The advantage of a more open contest at the convention would be that it gives the candidate selected a stronger mandate, and tests them somewhat on a high-pressure stage before the final general election push. The downside would be that it continues party division in public long past the point when, at least in the modern era of presidential elections, it is usually long since concluded. At the moment it seems like Democrats – exhausted from the struggle of the last three weeks – are leaning toward this second view and inclined to make Harris’s path a smooth one.
The Trump campaign will likely greet the candidate switch with a mixture of bravado, complaints, and anxiety. All their planning thus far has been premised on the assumption that an aged Joe Biden and his record will be the target. Now they need to retool to fight quite a different fight, one that may expose vulnerabilities of their own – like Trump’s own advanced age and erratic state of mind – that Biden could not. Harris will also have more freedom to claim a share of credit for some headline successes of the Biden administration’s record (like economic growth and job creation), without being tied in voters’ minds, as Biden inevitably is, to everything they disliked about the last four years. Expect the Trump campaign to assail her as a dangerous radical, and the process by which she became a candidate as a coup and a fraud. But make no mistake: they are worried that an election they were increasingly starting to take for granted is very much back in play.
As a woman of mixed Black and South Asian heritage from liberal California, Harris is likely to want a vice-presidential running mate who ‘reassures’ a certain kind of voter by being white, male, and somewhat conservative-coded. Plausible candidates mentioned include state governors who have managed to succeed with relatively conservative electorates, such as Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Tim Walz of Minnesota, or Josh Shapiro of the key swing state of Pennsylvania.
