New Candidate. The Path to Victory Remains the Same.

How is the 2024 election different now that Kamala Harris is the presidential candidate? 

The exhausting and irritating “is he too old” question on the Democratic side is done now, and now that question goes over to the Republicans, so that is a plus. And I do believe that having an energetic young woman of color is going to help us build more enthusiasm for turning out the vote among people of color and young folks. That will be really important.

But at the end of the day -- before Joe Biden got out, after Joe Biden got out, with Harris as our presidential candidate, or with someone else as the candidate -- this election has always been about two foundational questions:

 Can Democrats persuade and turn out their voters:  people of color, young folks, unmarried women, Bernie Sanders progressives?

Can Democrats be competitive with the working-class swing voters who live outside the big metro areas and are central to winning Pennsylvania and the midwestern battlegrounds?

It is likely that Harris as our nominee will help jazz up our key opinion leaders, activists, donors, and voters in urban America and big city suburbs. Likely but not inevitable -- we should not assume it. Having a woman of color as the presidential nominee will be exciting to a lot of people, but the less engaged, lower income voters that are not following politics very much will not automatically turn out unless we do the hard work and put the resources in to make it happen.

On the second point, the pundits and worriers (Democrats do love to worry) are already saying that an African-American woman can’t compete very well for working-class folks outside.of big cities. But Barack Obama -- remember him, that African-American from Chicago with the African Muslim name -- actually won the midsized counties of PA and the Midwest by over 100,000 votes in 2012, his worst of the two elections he ran.

These Factory Town voters will be the bigger challenge, though. Democrats, unions, and progressive groups know how to do voter registration and GOTV, they have been doing a great job of it for years. Trump has shown a special talent in appealing to the Factory Town counties outside of big metro areas, and his pick of JD Vance shows that he is basing his campaign strategy on winning big there. Vice President Harris is not well known or well defined with these voters.

Democrats need to do all we can to compete effectively in those blue collar counties. The Biden administration has made big investments in these counties. Now we need to sell what we’ve done, talk about populist economics, and build a cadre of local folks who can carry the message to their friends.

If we turn out our voters, but also make a fight for non-urban, working-class America, Kamala Harris will win this election. Let’s make it happen.