Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff arrive on Air Force 2 in Cape Canaveral, Florida for a visit to NASA on Aug. 29, 2022. (Photo: NASA/Bill Ingalls)
July 24, 2024 by David Silverberg
President Joe Biden’s announcement on Sunday, July 21, that he was withdrawing from the presidential race in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris sent a thrill through Democrats and all those who fear and oppose a potential dictatorship under Donald Trump.
Harris’ candidacy is especially important for Florida given the Amendment 4 fight for abortion rights, the state’s demographic trends, and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ideological cultural clampdown.
Trump was on a roll in the wake of the July 13 failed assassination attempt and the bump from the Republican National Convention. Biden’s powers appeared to be failing and he seemed unable to carry through the campaign to a must-win victory. His endorsement of the younger, more vigorous Harris turned the trends on their heads.
But how will the new situation affect Florida politically? There’s little hard data so any analysis is necessarily speculative. Still, trends can be discerned and the focus put on key issues.
Amendment 4 impact
Harris seems poised to make a significant difference in the Amendment 4 fight, which cuts across party lines.
She has consistently been an outspoken advocate for women’s reproductive rights throughout her tenure as vice president. In the spring she held a “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” tour around the country. She especially engaged after Florida’s six-week abortion ban took effect on May 1.
That ban energized Democrats and launched the movement for a state constitutional amendment protecting a woman’s right to choose. Support for the amendment cuts across party lines and polling has shown its support in the realm of 69 percent, well above the 60 percent threshold needed for passage.
Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket has boosted pro-choice supporters across the country but it looks to have an especially electrifying effect in Florida.
Can Harris flip the state?
Despite DeSantis’ overwhelming 2022 electoral victory and election of a Republican super majority in the state legislature, Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried has persistently insisted that Florida is flippable. The Harris nomination gives some credibility to that assertion.
“Vice President Harris keeps Florida in play,” Fried told reporters in a remote press conference. “We are running a former prosecutor against a convicted felon. No one is better prepared than Vice President Harris to prosecute the case against Donald Trump.”
Since the start of the campaign Trump has consistently polled eight to ten percentage points over Biden in the state. The change in the ticket is so new that credible new data isn’t publicly available yet.
For a long time, top national Democratic Party campaigners viewed Florida as a lost cause and Southwest Florida as especially hopeless. Starting in 2016 the region has been a backwater campaign stop, left to secondary surrogates like former President Bill Clinton who visited Immokalee and Fort Myers on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016 and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) who visited Fort Myers in 2020 on behalf of the Biden campaign.
On June 24 of this year, Florida Democrats suffered a new blow when Biden campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon contradicted state party assertions and simply stated that Florida wasn’t a battleground state.
This revelation came in response to a question from host John Heilemann in a podcast interview on the channel Puck News. Heilemann asked Dillon if Florida was a battleground state. Dillon answered “no,” prompting Heilemann to joke that he was afraid Dillon was going to lie to the contrary.
Jen O’Malley Dillon is interviewed by John Heilemann on Sept. 13, 2020 for his podcast. (Photo: John Heilemann).
The exchange was characterized as a “gut punch” to Florida Democrats’ hopes and efforts. It also contradicted an April campaign memo from Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez.
“Make no mistake: Florida is not an easy state to win, but it is a winnable one for President Biden, especially given Trump’s weak, cash-strapped campaign, and serious vulnerabilities within his coalition,” she wrote then.
The entire political universe has turned upside down since those statements were made.
The question to be answered in the days ahead is whether or not the Harris candidacy, the efforts of Florida Democrats and a change in the public mood can make Florida more obviously winnable for Democrats.
One thing that hasn’t changed, though: on Monday, July 22, Harris announced that O’Malley will stay on as Chair of her campaign.
This means that Florida Democrats must prove that the head of the Harris campaign is wrong. The only way to do that is to win the state and do it without national help.
Culture wars
DeSantis has made his crusade against “woke” culture the centerpiece of his governorship and had hoped to ride it to the presidency this year.
That ambition fell flat, particularly in the face of Trump’s attacks on him and his own shortcomings.
But DeSantis has kept up the effort rhetorically and financially, as when he vetoed all $32 million in state support for the arts this year.
Harris has been a counter-crusader in Florida, inveighing against DeSantis’ worldview.
For example, in August 2023 Harris came to lambast new Florida state curricula teaching the benefits of slavery to the enslaved.
“Right here in Florida, they plan to teach people that enslaved people benefited from slavery,” she said incredulously during that visit. When DeSantis challenged her to debate the issue she responded, “There is no roundtable, no lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact: There were no redeeming qualities of slavery.”
