Donald Trump is not going to get the presidential race that he thought he deserved. The Trump campaign had devoted its energies to depicting President Joe Biden as an old duffer incapable of serving a fresh term. It turned out to be more successful than it ever dreamed.
On Sunday, Biden announced that he was exiting the race and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president. It was the first time since 1968 that a sitting president has declined to run for a second term. In bowing to the inevitable, Biden has not only fortified his own legacy but also ensured that a real race to the finish line will take place. Harris, who will likely receive the Democratic nomination, is well-prepared to face off against Trump. After a stumbling start as vice president, she has displayed a more seasoned speaking style in recent television interviews, including immediately after Biden’s disastrous debate with Trump when she sought to turn the spotlight from Biden to Trump’s record.
A former California prosecutor and Senator, Harris has seamlessly ascended the political escalator. Her own bid for the presidency in 2020 failed, but there is no shame in that. Other candidates, including Biden, Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon, have made more than one run before succeeding. When Biden tapped Harris to become his vice president, he recognized that generational change was key to the future of the Democratic party.
Now that she is running for the presidency, Harris presents a stark contrast with Trump. Many of the darts and shafts that Trump wielded against Biden can be directed against him; he’s too old, over the hill, mentally and physically challenged, and so on.
The addition of J.D. Vance to the ticket will not help Trump, at least when it comes to wooing the minority voters that had been a crucial part of his race. Trump hoped that Vance would help him in the Midwest battleground states. But Harris may well select Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate. Other names circulating include Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper.
Trump will zero in on Harris as a continuation of a failed Biden administration in both foreign and domestic policy. The question for Harris will be whether she can not only defend the Biden record but also go on the offensive. She can point to low interest rates and record-low unemployment as pluses. In addition, the Federal Reserve is expected to lower interest rates in September, and the stock market is at record highs.
At the same time, Harris will seek to pummel Trump on gun control and abortion as well as Project 2025. She has been relentlessly targeting the blueprint for a second Trump term devised by the Heritage Foundation, which Trump has recently been disavowing in no uncertain terms.
Had Biden not withdrawn from the race, Trump would almost certainly have coasted to a landslide victory in November. Biden’s decision has probably deprived him of that. Trump remains a protean and forceful figure on the campaign trail, but he has never confronted a political opponent as tenacious and aggressive as Harris. Only now has the presidential race begun.
Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of The National Interest and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. He has written on both foreign and domestic issues for numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Reuters, Washington Monthly, and The Weekly Standard. He has also written for German publications such as Cicero, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Der Tagesspiegel. In 2008, his book They Knew They Were Right: the Rise of the Neocons was published by Doubleday. It was named one of the one hundred notable books of the year by The New York Times. He is the author of America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators.
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