Kamala Harris heads to DNC in Chicago with momentum and a big opportunity

WASHINGTON − Riding a wave of momentum since announcing her candidacy, Vice President Kamala Harris heads to Chicago this week for the Democratic National Convention with an opportunity to reintroduce herself to unsure Americans and push Donald Trump further on defense less than three months before the election.

More than any major party nominee in recent history, Harris' biography remains an unknown to many voters, having accepted the Democratic nomination without receiving a single primary vote or enduring the rigors of a long campaign.

In a fight to define who she is and what she represents, Harris is expected use the convention to weave together a personal story told in working-class terms − a daughter of immigrants who worked at McDonald's during college − while Republicans attack her as too liberal and too inexperienced.

The late timing of the convention, which the DNC scheduled to take place a week after the closing of the Olympic games, has presented an ideal scenario for the surging Harris − giving the vice president the chance to harness the enthusiasm she quickly injected into Democratic voters and put it on display before nightly prime-time convention audiences.

Yet to keep her upward trajectory going , Harris might need to pull something off that Trump didn't manage to do during the Republican National Convention: deliver a message that resonates to a broader electorate beyond the party insiders and activists inside the United Center.

"She's got to tell people what they're voting for. Elections are about the future, and she needs to say, 'This is how I'm going to make your lives better,'" said Todd Belt, professor and political management program director at George Washington University. "And she really needs to be introduced to America."

More: 'Resurrected from the dead': Harris pick of Walz caps complete shake-up of 2024 race

Since launching her candidacy shortly after President Joe Biden dropped out of the campaign July 21, Harris in short time has wiped out Trump's polling leads against Biden in battleground states, drawn packed rallies at arenas that dwarf the size of Biden's low-key campaign events, and raised a mountain of campaign cash .

Harris has turned the race upside down in less than a month, prompting some Republicans to urge Trump to stop talking about crowd sizes and calling Harris "dumb" on the campaign trail to stay on message about the economy and immigration.

But Harris and her newly named running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz , have to prove that the enthusiasm amassed over a few weeks can last 78 more days until Election Day. That means keeping on board the previously undecided voters who have moved her direction while efforts from Trump to paint Harris as "dangerously liberal" intensify. Given the polling surge Harris has already experienced, strategists aren't sure whether she can get a major post-convention bounce, but there's still much to be gained.

"She has already experienced the 'convention bounce' without the convention, and her goal at this point is to solidify those new voters," said veteran Republican pollster Frank Luntz, pointing to young female voters and Hispanic voters who have shifted her way.

More: Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump in 5 battleground states, tied in Georgia, poll finds

Luntz said Harris needs to deliver a unifying a message for all America − similar to then-state Sen. Barack Obama's famous 2004 keynote convention speech − and not play to the Democratic base. "Don't play partisan politics. Don't play ideological politics. Don't play gender politics and don't play race politics," Luntz said.

"Your efforts should be to reach America and not 'hyphenated America,'" Luntz said, adding that the opportunity for Democrats is beyond just the White House.

"If they're smart, this convention will not just be about the presidency, it'll also be about Congress. There is now the distinct possibility that the Democrats could win the House, the Senate and the presidency, and the message that's put up by the convention, if it's a Harris-specific message, it will blow that opportunity."

'An opportunity to speak beyond the Democratic base'

Harris' handful of stump speeches and television ads have offered clues about how she intends to sell herself to Americans at the convention . The campaign has framed Harris, 59, as a "fearless" champion of the everyday Americans who put "murders and abusers" behind bars as a prosecutor in San Francisco, went after "big banks" as California attorney general and targeted "big drug companies "as vice president.

"Here in Chicago, Vice President Harris will use our stage to tell her story to the country, outline the Harris-Walz vision for the future, and grow our broad coalition to defeat Donald Trump," said Emily Soong, press secretary for the Democratic National Convention.

A Harris campaign official told USA TODAY the convention will lean into one of its core framings − a campaign "about you" versus Trump caring about himself.

More: Biden, Obama, Clintons to headline Democratic National Convention speakers

Harris will have to contend with what's expected to be large protests outside the convention challenging the Biden administration's support for Israel's war in Gaza. And the road moving forward poses more challenges for Harris, who has not sat down for a televised interview or held a news conference since becoming the Democratic nominee.

Harris' rise so far has been more about being new face atop the ticket and less about policy, coupled with a framing of the race that has seemed to work. Harris has positioned herself as the forward-looking candidate − "We're not going back," she tells her crowds − as a counter to Trump's long-held "Make America Great Again" theme. With her self-anointed "joyful warrior" Walz , the Harris campaign has ought to portray messages of hope and optimism versus a Trump campaign that has portrayed the U.S. as a country in shambles under Biden and Harris.

Harris waited until Friday to reveal an economic policy agenda for her still-young campaign that has a decidedly populist bent. "Now is the time to chart a new way forward," Harris said in Raleigh, North Carolina, unveiling proposals that include a first-ever federal ban on price-gouging from food and grocery industries, tax incentives for first-time home buyers, and a $6,000 tax credit for working-class families with newborns.

But gaps still remain to fill out her agenda and vision.

"She has an opportunity here in that people are going to be more interested in watching this convention, certainly, than they were a month ago when Biden was on the top of the ticket," said Amy Walter, publisher and editor-in-chief of The Cook Political Report. "And it's an opportunity to speak beyond the Democratic base."

