Kamala Harris ushers in a new Democratic era, stepping out of Biden shadow

CHICAGO ― As President Joe Biden gave a tearful goodbye to the Democratic Party, a liberated Kamala Harris stepped out of his shadow and commandeered the national stage .

The handoff at the Democratic convention, one of several Biden farewells, was a visceral example of how the country is changing, with the first Black and Asian American woman topping a presidential ballot.

Biden’s policies formed a foundation for her candidacy. But it was the 59-year-old Harris’ turn to lead four weeks after the 81-year-old president tee’d her up to serve in the nation's most powerful office.

For the first time, activists who have sought to see more gender and minority representation in politics said they felt like they truly belonged.

“We're being seen and we see ourselves in her,” said Reproductive Freedom for All president Mini Timmaraju, who spoke at the convention Wednesday night .“It’s really emotional.”

Harris has less than three months to convince the rest of America to entrust her with a four-year presidential term. She has raced to lay out an agenda that hits on Americans’ most pressing problems that excites the party’s base and is palatable to moderates.

After years of quiet inroads on issues she cares about without undermining the president’s agenda, the pressure is on for Harris to provide a detailed vision of her own coming out of the party’s four-day gathering in Chicago.

Biden has mostly stayed out of her way, making fewer public appearances, and going on an August vacation.

She’s managed to close the gap with Trump in key battleground states and improve her favorability rating by several points.

“She needs to be herself. And she needs to get out there and …send the message that we are focused on the middle class, we are focused on families,” said Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a co-chair of Harris’ campaign.

It’s the post-Labor Day slog, when the newness of her candidacy wears off, that Democrats say Harris needs to brace for, when Republican 2024 presidential nominee Donald Trump finds a soft spot.

Harris’ honeymoon can’t last forever, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro suggested on Wednesday. “I do, of course, expect Donald Trump to figure out how to land a political punch. I mean, he's been horrible, right?”

“But he'll figure out how to get a message and land a political punch. I think what you've seen with her is an ability to absorb the criticism and just keep going,” he told reporters during a Bloomberg News event.

Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff offered a similarly blunt assessment in a Tuesday evening convention speech. His wife can smell weakness, he said.

“Kamala doesn’t tolerate any B.S. You’ve all seen the look. You know what I’m talking about. It’s not just a meme – it reflects her true belief in honest and direct leadership,” he said. “It’s also why she won’t be distracted by the nonsense.

Emhoff’s passionate speech in support of his absent wife, who was at a rally that evening in Wisconsin, was yet another reminder of how the power structure in the Democratic Party was shifting with a woman back in charge.

The convention has helped the country get to know Harris, said former Obama-era Labor Secretary Tom Perez. “This convention is perfectly timed, in the sense that we’re four weeks into this,” Perez, a senior White House adviser to Biden and former DNC chair, told USA TODAY in an interview.

Defining the generational shift

But it’s not only the face of the ticket changing. It’s the first major signal that the party’s priorities are shifting too.

Two years ago came a preview of the change after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries succeeded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the top Democrat in the House.

Now as Harris becomes the face of the new multicultural Democratic Party, the torch is also being passed to a younger generation within the party.

“In that generational shift, we have an opportunity to define what that shift means,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said Tuesday at a breakfast of roughly 150 advocates pushing for progressive policies like criminal justice, climate change reforms and AI reforms.

And that’s what Harris is doing, her allies said. Ahead of the convention, Harris laid out an economic platform that hits on key policies that are top of mind for voters: housing, high costs and credit to Americans with children.

“This is a moment when we're going to have a new leader … that is being responsive and understands a lot of what many Americans go through, that can speak to different experiences,” said Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of NextGen America, a progressive advocacy nonprofit.

While Harris was thrusted to the top of the ticket, voters’ excitement for the historic nominee was on full display at the convention.

“As a woman of color, it means everything. It means everything to me,” Angela Evans, 48, a delegate from Lexington, Kentucky, said of Harris being at the top of the ticket.

