Experimental

Less than a week after being designated to replace Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic Party ticket, the polls show Kamala Harris has erased Donald Trump’s lead. This surprise candidacy is turning out to be phenomenal.

An invitation was sent out for white women voters to participate in a Zoom call to support the Harris candidacy. It turned out to be the largest ever Zoom call, crashing the app.

The Harris candidacy keeps breaking all fund-raising records. The dynamics of this electoral contest is changing by the hour. New ground is being broken. New constituencies are quickly forming.

At this time in the campaign, Donald Trump is supposed to have the momentum. In a matter of a week, he was shot at, he named his vice presidential candidate and was formally nominated by the Republican National Convention. By historical precedent, he should be riding the crest of a post-convention bounce in his poll ratings.

But there is no bounce in his polling. It is clear, he has exhausted his voting base. He has no more voters to win.

Furthermore, his choice of running mate is quickly turning out to be a mistake. JD Vance, an uncharismatic freshman senator, is trying so hard to be a Trump clone he is not adding votes to their column.

He is the most disliked vice presidential candidate on record, with many more voters disapproving of him than approving. Not even Sarah Palin, John McCain’s disastrous vice presidential choice, polled as badly.

The few issues he has raised in his independent campaign sorties have all backfired. Vance compounds the sense of crisis that has descended upon the Trump campaign.

JD Vance was chosen because of Donald Trump Jr.’s insistence. In typical Trump fashion, he alone mattered in making the choice. No test polls were run to check on voter reaction. No simulations were run to estimate how many votes the candidate might draw to favor the campaign.

In a word, JD Vance was chosen without due diligence. Now he threatens to drive away even more voters from the ill-fated tandem.

Trump is said to be suffering from buyer’s remorse. But it is too late to junk JD Vance. Post-convention, there is no longer any mechanism to do that.

From the looks of it, the Trump campaign is now a dead horse.

By taking a hard conservative position on key issues, Trump has been narrowing his voting base rather than widening it. Neither Trump nor his lesser educated base would have the aptitude to shift strategy at this late stage.

The surprise shift from Biden to Harris as Democratic Party standard-bearer caught the Trump campaign by surprise – even as they were arguing that Biden was not fit to run. The campaign is desperately trying to keep a handle on the campaign discourse, to little avail. In his last campaign rally, all Trump could do was to accuse Harris of being a Marxist without explaining how she merits that tag.

Meanwhile, Harris has attracted the support of Republican voters disgusted with Trump. This includes those who campaigned and voted for Nikki Haley during the Republican primaries. One by one, leading figures of the Republican Party are crossing lines and endorsing Harris.

Harris appears to have chosen “Freedom” as her main campaign theme. This enables her to tie together all the issues against Trump: from restrictions on women’s rights to the patently fascistic Project 2025 that is Trump’s de facto platform.

The tone of the Democratic campaign has shifted markedly in a matter of days. Even as it zeroes in on all of Trump’s follies, the campaign has gained new color and is immensely more joyful. Her campaign now dominates on TikTok, a platform Trump and his drab conservative base can never master.

One week after she assumed the mantle of leadership in the fight to save America from Trump, Harris is expanding the political horizon for this contest. She is tapping into new social networks, such as the alumni of college sororities.

Harris has the space to be even more experimental with her campaign, beginning with her choice of running mate.

Right now, the choices for vice president include another woman, the popular Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer. It also includes a gay man, the competent Pete Buttegieg who is currently Transport Secretary. The others are: the respected governor of Pennsylvania who is Jewish and Senator Kelly of Arizona, a former astronaut.

I am sure Harris’ campaign staff is now doing the due diligence, checking the backgrounds of those in the vice presidential shortlist and running tracking polls about their acceptability to voters. The most exciting option open is that Harris could choose another woman to be her running mate.

The fact that this has never happened before does not mean it could never happen. Harris, after all, breaks the rules set down by white men. She is the first woman of color to seek the highest office in the land.

If she is disposed to be even more experimental, she might choose an all-female ticket. That will drive the misogynist tandem of Trump and Vance up the wall. It will excite voters all the more.

The US has always been behind the curve in giving women the role they deserve in politics. The US was among the last countries to give women the vote. The country never had a female chief executive.

This could be the year all that changes.