‘The Most Important Thing That the Harris Campaign Can Do’

In some respects, Kamala Harris is on a serious roll. She swiftly consolidated the support of the Democratic Party after a fractious internal effort to oust Joe Biden, sailed through the Democratic National Convention and stuck the landing by decisively winning her first debate with Donald Trump.

But Election Day is still over 50 days out — a long time to go for a candidate grappling with real political liabilities and facing a brutal opponent in a razor-tight race. What can Harris and her team do to maintain her momentum into November?

For one answer to that question, POLITICO Magazine reached out to Guy Cecil, the veteran Democratic strategist and longtime former head of the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA.

His advice to Harris HQ? Make sure voters know just how close the election is likely to be, despite all the good vibes currently enveloping the campaign.

“The most important thing that the Harris campaign can do — which I think they are doing — is building an operation and executing a plan that assumes it’s going to be a close election,” Cecil said.

Cecil also had a brisk message for fellow Democrats who are fretting that Harris isn’t doing enough to distinguish herself from Biden on policy: Chill out.

“I think these are parlor games — it’s not really how the American people process information,” he said. “As long as we keep the focus on drawing the contrast with Trump, I think she’s going to win.”

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

How would you evaluate Harris’ standing in the race after this week’s debate?

I think it’s hard to imagine that the debate could have gone any better. She really had to accomplish three things: One, she had to demonstrate that she could perform on a presidential stage at a presidential level. Two, she had to lay out some details — in particular as it relates to the economy, which still is a pressing issue for most Americans, and demonstrate strength on national security. And third, I think she had to — some people keep calling it baiting Donald Trump — but really what she did is just continue to reveal the person that he is. I think that was pretty clear from the beginning of the debate through the very end.

So if you’re thinking about what does any candidate hope to do [in a debate] — motivate their base and talk to persuadable voters — I think she was pretty impressive in accomplishing both of those things.

Do you think it'll have a lasting impact on the race, or is it just going to be a short-term sugar high for Democrats?

I don’t think about it as a sugar high. The way that I think about it is Kamala Harris is continuing to introduce herself to the country, and it is hard to imagine, at least in modern times, a candidate who has faced so many critical moments. The way she handled the speculation over President Biden, the way that she rallied support around herself for the nomination, her selection of Tim Walz, her speech at the convention, the convention itself, which had to turn on a dime for two new candidates, and then her performance at this debate.

At every point she has excelled, and I don’t know that one particular moment is the moment that’s going to turn the election. Not just checking boxes but excelling at each of these things is setting her up for success. It’s less about a sugar high and more about just continuing to perform at a high level and demonstrating to the country that she is equipped to be president and that he is not.

That said, the race is still very, very close if the polls are to be believed. If you were advising Harris and her team right now, what would you tell them to focus on and devote their resources to in the near term?

The first thing — and I think they’re doing a pretty good job of this — is level-setting expectations.

[Campaign chair] Jen O’Malley Dillon has done this in her last two memos, and Harris has done this in every speech that she’s given. It’s going to be a close election. We barely lost in 2016; we won by a relatively small margin in 2020 and the country is divided. The most important thing that the Harris campaign can do — which I think they are doing — is building an operation and executing a plan that assumes it’s going to be a close election.

That may sound obvious, but when you compare the ground operation of the Harris campaign versus the Trump campaign, you see a pretty remarkable difference between the two in terms of numbers of staff, numbers of volunteers, numbers of offices, numbers of door knocks, the way people have responded at the small donor level in an unprecedented way. Focusing on the things that matter — building an operation, building a turnout campaign, continuing to focus on increasing the levels of interest among Democratic or likely Democratic voters while still maintaining a connection with the small number of undecided voters — is critical.

