2020 when she ran against Biden, they reason. Certainly, they believe, she won’t be that much more of a challenge against Trump.
There is no guarantee that Harris will be the Democratic nominee. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin was reportedly thinking about switching his party registration from independent back to Democrat so that he could make a run in Chicago for the nomination. For her part, the vice president said that she intends to “earn and win” a spot at the top of the ticket.
This starts with a speech, likely after Biden addresses the nation. Nothing has been officially scheduled yet, but Terry Szuplat, who served as a speech writer for all eight years of the Obama presidency, said that when the moment comes, Harris ought to lean into “one of the most effective issues for Democrats,” namely abortion access. “She has tremendous opportunities now to bring the party together, to point to a way forward with energy and vigor,” Szuplat told RCP, and “to change the fundamentals.”
One fundamental change, said Svante Myrick, “is the fact that there is one 80-year-old person in the race and someone who is not.” Myrick, president of People for the American Way and formerly the mayor of Ithaca, New York, said that after Biden’s exit, “younger people are going to be excited about this race.”
“This is the first race since 1976 that didn't have a Biden, a Bush or a Clinton on the ballot,” he said before noting that a new Democratic nominee would provide “the opportunity for a change which is always exciting for young people.”