Evans, who is following a tradition of serving as a delegate that her mother set 40 years ago, said Harris’ resume and life experience allows her to carve her own lane in the path the Biden White House laid out.

“I'm just thrilled that she can continue it on, but bring her own unique perspective as a prosecutor, as a woman, as a woman of color, to all of that,” Evans said. “She just brings different attributes to the table, and she needs to highlight those for herself.”

Perez said the vice president is expanding on Biden’s policies — pointing to her proposal taking on “greedifcation” through the first-ever federal ban on price gouging of food and groceries and expanding the child tax credit.

“She is not reluctant to take on these powerful interests,” he said, noting Harris’ attorney general background.

‘Her record is Joe Biden’s record’

However, Harris is still running on a platform that is reflective of her current boss and partner, Biden.

“She’s running on her record. Her record is Joe Biden's record,” Timmaraju said.

Harris had been a “real partner” to Biden, said Perez, bringing up her deciding votes on the Inflation Reduction Act and American Rescue Plan, in her capacity as president of the Senate.

Part of the reason she would be able to seamlessly transition into the presidency, he said, is because she is the last person in the room with Biden as he makes consequential decisions.

“He kept that promise,” Perez said. “She was a trusted partner, and someone who has been battle tested.”

Ultimately, any policies that Harris wants to push forward comes down to the make-up of Congress, Timmaraju said. For example, signing abortion rights legislation would be the biggest accomplishment of Harris’ presidency, she said. And without Democrats controlling the Senate, in particular, her agenda would be stymied.

“If she doesn't get a solid congressional majority, a lot of the things that are in the party platform, and a lot of the things she wants to do, she won't be able to, like codifying a federal right to abortion,” Timmaraju said.

Democrats are worried about holding two Senate seats in particular that could make all the difference, incumbents Jon Tester in Montana and Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Neither was planning to attend the convention where Harris on Thursday is set to deliver a speech accepting her party's presidential nomination.

And another issue: the abbreviated campaigning cycle.

Rohini Kosoglu, a former top aide to Harris and an outside policy adviser, suggested during a Bloomberg roundtable on Wednesday that the truncated campaign won’t leave time for Harris to lay out detailed proposals to advance issues such as paid leave and Black maternal health. Those are two areas that Harris had led in the Biden administration but are not the core economic issues that most Americans will be voting on over the next two and a half months.

Harris has to communicate her priorities to voters, she said. But she also needs to define her opponent.

“The questions around even what voters want to hear in terms of her work over her career, her time as vice president and then moving forward, may sound a little bit different than our traditional sort of longer term campaigns,” she said, which have typically had “huge apparatuses.”

Still, allies believe Harris can put “her own stamp” on the agenda laid out for her during the Biden administration, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said.

“She is uniquely qualified and capable of speaking to reproductive rights, to speaking to housing, to speaking to voting rights, and I think that she will do that with incredible qualifications and quality,” Jayapal said.

She said that Democrats were extremely close to being able to pass legislation that included paid leave, child care and long-term leave after the last presidential election. It passed in the House and failed because Democrats could not get the needed votes in the Senate.

Harris understands how important passing legislation that encompasses those policies are to Democrats, she said.

“We will be ready to pass those things quickly,” Jayapal said.

‘She’s one of us.’

Biden relied heavily on male senators he served with to help him muscle through legislation when he took office.

Women lawmakers who Harris, a former California senator, was elected alongside would be her administration’s backbone.

“She’s one of us. She knows how the institution works, and she’s going to be able to help us lead and get legislation passed that’s going to support her administration,” Duckworth said.

When Biden took office in 1973, representing Delaware, there were no women senators.

A quarter of the Senate is now female. Harris has hosted them at her home, and several Democratic senators are part of her inner circle.

Those relationships will help her to keep reproductive rights at the fore, Timmaraju said. While the president has been an advocate, “She's much more steeped and versed and an expert, and with the women's senators completely will be transformative.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kamala Harris ushers in a new Democratic era, stepping out of Biden shadow