She took on the entire DeSantis revision of history, saying in July 2023 that he and other conservative politicians “want to replace history with lies.”
“We will not stop calling out and fighting back against extremist so-called leaders who try to prevent our children from learning our true and full history,” she said at the time.
She has also spoken out against book banning and gun violence. In March she traveled to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland to honor the victims of the 2018 shooting.
What to expect
As of this writing it is 104 days (three months and 12 days) to the election. A lot can happen in that time.
Right now Harris is on a roll. Her pending nomination has supercharged Democrats and the media coverage. If all goes as expected she will head into a triumphant convention on August 19 in Chicago and benefit from the traditional convention “bump.”
However, it’s worth remembering that whenever one side is trending, the other side will try to disrupt that trend, especially when the trend seems to be heading toward victory.
The Trump campaign must do everything it can to re-orient itself to running against Harris and it will use every kind of ammunition it can against her—and her husband, Doug Emhoff, and all the members of their extended families.
Rick Wilson, the Florida-based pundit, author, Lincoln Project co-founder, and veteran Republican operative put it well in a blog post, “Karma Comes Knocking for Trump.”
“First, the Trump campaign is still armed and dangerous,” he warned. “Don’t underestimate their cash, cruelty, and [the] determination of Trump to stay out of jail. There is no lower boundary. They can and will fight like the rabid, cornered animals they are.”
He warned that Harris and her campaign will make mistakes. “This is inevitable. She will say something wrong. She will get tired. She will forget a date, a name, or a fact. Campaigns are exhausting.”
As entranced as the media is with her now, they will turn, Wilson warned. “Harris jumped up so fast they naturally want to take her down a notch, and they will.”
Violence is very much a possibility, as illustrated by the attempted assassination of Trump on July 13. Reaching back further in time, it’s worth remembering the killing of another female political leader, Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in Pakistan in 2007 when it appeared that she was on her way to electoral victory.
The Secret Service is on high alert but the threat not only remains, it has intensified.
The election battle will also intensify in Florida, playing on emotions that will get meaner and nastier as Election Day approaches. While DeSantis and Trump still dominate the state, they will be fighting to maintain their dominance. They have a war chest, so voters can expect to see plenty of advertising in all mediums attacking Harris, Democrats, Amendment 4 and the marijuana legalization initiative, Amendment 3.
Unless campaign director O’Malley and the national campaign decide that investing in Florida is worthwhile, the Democratic response is likely to be tepid due to funding constraints. Only a truly robust ground campaign can even make a dent in the Republican registration advantage.
Florida Democrats do have some advantages, though. If Harris’ appeal remains strong it may lift all other Democrats down the ballot. Her outspokenness on reproductive rights, healthcare and women’s rights may have a cross-party allure, bringing her independents, the uncommitted and non-Trump Republicans. Anger over the six-week abortion ban and the movement to pass Amendment 4 is already providing a powerful boost to Democratic prospects.
Another factor in Harris’ favor is the fact that Americans appear to have become accustomed to the idea of a female president. When Hillary Clinton ran in 2016 the idea of a woman president was new and for many, scary; particularly that woman. (Even so, she won the popular vote by 2 million votes.) Since then the idea seems to have lost much of its novelty as was shown by the relatively strong showing of former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley in the Republican primaries. Clearly, even many Republicans are now comfortable with the idea of a female president.
Harris has another advantage—and his name is Donald Trump. No poll has measured the weariness, the disgust, and revulsion of voters towards this man. Americans now know the corruption, criminality, and devastation another Trump presidency will bring. The data that’s been made public to date hasn’t measured how many Americans fear the threat he represents to their democracy and rights as individuals. The hatred, prejudice and rage he generates, his meanness, pettiness, and viciousness is unlikely to in any way abate in the days ahead; indeed, it is likely to intensify. Many voters will recoil.
Lastly, Harris is continuing Joe Biden’s fight for the soul of America but with an additional challenge. Like Joan of Arc, she has to do more than just lead; she has to inspire. She needs to elevate the dialogue, raise the level of devotion and then bring it home on Election Day in a clear, unambiguous and decisive victory that puts Trumpist authoritarianism to rest once and for all.
It’s a tall order. Harris has stated that she plans to “earn and win” the nomination of her party. That nomination seems assured. After that she’ll need to “earn and win” the presidency. She’ll certainly have help from every supportive American.
But earning and winning that victory won’t be easy and it’s on that victory that this state, the nation, the world and the arc of all future history depends.
Then-candidate Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in 2020 shortly after he named her his vice presidential running mate. (Photo: Biden campaign)
Liberty lives in light
© 2024 by David Silverberg