The New Kamala Harris [Guest post]

[Iskra Fileva is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado and a popular blogger at Psychology Today. In this guest post, Prof. Fileva reflects on the rise of Harris. —mh]

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It is difficult to think of good reasons Democrats may have had not to pressure Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential race before the start of the primaries (an issue I have discussed elsewhere:  https://www.dailycamera.com/2024/07/16/guest-opinion-iskra-fileva-on-saving-face-versus-saving-the-country/). Arguably, however, there was at least one good reason to stick with Biden once he had won the – admittedly pro forma – primary contests: The only viable nominee replacement at that point was Vice President Harris, and Harris was unpopular. While in July of 2022, Harris’s favorability rating was higher than Trump’s – 43% versus 38% -- by May 2024, things had changed. Harris’s favorability had dropped to 36% while Trump’s had remained stable: 39%. Biden, by comparison, even after the fateful presidential debate night in late June, was viewed favorably by more people than Harris was:  https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/joe-biden/.

What followed after Biden finally announced that he was stepping down was something few of us saw coming: Harris became transformed from an unpopular Vice President into a popular presidential nominee almost overnight, in a manner reminiscent of the duckling-turned-swan from the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale. Her favorability went up, surpassing Trump’s by several points, but more importantly, the mood of voters changed. Quiet resignation and a sense of doom gave way to hope and cautious optimism. There is something new about the way Harris the presidential candidate carries herself, a certain je ne sais quoi that makes even naysayers who opposed the nomination on strategic grounds come around to the view that really, she could win.

This Harris transformation threw a wrench into the works of the Trump presidential campaign, and Trump has been struggling to regain his footing and find the right line of attack against his new opponent. But what explains the evolution of Harris and of the public’s perception of her? 

It’s Good to Be the King

The first point to note is that when circumstances change, so does our behavior. The very most humorous comedian is likely to appear subdued if put on trial, and a person who scores high on social anxiety may be relaxed and confident in the company of intimate friends. Biden’s decision to step down and endorse Harris changed the circumstances, and the new situation is eliciting different behavior from Harris. The old Harris was Vice President. A Vice President’s job is to play second fiddle, do no harm, and make sure not to draw attention away from the president. The Harris In a New Key is a presidential nominee. A top-of-the-ticket nominee,  unlike a VP, is allowed and indeed encouraged to remain in the limelight and go full throttle on the political highway.

In addition, and relatedly, people like winners. (Perhaps, we have evolved to.) Years ago, when Barack Obama was competing for the Democratic nomination with Hillary Clinton, a Clinton supporter said to me after the first primary, “Guess who won!” “I don’t know,” I answered. “Was it Clinton?” “Barack Obama,” he replied, and went on, “And this victory makes him interesting.” While Obama was the same person he had been the day before, I knew what my interlocutor meant: Something had changed. It was as though new victory light was shining on him while the light illuminating Clinton was getting dimmer. People wanted to see more of him and less of her. He had become more interesting.

I would conjecture that Biden’s endorsement of Harris had an effect parallel to that of Obama’s first primary victory: Harris became more attractive and better able to command attention. There is a halo around a person likely to be coronated.  

Gerontocracy Malaise

Part of the excitement about the Harris candidacy has to do with the fact that Harris is much younger than the person she replaced. Many voters were unhappy with the prospect of a re-match between two candidates who were already of retirement age four years ago, but one of whom is now an octogenarian, and the other – not far behind. Some sensed, probably correctly, that this is not an accident but a symptom of something potentially troubling; that the political system has a feature or features which make the concentration of power in the hands of seniors likely. The median age of Representatives in Congress and of Federal Judges has been trending upward (https://www.businessinsider.com/gerontocracy-united-states-congress-red-white-and-gray-data-charts-2022-9) in what some have described as a march toward gerontocracy.

To be clear, actual gerontocracies have rules – formal or informal – that deliberately select for older people. The US has no such rules, nor does it have elders’ councils. The minimum age to run for president is thirty-five – the same as that of many advanced graduate students.  

