Time

Trump has just a few short weeks to re-set the dynamics of the new election contest

Photo by Wilhelm Gunkel on Unsplash

Americans are used to endless presidential campaigns. Candidates will scope out potential presidential runs years in advance, and as soon as one election ends the political press will turn its attention to the next.

Joe Biden’s stunning decision to relinquish the 2024 nomination upended that process. You can throw out the candidate-centered horserace commentary and polling from before July 21. This year, the contest is a sprint.

There are advantages and risks to a short campaign. It brings a freshness and excitement that can get lost in the marathon of contemporary politics. But it also compresses the decision-making process. Voters have a truncated timeline for assessing their choices, and candidates have to make their case quickly.

When Kamala Harris suddenly and unexpectedly replaced Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, there were a few things she had to do immediately in order to be competitive. In rapid succession, she had to:

• Consolidate the party around her candidacy

• Demonstrate she can raise money and engage volunteers

• Shift the messaging of the Biden campaign to reflect her candidacy

• Incorporate her advisors into an existing campaign structure without undermining its effectiveness or alienating staffers loyal to Biden

• Successfully conclude an expedited running mate search

• Define herself to the American people

Each of these tasks requires great skill and had to be completed quickly and without complications. That Harris has been able to replace Biden with apparent effortlessness speaks to her political acumen and bodes well for her prospects.

Within hours of Biden’s departure she was on her way to securing the support of enough convention delegates to become the nominee-apparent. Potential rivals quickly fell in line behind her. Money arrived in gushers and volunteers poured into the campaign as she struck a confident, upbeat tone that spoke to a hunger in the country for a new direction—which she soon began articulating with great success at massive swing state rallies.

I can’t think of a campaign that has had a better launch.

But one important step is still in progress. The impression Harris has been making these first few weeks of a joyful political warrior driven by a lifetime of effective public service needs to set like concrete in the public’s imagination. If it does, she will inoculate herself against the attacks she will face until Election Day. If it doesn’t, her momentum could stall and she could find herself on defense.

Because of the abbreviated timeline, Harris goes into the fall sprint without having to defend past political attacks from fellow Democrats that would be available to her opponent had she been through a primary campaign. But new attacks are coming—or should be coming if Donald Trump’s pathology doesn’t get in the way.

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When Biden dropped out and the contest reset, the Trump campaign needed to recalibrate its strategy—and they had to do it fast. In an instant, they found themselves with a different opponent and in a race against time to convince the public to accept their version of who Kamala Harris is before Harris defined herself. While Harris was managing the strategic and organizational complexity of assuming responsibility for someone else’s campaign, Trump should have been using the early days of the new contest to make her an unacceptable choice.

Really, this was his only job.

Although Harris is the incumbent vice president, she is largely unknown to many voters because vice presidents operate in the shadows. That gave Trump an opportunity to define Harris before people found out much about her or saw her in action. What he needed was an effective message and the discipline to communicate it.

On both counts, Trump has come up short.

None of his attack lines so far have been particularly effective. The predictable attacks on Harris’ race and gender and on her liberal Bay Area origins so far have fallen flat.

But the biggest problem for the Trump campaign is the candidate himself. Enraged by the departure of his preferred foil, furious about the energy surrounding his new opponent, incensed by the size of her crowds, and inflamed by the evaporation of his polling lead, Trump’s worst narcissistic tendencies have been on display. He speaks like he is still running against Biden and fantasizes that he will again. He treats his new opponent with contempt. He is engaging in a public orgy of self-destruction as he rails against the unfairness of his situation.

Trump can’t help himself, no matter how much it undermines his cause.

None of what Trump is doing or saying will help him make inroads with undecided voters, nor will it blunt Harris’ ability to define the terms of the contest as a choice between the future and the past, between joy and hate, between normal and weird. It seems every time Trump or his running mate open their mouths, they validate her framing.

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This could explain Trump’s puzzling decision not to schedule any events until after the Democratic convention. That decision doesn’t bode well for his ability to change the narrative arc of the campaign.

And he will soon run out of opportunities.

The political calendar tells the story. We are already in the build-up to the Democratic convention, which will be held next week between Monday August 19 and Thursday August 22. Harris and Walz should be expected to follow that with another campaign blitz like the one they just completed, which will take us to Labor Day. Eight days later, on September 10, is the only presidential debate that both candidates have agreed to attend, and eight days after that, Trump is scheduled to appear in a New York courtroom to be sentenced for those 34 felony convictions (assuming the trial judge agrees that the evidence used by the prosecution does not run afoul of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision).

Then look at what happens. Less than a week later, on September 16, the first early ballots will be cast in Pennsylvania. Virginia and Minnesota follow four days after that, and Illinois six days later.

The election is almost here.

These of course are planned events. The direction of a campaign can always be thrown off by an international or national crisis or by an unexpected twist. After what we’ve just been through, it’s hard to imagine that it won’t be.

But we are fast reaching the point where the trajectory that was established after Biden dropped out will settle in.

If Harris is able to maintain her momentum for a few more weeks, it’s going to be very difficult for Trump to blunt it before early voting begins.

Time is running out.