July 22, 2024 12:38 PM UTC

Kamala Harris for President is Changing EVERYTHING

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: The Harris campaign announces that it set a new record for the largest 24-hour fundraising haul in history: $81 million in the first 24 hours of her candidacy. From a press release:

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How about them vibes?

President Joe Biden announced on Sunday that he would no longer seek re-election and gave his full endorsement to Vice President Kamala Harris to run as his successor.

By Sunday evening, Governor Jared Polis and every Democrat in Colorado’s congressional delegation had endorsed Harris for President, with big-name Democrats across the country doing the same (including, on Monday, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi).

Meanwhile, newly-energized supporters were opening their digital wallets, as The New York Times explains:

Vice President Kamala Harris raised more than $50 million in less than 24 hours after entering the 2024 race for president, her campaign said, as Democrats welcomed her candidacy with one of the greatest gushers of cash of all time.

Ms. Harris’ take was part of an even larger haul collected through ActBlue, the online donation-processing portal used by Democrats up and down the ballot.

As of Monday morning, ActBlue had processed more than $80 million online in the hours since President Biden announced he was stepping aside, according to a New York Times analysis of the platform’s online ticker of contributions. [Pols emphasis]

The surge of online donations peaked at $11.5 million in a single hour on Sunday evening.

The Harris campaign accounted for the lion’s share of the funds raised online. Her campaign announced that she had raised $49.6 million as of 5 a.m. Eastern time.

That is a RIDICULOUS amount of money — almost all of it from small dollar donations — and it keeps growing. Chris Korge, finance chair for the Biden Victory Fund, told NBC News on Sunday, “The floodgates will open” with Biden’s decision to leave the race. Donations may well exceed $100 million later today.

As we explained on Sunday in a special episode of The Get More Smarter Podcast, the entire vibe of the 2024 election changed almost instantly:

Harris is not yet the formal Democratic nominee for President, of course, but at the rate things are going she should have that title all but wrapped up well before the Democratic National Convention a month from now. Democrats who had been despondent about the shape of the race for President with Biden at the top of the ticket are suddenly feeling a new sense of hope and optimism. Democrats will own the news coverage for the next several weeks, parking Trump in “page two” status, where he will undoubtedly rage and rant until someone pays more attention to him.

Republicans Struggle to Respond

Last week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee ended on a dour note, with Donald Trump accepting the GOP nomination for President in a rambling, incoherent speech that was longer than any other acceptance speech in history. Three days later, Biden was out; Harris was in; and Republicans were baffled.

As Dana Milbank explains for The Washington Post:

On Sunday morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson declared that President Biden absolutely, positively had to run for another four years as president.

“It’s not possible to simply just switch out a candidate who has been chosen through the democratic, small-d democratic process,” he told ABC News’s “This Week.”

On Sunday afternoon, Johnson proclaimed that Biden absolutely, positively could not remain in office for even one more minute.

“He must resign the office immediately,” the Louisiana Republican said in a statement.

Confused? The Republicans certainly are.

They wanted desperately to campaign against Biden this fall, and their party’s nominee, Donald Trump, had built his entire campaign around beating an opponent he could portray as old and feebleminded. But Biden upended everything Sunday with these words: “I believe it is in the best interest of my party and my country for me to stand down.” [Pols emphasis]

Just like that, Trump became the old man in the race for President, and it is his words that will now be closely-watched for signs of an aging mind. It is now Trump who would be the oldest person in history to begin a term in the White House if he were to win in November.

Democrats can counter with a much better “first”: The first woman to be elected President of the United States.

And Republicans don’t know what to do next. Again, from Milbank:

The Republican response was confused and weak. They accused Democrats of a coup and a conspiracy to hide Biden’s “dementia.” They called for invoking the 25th Amendment and teed up legal challenges. But mostly they responded, in what was clearly a coordinated if illogical plan, by insisting that Biden resign immediately. “If Joe Biden can’t run for re-election,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) wrote in a typical formulation, “he is not capable of serving as president for the next six months and needs to resign NOW!” [Pols emphasis]

Colorado Congressperson Lauren Boebert was making the same pitch about Biden. As a political strategy, this makes absolutely ZERO sense. If Biden resigned, KAMALA HARRIS would become President six months earlier. How, exactly, would this help Republicans?

What Harris Means for Colorado

While some polls showed that Trump was moving closer to Biden in Colorado, there was no real chance that our state was going to be in play at the top of the ticket. Trump lost Colorado by 5 points in 2016 and by 14 points in 2020.

That doesn’t mean Harris won’t change the election cycle in Colorado. Her candidacy will bring a new excitement for Democrats in Colorado who were already motivated to oppose Trump. That top ticket enthusiasm will trickle down to candidates such as Democratic Rep. Yadira Caraveo, whose re-election bid against Republican Gabe-ish Evans in CO-08 is the top race to watch in Colorado.

Harris will also change the issues discussion in a manner that helps Caraveo and hurts Evans. A different focus on the issue of abortion rights, for example, is a huge benefit to Caraveo and a big problem for a staunch abortion rights opponent such as Evans.

For more than a year, polling has shown that Americans were absolutely NOT excited about the prospect of a rematch between Biden and Trump. Biden did what needed to be done — what Trump would never have done — and it has completely reset the narrative of the 2024 election.