By Angelo Lynn
The tectonic plates of this presidential election are shifting so quickly it’s hard to keep up. With President Biden announcing Sunday, July 21, he was stepping aside and throwing his support to Vice President Kamala Harris, there was a moment of anticipation that Democrats would see a scramble between top contenders for the party’s presidential nomination. But of the half dozen likely contenders, no others stepped forward.
Party unity in defeating ex-president Trump prevailed and Harris appears to have clinched the nomination well ahead of the convention.
For Democrats, a unified party behind a strong candidate is better than facing a potentially fractious fight. The downside of such a hasty coronation, however, is the missed opportunity to refine some of its talking points with free televised coverage in a debate-like format — an opportunity that would have drawn huge audiences of undecided voters.
In lieu of those debates, there might be another opportunity.
Harris and party leaders could slow the search for a vice-presidential candidate and use the next three weeks before the convention to flesh out the Democratic platform via group interviews with the top VP candidates and Harris. The party could, for example, pick five top issues to discuss in five separate conversations, allowing each of the candidates to elaborate on how the Democratic platform differs from the Republican approach and why it better serves the average voter.
These conversations, which would still be moderated, would introduce voters to the candidates and help define the issues. The top issues aren’t hard to choose:
The economy and why America is better off than most other countries, what that means to the average voter, and why we’re on track to tame inflation;
Abortion and a woman’s right to control her own body;
Climate change — the opportunities of a green economy versus the catastrophic results of denial;
Foreign policy and the false allure of isolationism;
How to manage immigration so it doesn’t overwhelm our lives yet helps the nation grow and be stronger as it has always done throughout American history.
If it’s too complex or cumbersome to include all the VP contenders, Harris could do the same on her own and draw millions of viewers with each topic. That’s in addition, of course, to Harris’s campaign duties and a ramped-up schedule to compare and contrast her youth, vigor, intelligence, and knowledge of the issues to Trump and the party he has made in his orange-glow image.
Harris has a lot of work ahead to ensure American voters get to know who she is, feel comfortable with her, and understand the contrast in leadership and optimism she offers the country.
It feels new and exciting because it is.
