How Kamala Harris’ warp-speed campaign launch has changed the 2024 race

The five days since Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign launched at warp speed have remade the 2024 race – and given Democrats new hope of preventing a second Donald Trump presidency.

The five days since Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign launched at warp speed have remade the 2024 race – and given Democrats new hope of preventing a second Donald Trump presidency. Bright green, pro-Harris memes have erupted across social media. Fundraising exploded, with Harris’ campaign saying she raised $126 million between Sunday afternoon and Tuesday evening. And Democrats were more eager to devote their own time to working to elect Harris: More than 100,000 people signed up to volunteer for her bid, and more than 2,000 applied for campaign jobs, Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a Wednesday memo. New polls show a race in which Trump had been ahead now having no clear leader. It’s all made clear how desperate much of the Democratic Party was for a change at the top of the ticket – and how eager its donors and loyalists are to back a candidate who can take on Trump in a more consistent and aggressive way. Michigan AFL-CIO President Ron Bieber described the energy in his state – one of November’s most important battlegrounds – as “electric.” “I’ve never seen energy like this, this time in an election cycle,” he said. The Democratic message is largely the same. Though Harris has put her own spin on it, much of what she’s focused on in recent days – defending women’s reproductive freedom; rejecting “trickle-down economic policies”; standing up for democratic norms and values – mirrors what President Joe Biden had campaigned on.