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As Democrats unite around Vice President Kamala Harris as their likely new nominee, their public mood is absolutely jubilant. Now, they hope, the party has a nominee who can take the fight to Trump — and win.

These hopes are not yet supported by polling data, which currently shows Harris on track to lose.

Now, maybe those polls aren’t worth much since voters haven’t truly gotten to know Harris. Maybe she’ll wage a smart, vigorous campaign and win them over. Maybe the excitement her selection brings to the ticket will supercharge enthusiasm.

Maybe.

But Harris also has some very real weaknesses as a candidate that could turn things the other way.

Namely, she will be attacked as a San Francisco liberal elite. She will be held responsible for the Biden administration’s record rather than being able to have a clean slate. And her stint at the top of national politics has had its fair share of gaffes and reported staff turmoil.

(Her race and gender will also be factors shaping how she is perceived, but they are not reasons to assume that she cannot win. And it’s worth evaluating her record, as well as her political persona, on their own terms.)

Trump has his own serious weaknesses, and it’s certainly possible that Harris could win. But she doesn’t start off as the favorite, and she has some real work to do.

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Perhaps the biggest electoral story of the past decade has been the phenomenon of education polarization, in which college-educated voters have been trending increasingly toward Democrats while non-college voters have been moving more toward the GOP.

These shifts were arguably decisive in tipping key Midwestern swing states — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan — toward Trump in 2016. Biden — “Joe from Scranton” — reversed them a bit in 2020, just enough to eke out an Electoral College win. Notably, Trump made significant gains among voters of color without degrees that year, and 2024 polling has suggested these trends could continue.

Part of the reason for this, some Democrats have argued, is that their national party has lost the ability to communicate to non-college voters and their values have dramatically diverged from them. 

Harris is extremely good at speaking the language of Democrats’ upscale voter base. That is how she rose in blue San Francisco and California politics, and that is why there was initial enthusiasm for her 2020 presidential campaign. It’s also a main reason why, after that campaign flopped, she still got picked as Biden’s running mate.

But can she convince Midwestern swing voters she’s on their side, that she doesn’t view them as “deplorables,” that she’s not some out-of-touch San Francisco liberal extremist? Can she “speak” swing voter in a convincing way?

We simply don’t know yet. While she has made some campaign appearances in swing states, doing so as the nominee means she'll be in the spotlight in a new way, with much higher stakes.

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In the effort to push Biden off the ticket, there’s been a tendency among Democrats (who generally believe Biden has done a good job) to blame his political woes on his age rather than his record. 

Polling, though, has been pretty consistent that the American public believes the administration has handled major issues poorly — most notably the economy, immigration, and foreign policy, with voters consistently saying Trump would do a better job on all three issues.

Harris was not personally responsible for policy on inflation, the border, the Afghanistan withdrawal, or the Israel-Gaza war. (Republicans have falsely called her the “border czar,” when Harris was in fact tasked with the much more limited role of addressing “root causes” of unauthorized immigration abroad.) 

It’s true that Harris has staunchly defended the administration’s policies on these issues. It will be tough for her to criticize any decision (since doing so would raise the question of why she didn’t criticize it earlier). And it will be hard for her to make the case that she’d do things all that differently from Biden, considering she’s already been vice president for four years. 

Typically, when a new nominee runs for president, they get to offer idealistic promises of change and break with how the incumbent has been doing things in areas where the public wants change. That will be difficult for Harris. She does not start with a clean slate; she is burdened by what has been.

And the public is not happy with how things have been under Biden.

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Finally, there is the question of whether Harris will be able to run an effective and successful presidential campaign. There’s an idealized, meme-worthy image of Harris’s political appeal that has spread among Democrats eager to turn the page on Biden, but her track record at the top of national politics has been more mixed.

That began with her 2020 presidential campaign, which actually ended in December 2019. There is no shame in running in your party’s presidential primary and losing. Not every defeat is the candidate’s “fault” rather than a reflection of larger circumstances. A loss can position a candidate well for success next time. 

But Harris’s campaign was chock-full of public missteps and reports of behind-the-scenes chaos.

None of this prevented Biden from picking her as his running mate in 2020. Then, early in his term, a similar story unfolded in the vice president’s office.

In a high-profile interview with NBC’s Lester Holt in June 2021, Harris struggled to answer questions about the administration’s border policy, and claimed “we’ve been to the border” even though she had not. Afterward, she clamped down on her interview availability, reportedly for fear of making further gaffes. (Amid all the scrutiny on Biden for doing few high-profile interviews, it’s worth noting that Harris hasn’t exactly been ubiquitous either.)

Meanwhile, story after story told of staff chaos in and departures from Harris’s office. 

To be sure, Donald Trump’s staff drama in his campaigns and White House was far more intense (and it didn’t prevent him from winning in 2016). And reports of feuding in Harris’s office have lessened in the past year or so; perhaps Harris has found advisers with whom she is more comfortable.

But now she’s suddenly back in the spotlight, and the pressure is on. So now the question is will she rise to the challenge, overseeing and implementing a strategy and team that can win?

None of this means that Harris absolutely cannot win. 

The problems above may be serious challenges for her campaign. And yes, she currently trails in the polls. But challenges can be addressed and polls can change. The election is more than three months away.

And if the past month should tell us anything, it’s that the future of politics is never set in stone. 

—Andrew Prokop, senior correspondent

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Today's edition was produced and edited by Caroline Houck. We'll see you tomorrow!

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