A panel of CNN experts sought to make sense of how the presidential race is being reshaped, as Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage in Milwaukee for a packed rally.
"This is a prosecutor making her case," said reporter Jeff Zeleny. "This is also the same vice president who has been out there really for the last three years making speeches, but not when she is at the top of the ticket, something has changed obviously. Now this is her burden. This is her case. And often when the vice president has been out there — I've been at several of her rallies, she's been talking about the Affordable Care Act, the infrastructure fund. She's been selling the administration's programs, but not in a political speech like this."
"So look, the race to define Vice President Kamala Harris is on," Zeleny continued. "She is locked in this race. Obviously, she's trying to define herself as the prosecutor and the Republicans are also trying to define her, but in this key moment here, right out of the gate, it was just striking to watch." After months of handwringing from Democrats over President Joe Biden's fitness to run, "Just judging her stamina, her energy and her acuity at taking this onto Donald Trump, we're in an entirely different race now."
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Analyst Kristen Holmes concurred with this assessment — and added that this moment is critical for the Trump campaign.
"I think right now what the Trump folks are focused on is this race to define Kamala Harris," said Holmes. "Because when they look at all the polling, they obviously see the same thing that everybody else did, which was that Kamala Harris has high name identification. But when it comes to what people actually know about Harris, not just as vice president, but also as her time as a prosecutor, most people don't know a lot about her history ... you are going to see [Trump] trying to educate people or quote-unquote, 'introduce' Kamala Harris, their version of Kamala Harris, to the American public, and it's obviously going to be increasingly negative."
At the same time, she added, Trump's main pollster Tony Fabrizio has a memo out warning that there will likely be a "Harris honeymoon" that wipes out Trump's monthslong, tenuous polling lead.
"They expect over time, things will even out," she said, but "again, this is expectation setting for people who have been seeing these poll numbers with Donald Trump. Probably also expectation setting for the candidate himself."
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