More: Weeks into her campaign, Kamala Harris puts forward an economic agenda

A month ago, Trump headed into the Republican National Convention not only with polling momentum against Biden but also days after surviving an attempted assassination that galvanized his supporters.

But after promising a changed tone and a message of unity, Trump ended the Republican National Convention with a speech aimed at his base that talked about "crazy Nancy" Pelosi and blamed enemies for his three pending felony criminal cases.

"Let's face it, back a month ago, there's a reason that they were feeling incredibly confident," Walter said. "It was looking very, very good. I think the biggest mistake that the Harris campaign could make tactically is that they speak just to a Democratic audience or just to the people that she's rallied behind her, rather than recognizing who the people are she needs to get"

Walter said Harris needs to speak to voters "cross-pressured" between feeling anxious about inflation under the Biden administration yet disliking Trump and his temperament.

Harris calls her campaign the 'underdog.' Polls suggest otherwise.

Leading up to her Thursday night slot at the convention, Harris will take part in a bus tour with Walz in western Pennsylvania on Sunday and hold a rally Tuesday at the same arena in Milwaukee where the GOP convention took place.

During a recent campaign blitz of battleground states with Walz, Harris insisted repeatedly that her campaign is "the underdog" against Trump.

But a survey of the seven top battleground states from the Cook Political Report last week found Harris ahead in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Arizona and tied with Trump in Georgia, while Trump leads only in Nevada. Trump led Biden in six of the battleground states and was tied in another in a survey the same pollsters in May.

Harris has started to rebuild Biden's winning 2020 coalition. She has largely consolidated the Democratic base, the survey found, with 91% of voters who backed Biden in 2020 now saying they will vote for Harris, compared with 82% of this group in May who said they would vote for Biden.

Across the seven battleground states , Harris leads Trump head-to-head among independent voters, 48%-40%; Trump had led Biden 41%-38% among independents. And perhaps most significantly, Harris leads "double hater" voters − those who say they don't like Biden or Trump − by a wide 30 percentage points, 54%-24%. Trump had led with this group as well.

Walter said voters are so far giving Harris "the benefit of the doubt," not blaming her for their anxieties about the economy and inflation to the same degree they did Biden. Harris trails Trump by only 5 percentage points, 50%-45%, on the question of whom voters trust more to handle the economy, according to the poll. Biden had trailed by 11 points.

More: 'If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that': Harris fires back at Gaza protesters at rally

Openings remain for Trump to exploit, however. Despite inflation that has been on the decline, 57% of poll respondents said it is getting worse, and voters trust Trump more to handle immigration, 53%-39%. Harris is seen as "too liberal" by 53% of battleground state voters and "too inexperienced" by 52%.

Yet at the same time, 57% of likely voters in the poll said Trump is "too erratic and out of control" to govern, 59% said a second Trump presidency would be too focused on retribution, and 57% said it would be too focused on implementing "extreme policies."

"This race has shifted from being a referendum on Biden's age and the economy to being a referendum on Trump and his temperament," said Greg Strimple, a pollster at the Republican-aligned GS Strategy Group, which conducted the poll with Democratic polling firm BSG. But, he said, "despite the fact Donald Trump is unable to get out of his way at the moment," the Trump campaign's advertising is on message.

"If you go after Kamala Harris on being too liberal, too inexperienced and a continuation of Biden on the economy and inflation and cost of living and immigration, you could see Trump coming back," Strimple said. "There's a lot of talk right now about the race being over. I just kind of caution everyone that there is a path for Trump, it's just whether he can take it."

Trump on Harris: 'People don't know who she is'

In a push to shift the race to the economy, Trump held a news conference Thursday alongside props that included boxes of cereal, condiments and other grocery items that remain more expensive amid high inflation.

"People don't know who she is," Trump said. "You don't have to imagine what a Kamala Harris presidency would be because you're living through that nightmare right now."

Still, at several moments, Trump veered off message, saying Harris "doesn't love our country," that he's "entitled to personal attacks" against her, and that he doesn't have "a lot of respect for her intelligence."

"I think this is a different kind of a race," Trump said. "All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist, or a socialist, or somebody that's going to destroy our country."

More: Trump says he's 'entitled' to attack Harris, hits inflation efforts: 3 takeaways from NJ press conference

Meanwhile, Harris faces a political tightrope at this week's convention to pay tribute to Biden, who will address the convention Monday night, while setting her own agenda and trying to distance herself from the low marks voters still give Biden on his handling of the economy and inflation.

"They've been aligned for the last 3½ years," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said of Biden and Harris this week in remarks the Trump campaign seized on. "There's not been any daylight."

In a display of unity, Biden and Harris on Thursday made their first public appearance together since Biden withdrew from the election. Harris thanked "our extraordinary president, Joe Biden" at an event in Largo, Maryland, where the two touted their efforts to lower prescription drug prices. "Thank you, Joe!" a crowd of supporters chanted back.

"Folks, I have an incredible partner, the progress we've made," Biden said. "And she's going to make one hell of a president."

Reach Joey Garrison on X, formerly Twitter, @joeygarrison.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kamala Harris heads to DNC in Chicago with momentum and a big opportunity