Earlier this month, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) was nowhere to be found as President Biden quietly joked about his age and defiantly declared he would not let anyone \u201cpush me out of this race\u201d at a low-key rally in her hometown of Madison.<\/p>\n
But just a few days ago, the two-term senator, who faces a tough battle for reelection this year in her swing state, was beaming as she spoke before Vice President Harris in front of a roaring crowd of re-energized Democrats in West Allis.<\/p>\n
The scene underscores the feeling of cautious optimism that is boosting Democratic candidates all the way down the ballot in the eight days since Biden stepped aside. Vulnerable Democratic incumbents hoping to hold onto their slim majority in the Senate and flip the House had all but resigned themselves to defeat after Biden\u2019s disastrous debate, and they were running as far away from his candidacy as possible.<\/p>\n
Now that Harris has an opportunity to introduce herself to a Democratic base waked up by her candidacy, congressional Democrats are starting to see a path to victory with fewer than 100 days until Election Day, even as Republicans are organizing themselves around a line of attacks they hope will tie Democrats to Harris\u2019s past positions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see huge energy everywhere,\u201d said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who is running for reelection this year in Virginia, which some polls showed would be close on the presidential level with Biden atop the ticket. \u201cIn the events that I\u2019ve done since that announcement, the energy is really, really ratcheting up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, Harris is battling deep dissatisfaction with inflation and the administration\u2019s handling of the border among voters, and Democrats are facing a brutal Senate map full of purple and red states that favors Republican attempts to wrest back control of the chamber. House Democrats have to win four more seats if all incumbents are reelected to retake the majority.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe additional enthusiasm that the Democrats have shown will obviously help down ballot races,\u201d said GOP political consultant Whit Ayres. \u201cWhether that will be enough to overcome the other negatives and challenges remains to be seen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Democratic strategists running Senate and House campaigns noted an abrupt shift in messaging as soon as Biden, 81, passed the baton to Harris, 59, from an operation focused on the president\u2019s record the last four years to a campaign leaning into the future with slogans like \u201cWe\u2019re not going back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who runs the Senate Democrats\u2019 campaign arm, called the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, argued the contrast with Trump would be good for Harris and all Democratic candidates.<\/p>\n
\u201cCampaigns are about the future. And how the policies they\u2019re fighting for are impacting their lives,\u201d Peters said. \u201cThat\u2019s why I think it\u2019s a real problem for Donald Trump he continually dwells on the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
House Democrats also see the future-forward messaging as a welcome change. Multiple House Democratic lawmakers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak openly about Biden\u2019s troubles, said the president spent the last several weeks recounting his first-term accomplishments rather than laying out a concrete vision for the future.<\/p>\n
Democrats this week cheered on Harris as she embraced \u201cfreedom\u201d as a core tenet, and they noted her sharper messaging compared with Biden on abortion rights and other issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have an opportunity to move past the chaos and extremism and return to normal, pragmatic, reliable leadership, and [voters] get that with her. They get a better understanding of what\u2019s on the line in terms of democracy and how we\u2019re going to strengthen it,\u201d Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) said. \u201cIt\u2019s also an opportunity not just to say, \u2018Here\u2019s who I am,\u2019 but to set the terms of the debate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the past eight days, the once-depressed Democratic base has wake up, helping amass more money and a volunteer army down-ballot. The Harris campaign said Sunday that it had raked in $200 million in the week since Biden exited the campaign, two-thirds being from new donors.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, the DSCC raised more than a million dollars online two days in a row, the most of the cycle, according to the group. And Peters said the number of statewide volunteers in his state doubled in the four days since Harris announced her candidacy.<\/p>\n
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had its best day of the cycle in the first 24 hours after Biden\u2019s announcement and one of the best online fundraising days in the House Democratic campaign arm\u2019s history, raising nearly $1 million, they said. In the first nine hours after Biden\u2019s Sunday announcement, the DCCC was raising $1,300 per minute, according to the DCCC.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love Joe Biden, but I think it\u2019s a fact that we were having a difficult time activating our base. We have that problem solved,\u201d Rep. Daniel Kildee (D-Mich.) said.<\/p>\n
The latest influx of cash is something keeping Republicans up at night because it can take some districts off the competitive map, according to GOP campaign strategists.<\/p>\n
\u201cKnowing the path forward has folks incredibly energized, and frankly, our candidates have always been running ahead, so we\u2019ve been on a good path to take back the House from the beginning of the cycle and continue to date,\u201d DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) said.<\/p>\n
Both a Siena\/New York Times poll and a Wall Street Journal poll published this week showed Harris faring better than Biden among young, Hispanic and Black voters \u2014 all key constituencies for Democrats up and down the ballot this fall. But the Siena poll also registered some slippage compared with Biden among older voters, showing the rapidly shifting coalitions that Democrats are still deciphering. An ABC\/Ipsos poll released Sunday showed an eight-point spike in Harris\u2019s favorability rating from 35 to 43 percent, with an unfavorable score of 42 percent.<\/p>\n
Harris\u2019s strengths have presidential strategists hoping that Sun Belt states including Nevada, Arizona and Georgia may be back in play after the Biden campaign had begun to write them off. That is welcome news for Democrats running for the Senate there: Rep. Ruben Gallego (Ariz.) and Sen. Jacky Rosen (Nev.). Democrats also believe Harris\u2019s candidacy will help incumbents in the \u201cblue wall\u201d of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, states Democrats historically have won to secure the White House.<\/p>\n
