As Kamala Harris Hits Her Stride, the Olympics Could Stall Momentum

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There’s no point denying it: Vice President Kamala Harris’ rollout has been nothing short of a storybook introduction. A clean exit from President Joe Biden? Check. Delegates and donors falling in line? Double check. A polling bump, a surge in activist interest, and, on Friday, the blessing of the most popular Democrats in the land, former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama? Check ‘em all.

Everything’s coming up Kamala in this midsummer reboot of a campaign that for months had turned even the most interested insiders lackadaisical, if not sour. Suddenly, Democrats think they have a shot at keeping the White House and prevailing in a narrowly divided Congress. And Republicans are finding themselves in an unexpectedly tight contest where all of their attacks on 81-year-old Biden—his age, his acuity, his ability to articulate a fully formed idea—can now be easily hurled back at 78-year-old Trump. So unsettled is the new battlefield, Trump’s allies are now declining to say if he’ll participate in the September debate that was initially meant as a Biden-Trump rematch but now has been recast with Harris in the prime seat.

But like all good fairy tales, there is always a complicating factor in the wings. And rather than sorceresses or dragons, the gatecrasher of this tale is none other than the global spectacle that is the Olympic games.

Starting Friday, most Americans—and connected citizens of the planet, really—will have their attention drawn in part to the sporting contests nominally centered in Paris but playing out in venues across France. It’s a distraction from politics, for sure, but it comes at the precise moment when Harris’ ascent seems to be compounding in momentum every day. The torch lighting and almost three weeks of athletics stand to steal Harris’ thunder in a major way; more than a quarter-million hours of broadcast television is impossible to overpower, no matter the political fundraising haul. Sure, the first debate—the one that ushered Biden off the ticket after three miserable weeks of second guessing—saw an audience that topped 51 million, but the Olympics will attract billions of eyeballs. In the competition for TV gold, it’s Harris versus the global games, and it’s not even remotely a fair field.

Harris’ allies note that she has no plans to take her foot off the pedal. Since she subbed-in for Biden, the campaign says more than 100,000 new volunteers have signed up and another 2,000 people applied for full-time campaign jobs, a startling flood of interest and talent that, frankly, was never going to step up for an operation with Biden at the top. Her team plans to keep Harris on the road where it makes sense, like next week’s trip to Georgia, but also take advantage of the lesser glare—at least from the public, if not the political press—to retool parts of the Biden operation, layer in new Harris-focused talent and tones, and stress test the machinery with a little more than 100 days until votes are counted. Oh, and she has to pick a running mate, with Democrats quietly circling Aug. 7 on their calendars as the last possible day to make the announcement.

There are plenty of reasons for Harris’ fans—an expanding K-Hive is part of the play, of course—to carry legitimate optimism. A New York Times/ Siena College poll taken after Biden’s exit finds Harris’ favorability numbers are up, with 46% of registered voters liking her compared to the 36% who said the same in February. Among those who hold an unfavorable view of the Vice President, the number is down to 49% from the 54% level, also taken in February. And the so-called Double Haters—the voters who can’t stand either option—are now down to 8% from the 20% that has held steady throughout most of this year. In the most simple terms, people are warming up to Harris now that she’s a real option, Democrats have stopped clutching their pearls over her odd ticks, and voters are realizing they have a choice between a convicted felon and a steady prosecutor.

A cynic would say Biden and his allies planned this to launch Harris with a clean trajectory and  reset the race against Trump, but all signs indicate this was far from some master scheme and more of a messy family therapy session that carried geopolitical weight. No, until Biden announced his plans to step aside on Sunday afternoon, the Harris orbit was largely kept in a loyal holding pattern. 

Harris on Ice ended quickly, though. Along with essentially shutting down any competition for the nomination and lining up any would-be rivals as inviolable allies, Harris has been working the phones, ropelines, and political behemoths like the unions and activist groups with a gusto unseen since the hustle of midsummer 2007 when Barack Obama seemed stuck in neutral in his race against Hillary Clinton but grinded it out with an organizational might that no one saw coming.

For Harris, though, her challenge will be to keep in the game as much as she can over the next three weeks. The games will dominate—and unify—Americans in a way that hasn’t been seen since, well, last week when Biden called it quits. (A shocking 87% of Americans back his decision, although Democrats and Republicans have vastly different reasons for sharing this view.) Harris has the chance to throttle back a little and make sure her first days as the Democratic leader are sustainable and not a flare. Judging from her confident rush to the fore, it’s a good bet that her launch was far from a fluke. Now, she just has to wait out the hullabaloo in Paris to fade and have a second reboot at the ready.

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