The Harris Party’s a Blast. Now to Avoid the Hangover.

To keep the good times rolling, Kamala Harris must move to blunt GOP attacks on her record.

Jack Karlson, the Australian petty crook whose 1991 arrest outside a Chinese restaurant unexpectedly became one of the great viral clips of all time decades later, died yesterday at the age of 82. If you’ve never seen his finest moment, take a second and do yourself a favor. Happy Thursday.

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Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris arrives to speak during a campaign rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, August 7, 2024. (Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images.)

Getting Serious for a Minute

—Andrew Egger

For Democrats, the last two weeks of the presidential race have felt like one big party. And can you blame them? The agonizing grind of Joe Biden’s post-debate purgatory feels like ancient history and the pivot to Kamala Harris has gone off without a hitch. The polling looks rosy. The money is rolling in. The choice of Tim Walz as VP candidate has energized both centrists and progressives; Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joked that his selection had Democrats “in disconcerting levels of array.”

Up in front of crowds this week, there’s been no question Harris has the juice. Her message is energetic, straightforward, and tight: “We’re not going back.” And she’s handled unpredictable crowds with aplomb. In Eau Claire, Wisconsin, she talked her audience down from a “lock him up” chant about Donald Trump: “Hold on. The courts are going to handle that part of it. What we’re going to do is beat him in November.” And in Detroit, she showed a flair Biden never managed in handling pro-Palestinian protesters who tried to interrupt her.

All this is just fine. The Democratic base needed a shot in the arm like this. But amid all the honeymoon-period vibes, somebody probably ought to point out—and maybe the job falls to us fusty old unpleasable anti-Trumpers, the ugly stepsisters of the Harris coalition—that all the good vibes in the world can only take you so far. The party’s been fun; it’s time to start drinking water to dodge tomorrow’s hangover.

After all, structurally speaking, it’s still the same old election it’s always been: One that’s likely to come down to the votes of a few thousand idiosyncratic independents across a handful of swing states, and one whose brutal electoral math dictates Harris likely needs to win the popular vote by 3 points just to have a real shot.

Team Trump’s early attempts to go on the attack against “Kamabla” have mostly been flailing, incoherent, and ineffective. But it would be wildly Pollyannaish for Team Harris to assume this will remain the case. Now is the moment to start getting out ahead of the stronger attacks that are beginning to form.

If there’s one Republican attack against Harris that has teeth so far, it’s this: Harris is a liberal’s liberal who had a progressive voting record in the Senate and ran hard to the left on issues from health care to immigration in the Democratic primaries in 2019. Now, she’s trying to memory-hole that past, sticking to scripted campaign events to avoid tough questions and counting on a sympathetic press not to push her too hard on the change.

There’s no question Harris now considers some of her positions from that primary liabilities today. Her aides wasted no time disavowing them in the days immediately following her campaign announcement last month: The Harris of today doesn’t want to ban fracking, talks a tougher game on immigration, and no longer supports moving to a single-payer healthcare system.

But background statements from nameless aides won’t be enough here. The longer she goes without answering probing questions about her own evolution—the longer she avoids press questions and sticks to the choreography of the campaign event—the more Team Trump will be able to characterize her as scared of her own record.

Yesterday, in an odd coincidence, Vance and Harris happened to touch down on the same tarmac at the airport in Eau Claire. Vance decided to stroll over to Air Force Two to chat with the reporters covering Harris’s arrival.

“Hopefully it’s going to be my plane in a few months,” he told them. “I also thought you guys may get lonely, because the VP doesn’t answer questions from reporters . . . I’d love her to just answer what she wants to do and also explain why every single position she has has changed.”

It got weirder from there. Vance later tweeted out a picture of him and his staff walking away from Harris’s plane: “This Entourage reboot is going to be awesome.” And Trump spokesman Steven Cheung went in a grosser direction: “Make sure AF2 is deep cleaned because Lord only knows what Kamala Harris and her team have done on there. The smell alone on that plane must be crazy.”

Harris should start taking questions from reporters. She should explain her policy evolution. And she should leave Team Trump with nothing to talk about but their own bizarre fantasies.

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How to Get There

—William Kristol

I agree with Andrew—and with James Carville in my new conversation with him, out today—that at some point Kamala Harris should address straightforwardly the fact that she no longer holds some of the views she did in 2019.

I’m not sure just when that point should be. This week’s intro tour is going well, and she may be able to keep that positive momentum going until the convention by conveying a general feeling of optimism, normalcy, and a fresh start without having to address policy in too much detail. Which would be fine.

So the task of policy correction and explanation may be something Harris can wait on a couple of weeks. On the other hand, she should address it soon if any of the attacks on her 2019 positions seem to be getting traction.

Whenever it may be, Harris is going to have to make it very clear that she’s not the pandering-to-the-left Kamala Harris of 2019.  She can explain that she’s learned a lot as vice president, and from the successful policies of Democratic governors like Tim Walz, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, Jared Polis, and so on in recent years.

But she needn’t be defensive. She shouldn’t shy away from acknowledging—even embracing—the fact that it’s not 2019 any more. Indeed, she should own her new stances, leaving 2019 behind and emphasizing several moderate and popular Democratic policies she’s committed to going forward.

In the course of doing this, the Harris-Walz ticket shouldn’t sleep on Project 2025. Sarah Longwell discovered a month or two ago that swing voters were bringing up that notorious effort unprompted in her focus groups. The voters didn’t know many details, but they had the sense (correctly!) that there was a somewhat creepy and quite extreme right-wing agenda for a Trump second term buried in those hundreds of pages.

The new UMass Amherst poll that I cited earlier this week actually asked voters about Project 2025. It found surprisingly widespread familiarity with the project, and it found that many of its items are wildly unpopular:

(Photo via UMass Amherst.)

The Democrats can keep hanging those proposals around Trump’s neck—pointing out the deep involvement of Trump’s top policy people in drafting them, mocking Trump for trying to run away from them now. Bottom line: Make Project 2025 even more famous than it already is.

Keeping the focus on Project 2025 will help the Harris-Walz ticket get to where I think they have to get to: Beyond the weird and off-putting character of a Trump-Vance ticket to the dangerous and threatening character of a possible Trump-Vance administration.

A final point: Use Republicans more. For example, have the former Republican Lt. Gov. of Georgia, Geoff Duncan, speak just before Harris and Walz when they’re in Georgia. Let him get more attention for reiterating what he recently said: “Do the right thing. Listen to that tiny little voice in your head that tells you Donald Trump is the worst thing that not only happened to the party but this country.”

What was it we Reaganites used to say about tax policy? Lower the rates and broaden the base? So with the Democratic ticket today: Lower the barriers to entry to Republican voters by highlighting Republican voices against Trump, and broader the base of support.

It comes back to Andrew’s point above. The Harris-Walz team is off to a good start and has pulled even or a bit ahead. Now, like Cole Hocker, Quincy Hall, and Kristen Faulkner this week, they need to close strong to victory.

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Catching up . . .

• Israel vows it is prepared for retaliatory attacks: New York Times

• Trump complains about campaign as advisers try to focus on attacking Harris: Washington Post

• Vance runs a Swift Boat attack against Walz’s military service: Politico

• Tim Walz owns no stocks, bonds or real estate, disclosure shows: NBC News

• Taylor Swift shows in Vienna canceled over alleged planned terrorist attack: CNN

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