How Kamala Harris took command of the Democratic Party in 48 hours

WASHINGTON - Late morning on July 21, US Vice-President Kamala Harris summoned a small clutch of her closest advisers and allies to the Naval Observatory, where she lives and works, with little notice and even less information.

US President Joe Biden had informed Ms Harris earlier that morning that he was

withdrawing from the race

.

The Vice-President assembled her team so that the exact moment Mr Biden formally quit, at 1.46pm – one minute after the President had informed his own senior staff – they were ready to go.

Time was of the essence.

A sprawling call list of the most important Democrats to reach had been prepared in advance, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. Ms Harris, in sneakers and a sweatshirt, began methodically dialling Democratic power brokers.

“I wasn’t going to let this day go by without you hearing from me,” Ms Harris said over and over, as day turned to night, according to five people who received her calls or were briefed on them.

She phoned past Democratic presidents, many of her potential rivals – including governors Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania – Democratic congressional leaders; senator Bernie Sanders; heads of various influential caucuses; and other top Democrats, a person with direct knowledge of the call list said.

The blitz demonstrated exactly the kind of vigour and energy that Mr Biden had lacked in recent weeks. Mr Biden had reportedly made 20 calls to congressional Democrats in the first 10 or so days after the debate, while his candidacy hung in the balance. Ms Harris made 100 calls in 10 hours.

At the same time that Ms Harris was dialling, a new whip operation was set up to wrangle delegates who will ultimately select the nominee, integrating her team and the pre-existing Biden-Harris campaign’s delegate operation.

Within 48 hours, Ms Harris functionally cleared the Democratic field of every serious rival,

clinched the support of more delegates than needed

to secure the party nomination, raised more than US$100 million (S$134.34 million) and delivered a crisper message against former president Donald Trump than Mr Biden had mustered in months.

It amounted to a remarkable display of early dominance for Ms Harris and an organic outpouring of enthusiasm. And it allowed a Democratic Party that had been holding its collective breath in the month since Mr Biden’s uncomfortably inarticulate debate to finally exhale.

“It was a very well-orchestrated cascade,” said Mr Howard Dean, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee and a past presidential candidate himself. “I have to confess I am surprised myself how fast this has gone.”

The sitting Vice-President was always going to be the front runner to win the Democratic nomination if and when Mr Biden stepped aside. To deny Ms Harris would also have meant breaking with one of the party’s most valuable and loyal constituencies: Black women.

The story of how Ms Harris so efficiently and effectively locked down the nomination – “a perfect 48 hours”, Mr Robby Mook, who managed Ms Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, called it – was told through interviews with more than two dozen people who are supporting Ms Harris, involved with her campaign or who interacted with it.

Top Democrats decided to look past any nagging concerns about Ms Harris in one fell swoop, as Republicans eagerly began to recirculate old clips of her taking liberal stances that could make her vulnerable in November, such as opposing fracking, supporting Medicare for All and declaring that those who cross the border illegally are not criminals.

In some ways, the window for Ms Harris’ might-have-been rivals closed after a mere 27 minutes. That was the amount of time between when Mr Biden announced he was quitting and when he endorsed her as his successor, at 2.13pm in a post on X.

The Biden endorsement offered more than just the President’s imprimatur, which would be powerful enough. It cleared the way for Ms Harris to access the US$96 million sitting in the Biden-Harris campaign coffers and a 1,300-strong campaign team that no potential rival could compete with.

The first paperwork making the formal transition was filed at 4.48pm with the Federal Election Commission, records show.

The party was also primed to unify. After a chaotic and damaging three weeks of infighting about Mr Biden’s mental capacity, a broad range of Democrats were desperate to refocus on Trump, and Ms Harris was the only viable path to come together quickly.

The speed with which the consolidation happened was reminiscent of how the party had first rallied behind Mr Biden in 2020 after he won the South Carolina primary and a contest with Trump loomed.

Former president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton had, in private discussions before Mr Biden’s exit, said that the No. 1 priority for the party was unity, according to two people with knowledge of those conversations.

The Clintons, these people said, believed that a speedy coming together above all else would maximise the party’s chances against Trump.

Ms Harris called each of them separately, and within an hour of Mr Biden’s endorsement, the Clintons had issued their own joint endorsement that served as a clarion call to the broader party that it was time to coalesce.

A wave of endorsements followed, not just from likely allies in the Congressional Black Caucus and the California delegation but also across the party’s ideological spectrum. Mr Matt Cartwright, a moderate who won in a north-eastern Pennsylvania district that Trump carried, said he was “proud” to support Ms Harris.

One of the few people yet to endorse her as at the afternoon of July 24 was former president Barack Obama, whom Ms Harris had called on July 21.

Overall, the embrace of Ms Harris was so widespread that congressional Republicans stopped tracking which vulnerable Democrats had endorsed her and kept tabs on only the smaller list of who had not.

Money, meanwhile, was gushing into the campaign. The Harris campaign said in a memo that as at the evening of July 23, it had topped US$126 million raised since Mr Biden’s exit.

The seamlessness of Ms Harris’ ascent – all her biggest potential rivals have already endorsed her – impressed a range of party leaders after years of private sniping and second-guessing of her political skills.

Even some at the White House and the newly transformed Harris campaign in Wilmington, Delaware, privately confided that the Vice-Pesident’s energetic early appearances were a refreshing change from those of the 81-year-old President, whose verbal stumbles were constant fodder on the right.

In her first appearances, Ms Harris sketched out a new line of attack against Trump, homing in on her time as a prosecutor and his status as a felon. And the campaign is now seeking to invert the age argument that had proved so damaging, calling Trump’s age – he is 78 – a “weight” on him in an e-mail on July 23.

The Harris operation for months had been working alongside the Biden team to recruit delegates, and she had her own base of loyalists across the nation.

By evening on July 22, less than 36 hours after Mr Biden’s exit, Ms Harris had secured the support of a majority of the delegates that she needs to win the nomination in August.

By July 23, she had locked down the backing of more than 3,100 of the party’s 4,000 total delegates, according to an Associated Press survey.

The Harris takeover was completed early afternoon on July 23, just before the 48-hour mark since Mr Biden’s exit, when the two Democratic congressional leaders, Mr Chuck Schumer and Mr Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, endorsed Ms Harris.

By then, Ms Harris was on her way to Milwaukee, for her first appearance in a battleground state as the new face of the Democratic Party. She was greeted by a crowd the campaign estimated at more than 3,500 – larger than any campaign crowd Mr Biden had drawn during the entirety of his candidacy. NYTIMES