House and Senate Democrats running in swing districts and states had been outperforming Biden before his exit from the campaign \u2014 strategists said they continued to do so in the weeks after the June 27 debate.<\/p>\n
But Democratic lawmakers feared that if Biden stayed on the ticket, he would eventually doom their chances down-ballot. They worried that Democrats were unlikely to hold onto the Senate if Biden lost, given the fact that even if all their incumbents win, the Senate would be split 50-50 next year. (The president\u2019s party gains control of the Senate in the case of a split.) House Democrats also were concerned that a depressed base would result in historically low voter turnout, which is critical in swing districts where elections are determined at the margins.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the dynamic for them has improved simply because it\u2019s not Biden,\u201d said Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.). \u201cWe still are trying to catch up in some of the swing states in the Senate races.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the red states of Ohio and Montana, where Sens. Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester, respectively, are fighting for their political lives, it is less clear that Democrats will be aided by Harris at the top of the ticket. Tester is the lone vulnerable Senate incumbent who has not endorsed Harris, even though the Los Angeles Times reported in 2015 that he encouraged her to run for Senate in the first place.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s doing his best to try and get himself aligned with his state, which is going to be really hard because his state is a far cry from the kind of San Francisco liberal policies that Harris brings to the ticket,\u201d said John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican.<\/p>\n
National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Steve Daines (R-Mont.) said he believed that Harris will eventually help Republican candidates because it\u2019s easier to connect Democrats to her policy positions, which he cast as far left, than to connect them to Biden\u2019s age.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe is a San Francisco radical, and this just feels a lot like a replay of George McGovern and Michael Dukakis,\u201d Daines said, referencing past failed Democratic presidential nominees. \u201cThe nation is not ready for a far-left president.\u201d<\/p>\n
That messaging is being used by Pennsylvania GOP Senate candidate David McCormick, who released an online ad targeting Sen. Bob Casey (D). In the ad, Casey praises Harris before a lengthy supercut of Harris previously endorsing policies such as banning fracking and discussing \u201cstarting from scratch\u201d in designing the agency charged with enforcing immigration law inside the United States. In a memo, the NRSC urged candidates not to \u201cbe shy about aggressively tying their opponents to Kamala Harris\u2019 extreme agenda.\u201d (The Harris campaign told reporters this week she now does not support a fracking ban.)<\/p>\n
In the House, swing-district Democrats have largely embraced Harris\u2019s candidacy, with many believing she can only improve on her support from here. One House Democrat representing a swing district said they called on Biden to step aside because they had seen 30 months of consistent internal polling that showed Biden not improving against Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw Biden\u2019s ceiling and I think what we see in the polling is Harris\u2019s floor,\u201d said the lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about party leaders.<\/p>\n
Democratic Rep. Hillary J. Scholten, who represents a swing district in western Michigan, says she has had many \u201cmoderate, even conservative crossover voters\u201d in her district who mention liking Harris\u2019s personality and gravitas, and who consider her a politician \u201cwho really means business.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Democrats say Harris must use this opportunity to reintroduce herself to a public that does not know much about her as Republicans are sharpening their attacks.<\/p>\n
Many swing district Democrats \u2014 which represent districts with an almost evenly split mix of Democratic, Republican, and independent voters \u2014 are telling Harris\u2019s campaign that she needs to run to the center rather than appeal to the far left.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re in the general now. If Democrats are going to give you the path, you need to run like you understand what it takes to win in a battleground state,\u201d the Democratic House member said. \u201cIf you all go off to the left and try to please the \u2018Bernie bros,\u2019 you got a problem in battleground states.\u201d<\/p>\n
Democrats welcomed Harris latching onto her prosecutorial record to sharply contrast with Trump\u2019s recent felony conviction. Many noted that such an embrace could help them counter GOP attacks that Democrats are soft on crime.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a difference from the Harris 2020 presidential campaign in which she often times softened her record as a prosecutor and attorney general of California in fear of disappointing the liberal base during a crowded Democratic primary.<\/p>\n
But Hill progressives are also embracing Harris as a candidate who will continue liberal policies that Biden enacted during his presidency. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, was asked by the campaign to stump for Harris in Georgia this weekend. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said Harris\u2019s past positions on climate, abortion and the war in Gaza will continue to excite liberals, especially young voters. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said he will do \u201canything\u201d he can to help elect Harris, but he has not yet formally endorsed her.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s exactly what Republicans want to capitalize on.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat San Francisco liberal wants to turn the whole country into San Francisco,\u201d said National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) at a Trump rally in North Carolina last week. He added that Harris \u201cwants more illegal immigration, she wants free health care for illegals, she wants to defund the police.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Harris has brushed off these attacks, portraying a vote for Trump as a ticket to the past. \u201cWe\u2019re not going back,\u201d she said in Wisconsin last week, as the crowd began chanting the same.<\/p>\n
Leigh Ann Caldwell contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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