The Kamala Harris Files: A Brief Window Before the Attacks Really Begin

Chris Whipple

In the span of a few weeks, Kamala Harris has accomplished the seemingly impossible. The presumptive Democratic nominee has navigated the most politically fraught situation imaginable — a president’s reluctant abdication from the Democratic ticket — and rallied the party around her. She’s outmaneuvered potential rivals, galvanized voters and volunteers, shattered fund-raising records and pulled the Democratic campaign out of free fall.

Now comes the hard part: She must gird for a take-no-prisoners general election battle against Donald Trump. Between now and when the Democratic convention kicks off on Aug. 19, the vice president should frame the race on her own terms by establishing her identity, projecting strength, parrying Trump’s attacks immediately and continuing her pivot to offense.

Harris’s nearly flawless start knocked the Trump campaign on its heels. Convinced that Joe Biden, a doddering octogenarian, would be the nominee, Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have groped for a line of attack against the relatively youthful Harris.

“They wanted this to be about a weak, dithering president who couldn’t handle the fact that the world was on fire and inflation and the border were out of control,” said Tim Miller, a former communications director for Jeb Bush. “And then this happens and discombobulates it all. And they haven’t landed on how to pivot.”

But Trump has plenty of heavy weaponry at his disposal. Unlike his previous races, when he went through campaign managers the way the Borgias went through family, the former president’s 2024 campaign has been a relatively no-drama affair, run by the political veterans Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita.

Harris has her own formidable team, including the campaign chair, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, inherited from the Biden campaign, and the spokesman Brian Fallon. Her campaign is rumored to be talking with David Plouffe, who led Barack Obama’s winning 2008 campaign and whose strategic acumen would be a good fit with O’Malley Dillon’s ground game.

Harris should be preparing for a barrage of incoming negative attacks. Trump’s allies have already stirred up racist and sexist innuendo against Harris — just a preview of what may come. A Trump campaign version of the “Willie Horton” attack — the notorious 1988 commercial produced by a political action committee supporting the Republican nominee, George H.W. Bush — isn’t inconceivable. In that ad, widely criticized as racist, Bush’s Democratic opponent, Michael Dukakis, was excoriated for granting furloughs to violent criminals as governor of Massachusetts.

In a recent memo, Trump’s pollster Anthony Fabrizio hinted at such an attack on Harris, alleging that as a California district attorney, she’d freed “illegals” who’d gone on to commit violent crimes. Those tactics are part of the Trump campaign’s DNA. It was LaCivita who, in 2004, spearheaded the infamous “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” ad campaign, which helped to sink the presidential hopes of the Democratic nominee, John Kerry.

In the 2022 U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin, with LaCivita as a general consultant, the winning campaign of the Republican incumbent, Ron Johnson, along with other groups, aimed a devastating ad blitz at the Democratic challenger, Mandela Barnes, accusing him of coddling criminals. “It was images of crime scenes,” recalled Ben Wikler, chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. “They darkened his skin in their mailers. They stamped his name over crime scenes. And there was the spray-painted slogan ‘Defund the Police’ with Mandela Barnes in front of it, insinuating that he’d supported it.”

Barnes, strapped for money, was unable to respond quickly. “When the resources did arrive later in the race,” Wikler said, “and the Barnes campaign was able to simultaneously defend and go on offense, he started gaining a point a week and wound up losing the race by a single percentage point.” The clear lesson for Harris is to answer every attack, pivot quickly to offense and pound her message home every day until the polls close. Given the flood of donations she’s already unleashed — $200 million and counting — and the truncated general election calendar, money should be no object for the vice president.

In the weeks before the Democratic convention, with the wind at her back so far, the vice president has a chance to chart a course to victory.

Above all, Harris must affirmatively define herself before Trump and his allies can define her. Despite having served for decades as California’s attorney general, a senator and vice president of the United States, she is barely known to many voters. “That’s why the explosion of resources for Vice President Harris has been really critical,” said Wikler, “because she’s going to have to do multiple things at once in a way that Joe Biden, who’s already firmly defined in voters’ minds, didn’t have to.”

Harris must tell a compelling story that connects with ordinary Americans. What is her positive vision for the future? For working-class and middle-class Americans who have endured the worst of inflation, especially, an understanding of how she intends to bring down prices will be critical. She also should emphasize her confidence in America and Americans and contrast her positive vision for the future with Trump’s preoccupation with the past — something Democrats have struggled to do in recent years.

So far her performance is a striking improvement over her uncertain footing during her early days as vice president. “People see her and they’re like, ‘Well, wait a minute. She looks pretty good to me,’” said Mark McKinnon, former chief media adviser to George W. Bush and John McCain. Indeed, in the rarefied air of a historically unprecedented campaign, she’s performed a high-wire act worthy of the Flying Wallendas.

Any candidate vying for the executive office must project strength — a trait voters associate with Trump. Harris’s recent, pointed call for an end to the war in Gaza, issued after her meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, should be the template. Wading into a politically fraught subject, the vice president forcefully denounced the killing of “far too many innocent civilians” and the “dire humanitarian situation.” She vowed, “I will not be silent.” It was the language of leadership.

Harris must define herself between now and the Democratic convention — because Trump and his MAGA posse will pounce soon thereafter. “‘She’s a radical San Francisco liberal’ will be one line of attack,” said Rich Bond, a veteran G.O.P. strategist who served as Republican National Committee chair under George H.W. Bush. “And ‘the borders are a complete failure’ will be another. ‘Part of the Biden wrecking crew of the American economy’ will be another.”

One move that could help Harris on this front is her swift selection of a running mate. (But not too swift: George McGovern’s failure to properly vet Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, who had been treated for depression, doomed his 1972 campaign.) Harris has a deep bench of Democratic talent from which to choose, among them Mark Kelly, the senator from the border state of Arizona, who could help her on the immigration front; and Andy Beshear, the popular governor of Kentucky, who at 46 would reinforce the message that she represents a new generation of Americans.

The jabs against Harris will be blunted if she can burnish her identity now and pivot to prosecuting Trump’s flaws. Even with Joe Biden out of the race, Trump’s best hope is to run against the Biden-Harris record. If the race is about Trump’s character, the 34-count felon faces an uphill battle.

Bond, the G.O.P. veteran, sums up the Trump playbook: “They have a two-part list. One is take Harris down.” The second is don’t let Trump be a jerk. “That’s the entire list,” he said — “and the second part may be impossible.”

Whipple is the author of “The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House.” He has written about 10 presidential administrations.