The other thing is continuing to combine her policy prescriptions with her own personal story. I think she did a good job of that in her speech at the convention. She did a good amount of that during the debate, and I think her success is going to continue to be in combining those two things so that people simultaneously get to know her as a person and get to know her policies. Most presidential candidates don’t have to do that, and it can be difficult to have to do those at the same time, but I think she’s done a good job of that so far.

The polling indicates that voters still want to know more about her policy plans — especially undecided voters who are saying they still don’t know enough about what she actually hopes to do. How can she give those voters a better sense of her actual plans?

Well, first off, I think that's a reasonable expectation, and it’s not surprising. Joe Biden has been on the national stage [for decades], Donald Trump has been on the national stage for years at this point, and anybody that pays attention to history knows that even a vice president who has been on the national stage for a longer period of time than Kamala always has to introduce themselves to the country, because this is the first time they’re really being seen in their own light.

It's also not realistic to think that someone’s going to roll out every single policy within eight weeks of becoming the nominee of their party. And so I think she needs to continue rolling out [her plans]. She’s put out a pretty strong economic agenda, particularly around the cost that everyday Americans face around rent. She’s obviously laid out a strong plan as it relates to issues around choice. I think last night you saw her starting to dig in more on issues around security, and I think you’ll see her continuing to draw a pretty strong contrast between her and Trump — taking something that Trump assumed was some sort of strength and highlighting the fact that it’s a weakness.

I don’t find it alarming — and it’s not surprising — that people want to hear more. To me, that seems like a pretty acceptable thing for most Americans to want, and I think the Harris campaign knows that and is going to continue rolling out these types of policy agendas on issues that are important.

But nothing needs to change either with the pacing or the tenor or tone of these policy announcements?

I don’t think anything needs to change on tenor or tone, and I think they’ve increased [the pace]. Think about the economic agenda, which she rolled out just a couple of weeks ago, or the choice agenda, which she rolled out soon after she announced. She started talking about what she would do on immigration. Essentially, she’s been announcing policy once every week since she’s gotten into the race. That seems like a pretty good flow for the remainder of the cycle.

Another lingering weakness for her seems to be the perception that she’s just a continuation of the Biden administration and its policies, and her attempts to differentiate herself don’t seem to be breaking through. Are there more dramatic measures she needs to take to draw that distinction?

I think about it less as ‘Is she breaking from Joe Biden, or is she continuing?’ What I think is that it’s pretty obvious that Kamala Harris is her own person. She has a different background and a different perspective, and she has introduced policy proposals that were not part of the Biden agenda. But the idea that she is going to become a conservative or become Trumpian or become a fundamentally different person — I think Kamala has been pretty consistent on that front.

I think she can continue to roll out her agenda. It’s not about what Biden would do, what Biden should have done, what Biden could do, what Biden would do in another term. We are now in the Harris campaign, the Harris agenda, and I think she’s handled it well. She has served as his vice president. She was on his ticket. She’s in his administration. She’s not going to do a 180-degree turn, but she’s going to present her own agenda for the American people.

That’s the construct that I view it through. I don’t think Americans are thinking about this in the context of Joe Biden. They are thinking about what Kamala Harris is going to do for the next four years and what Donald Trump is going to do for the next four years. And as long as we keep the focus on drawing the contrast with Trump, I think she’s going to win.

OK, but Republicans seem intent on framing the discussion as ‘She’s just a continuation of Biden, their agendas will be largely the same.’ Is there no value — purely from the standpoint of political optics, if nothing else — of her being able to make some grand gesture of breaking with him?

I suppose that Democrats have also been arguing that Donald Trump would be a continuation of Donald Trump, and he’s trying to separate himself from his own policy agenda. The inarticulate discussion around abortion in the debate, for example, where he outright refused to answer the question [about vetoing a national abortion ban]. And the last two weeks, he has held every policy position around it, because he’s trying to obfuscate his position. In Kamala’s case, she’s answering questions directly.

