” Pray for us ! ”
That was the reaction of a twentysomething American woman on vacation in the Montreal area when she heard me say out loud Sunday, in the middle of a gas station, that Joe Biden had just withdrawn from the race for the White House. Three months and a bit before the election. Unheard of in American history.
If my brain had been a little less jet-lagged, I would have told him that his pleas to the political gods had perhaps just been heard. By giving up his seat, Joe Biden has just resurrected the race for the White House and given his vice president, Kamala Harris, a golden opportunity by endorsing her bid for the Democratic nomination.
The Democratic Party, which had been drowning in its divisions since the disastrous performance of a muddled Joe Biden during a single debate with Donald Trump, suddenly came out of the water to take a deep breath.
Since then, elected officials and party leaders have come one after the other to offer their support to Mr.me Harris, who by mid-afternoon Monday had received the endorsement of a majority of Democratic senators, representatives and governors, in addition to the support of the Clintons and various influential committees within the party. Even the grassroots of the political organization has mobilized, collecting more than $80 million in donations in less than 24 hours to support Kamala Harris’ campaign.
It’s a flying start, even though two of the race car’s wheels aren’t touching the ground. Some politicians and major donors — including former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg — are rejecting the idea of a coronation for now. They’d like the Democratic convention, set for Aug. 19-22 — which will officially nominate the party’s nominee for November’s election — to be a real contest.
But whatever happens in this regard, the vice president, who held her first campaign event in Delaware on Monday evening, already has a huge head start on her potential Democratic rivals.
A lead she should discuss at length with Hillary Clinton, the other politician who faced Donald Trump in a race for the White House and lost at the finish line, even though she won the popular vote.
PHOTO LANNA APISUKH, THE NEW YORK TIMES
Hillary Clinton, former Democratic presidential candidate, last April
In 2016, when she entered the big game of the primaries for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton had everything going for her. Celebrity, solid professional and political experience, colossal funds. The polls gave her the win, even though she had fallen short on Barack Obama’s immense popularity eight years earlier.
But nothing went as planned. The battle for the Democratic nomination gave Hillary Clinton a hard time. Bernie Sanders, a resolutely left-wing senator from Vermont, managed to rally a significant share of the progressive vote. Supported by party apparatchiks, Hillary Clinton won the race, but did not come out unscathed.
Kamala Harris must learn two important lessons from M’s misadventuresme Clinton: She needs to demonstrate that she has a consensus within the party rather than seeming like she was parachuted in from the top.
And she will have to quickly convince that she can create enthusiasm, not only by relying on her road map and on Joe Biden’s record, but also by proposing a real political project that goes beyond opposition to Donald Trump. A program that inspires.
In 2015, when I was covering the presidential election, I amused myself by asking voters I met to summarize the policy agendas of the two candidates for the White House. While all of them, without exception, could name Donald Trump’s priorities—building a border wall, axe corporate taxes, tearing up the nuclear deal with Iran—nine out of ten could not describe Hillary Clinton’s priorities. Her encyclopedic policy agenda attempted to solve everyone’s problems—but it was disembodied, overly technical. The opposite of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, whether you like their policies or not.
Kamala Harris doesn’t have the same popularity as Hillary Clinton did at the start of her campaign, but that could be to her advantage.
There’s nothing Americans love more than a great comeback. Rocky IV. Especially if it involves a good dose of fighting spirit and a tough rival with bleached hair.
The former California attorney general will have to fight to rally her party, convince undecided voters and those disillusioned with politics, while facing the headwinds that are already blowing very strongly in conservative political and media circles, as well as on right-wing social networks. A challenge that is not insurmountable, especially when faced with a candidate as controversial as Donald Trump.
The short campaign ahead, if it packs a punch, has the potential to keep America’s progressive forces in the ring until the end. It remains to be seen how agile M’s footwork will beme Harris. It will have more impact than any divine intervention.