What Harris needs to do, now, to win - WaPo Editorial

With President Biden’s exit from the race, Democrats are quickly coalescing around Vice President Harris. Too quickly, arguably: Both she and the country would be better served by a brief, contested nomination process that tested her skills as a presidential campaigner and sparked discussion about where the next generation of Democratic leaders should take the party.

The party seems to have made up its mind, though. So now it’s the nation’s turn. Fate has presented Ms. Harris the rarest of political opportunities: to start a presidential campaign in the summer of an election year as a fresh, all-but-anointed candidate free to present her vision to all voters, not just to her own party. Though many Americans might already have feelings about their vice president, they are listening now.

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When Ms. Harris sought the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, she tried to play down her record as a tough-on-crime California prosecutor and embrace the progressive left of the Democratic Party, backing policies that lacked broad appeal, such as Medicare-for-all. She did not make it out of 2019 before folding her campaign. Mr. Biden prevailed, in both the primaries and the general, after declining to court the passionate minority to whom candidates such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) appealed. Amid much activist mockery of his refusal to give up on bipartisanship or on a return to civility in politics — indeed, on the broad middle of the country — Mr. Biden built a coalition of liberals, voters of color, moderates and ex-Republicans.

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Ms. Harris should both resist activist demands that would push her to the left and ignore the social media micro-rebellion that will follow. Ms. Harris’s pick of running mate could be a revealing early indicator, too. Tapping a politician likely to appeal to the median voter would serve her — and the country — best.

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Ms. Harris might look at those numbers, and the complexity of the issues, and be tempted to ride a glide path to the nomination, taking few risks between now and when delegates vote in August. She should do the opposite. She could deliver a detailed national address and take substantive questions from journalists, hold a televised town hall to engage directly with voters and give interviews after rallies in battleground states. She could even take part in forums with fellow Democrats to showcase that the party is more than any one individual. The goal is to emerge from vice-presidential muddiness to presidential sharpness.

https://wapo.st/3Snlzvp