I suspect, however, that this is precisely why the perceived march toward gerontocracy bothers many: The US is not a country that embraces a seniority principle. Quite the opposite, it strives to be a meritocracy. There are many highly successful young people here. One may say success at any age is part of the American promise. You can make it as soon as you have something of value to offer.  You don’t have to wait for your turn. A de facto gerontocracy, albeit unintended, may seem like a reneging on the American promise; a symptom of the aging of America itself and a sign that the New World  is turning into the Old World that spawned it, like a daughter who discovers with dismay that she is starting to resemble her mother. Political life in older societies is controlled by political operatives and éminence grise. State bureaucracies protect the old guard’s entrenched interests and stifle anything new.

Donald Trump detected these sorts of anxieties, and in 2016, he sought to position himself as the disrupter and the anti-establishment candidate, the new kid on the block that just happened to be seventy years old. Now, eight years later, four of which Trump spent in office, it is much more difficult for him to make a case that he is the fresh face many believe the country needs.

None of this is to deny either the value of experience (our wise person schemas probably portray wise people as gray if not white-haired) or the reality of ageism (in many contexts, we hold people’s age against them for very bad reasons). My point is simply that these things can be acknowledged while acknowledging also that one can have legitimate concerns about a candidate’s age. Harris’s advantage is that she can position herself as the person better suited to assuage some of those concerns. While at fifty-nine, she is hardly young, she is two decades younger than her current opponent and looks younger than she really is. Harris makes the country’s perceived march toward gerontocracy seem less inevitable.

Gen Z and the Rebranding of Harris    

There is something else. Among all the factors that contribute to Harris’s present rise, this one was, ex ante, least predictable: Young people created their own version of candidate Harris, a version tailor-made to suit their needs.

It is notoriously difficult for politicians to relate to younger voters or young people in general, though (often awkward) attempts continue. When former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was seen wearing a pair of Adidas Sambas, apparently in an attempt to appear relatable, young people were outraged: “In a bid to present himself as young and hip…Sunak took an eternally cool sneaker and ruined it for everyone.” (https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-adidas-sambas-2024) Sunak later apologized for the transgenerational sartorial crime. (Imagine being so uncool that anything you wear becomes unwearable.) Indeed, Harris herself once, in a video meant to promote space exploration, did no better than Sunak with his sneakers. She chose to talk to child actors instead of ordinary middle schoolers:

, and the attempt was met with derision in many corners of the internet. Chances are she didn’t trust herself on being able to talk to ordinary kids.

Twelve-year olds don’t vote, of course, but I doubt the old Harris would have known how to talk to twenty-year olds either.   

Fortunately for Harris, however, she didn’t have to find a way to appeal to the younger crowd, because they rebranded her. They didn’t simply meet her half-way but walked the entire distance. Popstar Charlie XCX declared on social media that Harris is “brat.” “Brat,” kind young people explained later, meant that her vibes are summery, chartreuse-colored; that she is not too prim and proper; is perhaps a tad “messy” and “volatile” but in what psychologists call ego-syntonic way – she is comfortable and mildly amused by her own messiness and maybe, of that of life.

The “Kamala is brat” meme was precisely what the internet had been craving. It was a boon to the Harris campaign. All that the campaign needed to do at that point was run with it, and they did.

What made this re-branding possible?

I will mention two things. One is that Harris, as a person of mixed race, has what in a white-majority country may be seen as a “coolness” factor. She looks different and therefore, non-boring. Boringness may seem like a virtue to those who prioritize stability but not to those who look for excitement, which is most young people. (Whether Harris is actually different in non-superficial ways from any average candidate is a separate question.)

The second point is that Harris has been a low-profile Vice President and had, for this reason, up until quite recently, remained mostly unknown. Before the Biden endorsement, many knew what her laughter sounds like but not much else. She was a blank canvas. This made it possible for re-branders to project onto her whatever qualities they wished to see. Like many a lover who becomes enamored with an object for the first time, they chose to project something of themselves.

Whether the current enthusiasm will propel Harris to victory in November remains to be seen, but as of now, the Trump campaign refuses to go back into gear after losing momentum.

A staffer working for Clinton’s campaign back in 2008 once said that the Clinton camp was prepared for many things but not for Obama’s charisma. The charisma, she said, they did not know how to battle. I suspect some Trump campaign staffers may feel similarly about Harris. To be sure, Harris is no Obama, but Trump and his team do not seem ready to take on the Harris of Gen Z. They may have prepared for all the weaknesses of Joe Biden and many of Harris’s. What they didn’t prepare for, what perhaps they could not have prepared for because no one saw it coming, was a Kamala who’s brat.