5 questions facing Kamala Harris as her ‘honeymoon period’ ends

Vice President Harris has spurred huge excitement among Democrats who had grown deeply gloomy about their chances in November’s election with President Biden at the top of the ticket.

Team Harris raised $200 million within a week of Biden announcing he would stand aside, according to her campaign. More than 170,000 new volunteers have reportedly signed up.

Opinion polls also show Harris narrowing the gap former President Trump had been enjoying over Biden.

But Trump retains a lead in most surveys, and virtually everyone, including the most fervent Harris loyalists, knows her honeymoon period will end soon enough.

“We are the underdogs in this race,” Harris said at a weekend fundraiser in Massachusetts.

Here are five big questions for Harris and her campaign.

Will she make a strong VP choice?

This is the biggest decision looming over Harris.

It could come any time. During an interview Monday on “CBS Mornings,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) said she expected Harris to decide in “the next six, seven days.” Whitmer strongly implied she would not be Harris’s running mate.

The front-runners for the position are Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D). Other figures, including Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, could have a shot.

It’s easy to make an argument for any of the top three: Kelly because of his perceived capacity to ease Harris’s vulnerability on migration issues, Shapiro because he is the popular governor of the largest battleground state, and Walz because he has a plain-spoken Midwest appeal.

But running mate choices that look good on paper can easily go wrong. On the GOP side, there is significant unease over Sen. JD Vance’s (Ohio) rocky start as Trump’s vice presidential pick. The GOP is still haunted by then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s 2008 performance as then-Sen. John McCain’s (Ariz.) running mate.

It’s vital for Harris’s chances that her vice presidential choice doesn’t misfire.

Can she blunt attacks over her previous positions?

The overarching Trump campaign attack on Harris is that she is too liberal for the American public.

There is a genuine vulnerability here, particularly when it comes to Harris’s comments and policy positions as she sought the Democratic nomination in 2020.

At that time, she supported a ban on fracking, had already been a Senate co-sponsor of the Green New Deal and wanted fundamental reform of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

There is some controversy over exactly where Harris stood on some of these positions. 

For example, when she was asked during this period whether she agreed with calls to abolish ICE, she said that it was necessary to “critically reexamine ICE” and added, “we need to probably even think about starting from scratch.”

Team Harris counters that her record as a former prosecutor is a big asset in the battle to define her, helping to cast her as willing to stand up to powerful interests.

She also appears likely to position herself in a more centrist way than she did during the 2020 primary. For example, her campaign revealed to The Hill late last week that she no longer supports a ban on fracking.

But the jabs from the Trump campaign are going to keep coming. 

On Monday, the Trump campaign posted a comment from an old interview in which Harris said, “Yeah, I am radical. I do believe that we need to get radical about what we are doing and take it seriously.”

Can she win over voters angry about Israel’s assault on Gaza?

There is deep discontent among the Democratic voter base over Biden’s strong support for Israel in its war on Gaza.

A Gallup poll last month showed just 23 percent of Democrats approving of the military action Israel has taken in Gaza. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s joint address to Congress last week was boycotted by more than 100 Democratic representatives and senators.

Biden’s stance on Israel and Gaza is especially electorally dangerous in Michigan, a key swing state that has the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the nation.

Harris sounded a notable change in tone after she met Netanyahu, separately from Biden, late last week. 

Although she affirmed her “unwavering commitment” to Israel and its security, Harris also described what had happened in Gaza as “devastating” and lamented “the death of far too many innocent civilians.”

“We cannot allow ourselves to be numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent,” Harris added.

She will still have a needle to thread, however. Voters sympathetic to the Palestinians want to see an actual shift in policy, while pro-Israel voters will be very sensitive to any slackening of support.

Can she win the key battlegrounds?

For all the euphoria in Democratic ranks about Harris, Trump remains the favorite in November’s election, especially if the polling is to be believed.

Harris backers note the polling since Biden stepped aside has been fairly sparse and that it has moved in her direction.

But she has significant ground to make up, especially in the battlegrounds of Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. In the polling averages maintained by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ), Trump leads in these states by about 6 points, 4 points and 9 points, respectively. 

Harris will head to Georgia on Tuesday. It is plausible that her potential to be the first Black female president could help her significantly in a state where roughly 1-in-3 voters are Black.

Harris is down by smaller margins in the three “blue wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The Harris campaign believe she has significant upside with as-yet undecided voters. But there’s no mistaking it is a tough road ahead.

Can she differentiate herself from Biden?

Harris is in an inherently tough spot in one respect: She wears two hats, as a candidate in November and as the incumbent vice president to a president with mediocre approval ratings.

A challenge in the months between now and Election Day will be how to differentiate herself from Biden — if she wants to — without appearing outright disloyal.

There are elements of the Biden record that Harris will want to associate herself with, including increased infrastructure spending, a measure of student debt relief and concrete achievements such as capping the cost of insulin at $35 per month for millions of seniors.

But other elements of the Biden record — notably immigration and the unhealed political scar created by 2022’s inflation spike — are far more problematic.

In the months ahead, Harris will have to outline a distinct vision for the future without appearing too harsh toward the man in the White House.