Vice President Kamala Harris’s ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket has transformed the U.S. presidential race. But the real test awaits: Will the party be able to translate that energy into a winning coalition of voters in November? Reid J. Epstein, who covers politics for The Times, discusses a group of skeptical voters in swing states who may post the biggest challenge to the vice president. Our audio producers — Jessica Cheung and Stella Tan — traveled to Wisconsin to speak to some of them.
From the New York Times, I'm Michael Balboro.
This is the daily as Kamala Harris successfully re energizes the Democratic Party, her campaign is now trying to figure out how to translate that excitement into a winning coalition of voters in November.
Today, my colleagues travel to the swing state of Wisconsin, where a group of skeptical voters may represent Harris single biggest challenge.
It's Thursday, August 8.
Reed Epstein, welcome back.
Hi, Michael.
So, Reid, from the moment that Joe Biden left this race and Kamala Harris replaced him as the presumptive democratic nominee, the promise was that she would do better than Biden never could against Donald Trump.
But the specifics of that, of how she would do better, felt a little bit vague.
And that's what we want to talk to you about today.
We've had a few weeks to better understand that proposition.
So what does a winning Harris coalition in November look like, and how does it compare with the support that Biden had been getting?
So, Michael, I think the place to start is not two and a half weeks ago when Biden got out of the race, but four years ago when he defeated Donald Trump and won the White House.
In that race, he won a bunch of states that Trump had won in 2016.
He won Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in the midwestern blue Wall states, and he won in the Sunbelts in Georgia and Arizona, and he held on to Nevada.
In that election, Biden assembled a coalition with three essential elements for any Democrat to win a national election.
He drove up turnout in big cities, particularly among people of color and young voters.
He did better than Hillary Clinton had with college educated voters in the suburbs.
And he did something that has been trickier in the Trump era.
He limited his losses among white, working class and rural voters.
Biden had an image as Scranton Joe and somebody who had been in every union hall in the country and was familiar to some of these rural white voters as the type of Democrat that they used to vote for when they were voting for democrats.