WASHINGTON — Who is Vice President Kamala Harris?
That could be a recurring theme presented at the Democratic National Convention over four days in Chicago.
Typically, a political party’s national convention is used to choose a presidential nominee and update their party platform.
But the Democratic National Convention that starts Monday could be unlike any other.
That’s because until July 21, President Joe Biden was the presumed presidential nominee for the party. But after giving a poor performance on June 27 in a presidential debate against his opponent, former President Donald Trump, Biden was asked to step aside.
Biden’s announcement he was ending his campaign came just three days after the Republican National Convention wrapped on July 18.
And on Aug. 5, Harris became the party’s official nominee, without any opposition. She soon announced her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.
“Voters are still getting to know Kamala Harris and they’re certainly getting to know Tim Walz, and so they’re going to present different views of themselves,” said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University.
Cooper said with Trump, people know who he is, but they were looking to see if he could smooth his rough edges and temper himself around Harris.
“There’s still a sense people are trying to get to know her,” Cooper said of Harris. “And so I would imagine that the programming, the speeches, the messaging, will reflect that.”
Asher Hildebrand, a political science professor at Duke University who served as chief of staff for Rep. David Price, a Democrat, and worked on President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign, said the convention will be used to reintroduce Harris to voters.
“They might remember her from the 2020 campaign, but I think for the most part, they’re getting to meet Kamala for the first time,” Hildebrand said, “so I think both introducing herself, her personal story, the way that her family history, in many ways, represents the United States and the future that she envisions for the United States, and then also connecting that personal story to her policy vision, at least in broad details.”
Harris is in a rare position, having launched her campaign and secured her party’s nomination within weeks of the convention.
What isn’t rare is that Harris was chosen by delegates to the DNC, instead of primary voters.
Seth Masket, a political science professor at the University of Denver, previously told The News & Observer that major national parties have chosen the nominee at national conventions since the mid-1800s. Historically, he said, several names would be floated at the convention and it wasn’t until the convention that voters would know the party’s final choice.
That changed after the 1968 election, which Hildebrand said is the closest historical analogy he can find to what took place this election cycle.
Before that year, only five presidents chose not to seek reelection. And President Harry S. Truman is the only other president who withdrew his name from the race after launching a reelection campaign.
But on March 31, 1968, as Lyndon B. Johnson, the incumbent president, watched his popularity decline — partially because of the Vietnam War — and barely pulled out a win in the New Hampshire primary, Johnson addressed the nation and announced he would withdraw from the race. At the time, he was facing Sen. Eugene McCarthy, an anti-war senator from Minnesota, and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, who would be assassinated before the election.
And nearly a month later, Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, announced his candidacy. Despite avoiding all primaries, Humphrey became the party’s nominee at the DNC in Chicago. Anti-war activists were incensed that the Democratic Party ignored voters’ opinions, and violent riots broke out.
Cooper said choosing a nominee at the time was an “elite-driven” process.
“Pre-1972 changes, primaries were just sort of beauty contests,” Cooper said. “They didn’t really matter. They weren’t pledged in any way.”
But after the backlash to Humphrey, who ultimately lost his election, the two political parties chose to base delegates’ votes at the conventions on the results of their states’ primaries.
“Right up until that point, there was often a lot of intrigue and drama and vote trading, and all of the things that parties do in the final selection of that nominee,” Hildebrand said. “So there’s certainly plenty of historical precedent for nominees being chosen close to or at the convention, but it is, I think, pretty rare historically for Harris to be her party’s nominee without having gone through a primary competition or the sort of open convention that used to occur and that some Democrats were calling for.”
Biden became the third president in U.S. history to withdraw from his reelection campaign, then endorsed Harris to succeed him. Delegates from states like North Carolina and Tennessee quickly announced that they would unanimously vote for Harris as the party’s nominee. Enough states followed that Harris locked in the 1,976 delegates she needed to secure the nomination well before it was put to a vote.
Typically that vote would have taken place during the convention, but Ohio lawmakers required that the nomination be solidified 90 days before the election, which demanded that Democrats make their decision by Aug. 7.
Democrats began a roll call vote on Aug. 1, and Harris quickly secured the nomination.
In Chicago, a second roll-call vote will take place, this one ceremonial. And like Trump did at RNC in Milwaukee, Harris plans to give an acceptance speech, likely on Thursday.
Cooper said it is extremely unlikely, but possible, that Democrats could change the rules and vote someone else in as their nominee.
“But that’s not going to happen,” he added.
Conventions are also used for the party to decide on its platform for the next four years.
The Democratic National Committee released a draft of its party platform on July 13.
“This Platform highlights the progress that we’ve made since day one of the Biden-Harris Administration and recommits Democrats up and down the ballot to our mission to give every American a fair shot,” said Jaime Harrison, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, in a news release.
He went on to criticize the Republican National Committee for creating their platform behind closed doors. Typically, the party platform is shaped at the convention and broadcast on C-SPAN. But this year, Republicans prevented the public from witnessing the process, and cut the platform from 66 pages to 16 pages, saying they wanted to prevent Democrats from using the platform as a way to attack them. Harrison said in his statement that he believes Project 2025, a political initiative created by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, is the party’s true platform, an accusation many Republicans rebuke.
“The contrast couldn’t be clearer,” Harrison said. “Our Drafting Committee incorporated a diverse set of expertise and perspectives, inviting Democrats from across the nation to participate in our process and contribute to our Platform. The breadth and depth of this Platform is rooted in our collective experience and reflects a bold agenda that affirms Democrats’ commitment to protecting fundamental freedoms.”
Hildebrand said the use of a national convention to set policy has diminished significantly within both parties.
“The parties used to be the primary engines for policy development within the party, but now that’s largely played by the presidential campaigns or the presidents if they’re running for reelection,” Hildebrand said.
He added that Harris has a need and an opportunity to begin sharing her policy positions and her vision for the country’s future.
So if policy isn’t being set and the nominee is already chosen, what is the purpose of the convention?
Cooper called it a big public relations show for the party.
“We’re going to see a TV advertisement, a well-orchestrated advertisement, with the Democratic Party for a few days; just like we saw with the Republican Party,” Cooper said.
He also expects the excitement shown to Harris by the party to continue at the convention.
“There was a reservoir of discontent with Biden as the nominee, fairly or unfairly,” Cooper said. “And I don’t think that reservoir is there with Harris the same way, and if it is, nobody is talking about it. So I do think this is going to be a more excitable crowd, and I think that it’s important, but I think we need to remember that your vote doesn’t count twice if you’re super pumped to cast it.”
Hildebrand said that historically candidates also receive a small bounce in polls and popularity following conventions, though the bounce has become narrowed because of polarization and campaigns having started earlier.
But Hildebrand thinks this year could be different.
For Trump, his convention came right after an attempted assassination, bringing extra attention.
But all the attention dissipated quickly as Biden ended his campaign, and as Harris began hers and picked a vice president.
All the attention has gone to Harris, Hildebrand said.
“It feels to me that this could very well be a year where the convention matters in a way that it hasn’t for some time,” Hildebrand said. “Because it’s not only putting a candidate who’s been in the race for a long time, sort of in the front pages of the news, but it’s actually introducing that candidate to the country in a way that she hasn’t been used before and that makes the stakes of it higher.”
©2024 McClatchy Washington Bureau. Visit mcclatchydc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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