I don’t think this election is going to be decided because Kamala Harris decided on one policy issue that she’s going to make a political point. I think it’s going to be won because she puts forward an agenda — her agenda — and she contrasts that with Donald Trump. I was involved in Senate races for 20 years, and many of those races were run in states where the opposite party won the presidential [contest], and I remember tying ourselves up in knots on finding this differentiation. Where it exists, she should say so and where it doesn’t exist, she should say so.

I just question that there’s some sort of political need [to break with Biden]. I think that people can listen to and see and understand what her policy proposals have been and know that she is not Joe Biden. But they’re both Democrats.

Where does that differentiation exist?

Joe Biden did not have a plan to deal with renters in the same way that Kamala Harris does. Is that a break from Joe Biden, or is that a continuation of Joe Biden? You tell me. She’s proposed a different tax policy than Joe Biden — same values, but there is a different tax policy that she has put on the table. Is that continuing Joe Biden because she wants to decrease taxes on the middle class and the working families but increase taxes on billionaires and big corporations, or is it breaking from Joe Biden because the tax level is different?

I think these are parlor games. It’s not really how the American people process information.

Well that segues nicely to my next question, which is do you think her media strategy is working? Is she creating enough opportunities for herself to draw these points of distinction?

Are you talking about paid media or earned media?

News media — sit-down interviews and the like. She’s only done one extended interview with a cable news channel, and she’s kept a fairly low profile otherwise. Should she be doing more of that sort of thing to make the types of points that you’re saying she should make?

I think it's great if the Harris campaign does more interviews. I think she did exceptionally well in the last one. I would take issue with [the suggestion that she’s] keeping a low profile. She’s done more public events than Donald Trump since she won the nomination, so I don’t think she’s keeping a low profile. She’s been attending rallies. She’s been participating in official business. She’s been traveling the country. If anything, her profile has been higher than Trump. But if they want to do more interviews, I think it would accrue to her benefit.

I would call one sit-down interview for a presidential candidate a relatively low media profile, but maybe that’s just semantics.

You’re thinking about media as doing an interview with a publication or an outlet. I don’t consider Donald Trump calling Sean Hannity “doing media.”

You spent many years running a Democratic super PAC, Priorities USA. How do you think super PACs should be approaching the next two months of the race?

If you look at the ads from groups like Future Forward, American Bridge, and Priorities, some of the other super PACs that are doing work — a lot of them are amplifying what the Harris campaign has put forward, using video content from her rallies or talking about her economic agenda. I think the more that we are focused on positive messaging for Harris and contrasting messaging [the better] — meaning that in the same ad, in the same mailer, in the same door conversation, we are comparing the forward looking agendas of Harris and Trump. That’s where we should be from a message perspective, and I think that’s what they’re doing, for the most part.

I think more investment in organizations that are close to the work — organizations like BlackPAC, Care in Action, Planned Parenthood, Emily’s List, Somos Votantes — would help.

These are organizations that are national in scope but locally focused, so more investment in these organizations would help them directly communicate with Democratic voters and likely Democratic voters — not just in terms of turning them out, but also in terms of doing that last bit of persuasion work that can be done with people who may have been reluctant before Harris got into the race.

So overall, I’m hearing you say that things seem to be in pretty good shape for Harris — that the campaign needs to continue doing what it’s doing, and things will shake out in its favor.

I think two things can be true at the same time. I think that they are doing a great job as they continue focusing on organization and continue focusing on that combination of personal and policy — and it’s going to be a close election. Both of those things are true. They’re not in conflict with one another, but the way that we’ll win is that we draw a strong, forward-looking contrast with Donald Trump.

I think the one thing that I was not confident they would be able to do — or that anybody would be able to do — was to own the “change” message or the “change” mantle. And I think they’ve really done a pretty impressive job on this “turning the page” and forward-looking message, on moving beyond the chaos and anger and angst that is at the core of the Trump message. That’s a pretty difficult thing to do for an incumbent administration, and I think they’ve taken the steps necessary to make that stick going forward.