Kamala Harris Faces Warning Signs

Kamala Harris has aced her moment. So far.

The vice president has already won the backing of enough delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, sparked a fundraising bonanza and alchemized the mood of a party that looked headed for defeat.

But while Harris can hardly have hoped for a better start in establishing legitimacy among Democrats after President Joe Biden abandoned his reelection campaign, she is still just hours into a mission that ranks as the most daunting for any modern potential presidential nominee. And the full intensity of Republican nominee Donald Trump’s attacks is yet to unfold in the most unpredictable election season in generations.

In a rousing speech Monday afternoon, the vice president rallied campaign staff at their Wilmington, Delaware, headquarters with Biden – still recovering from Covid-19 – calling in to solidify the transition. After laying out her prosecutorial case against Trump, Harris cast the contest as “two different versions of what we see as the future of our country.”

And in her first public event since Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday, Harris earlier Monday officiated at an event on the White House lawn centering her in the imagery of the presidency.

Perhaps most significantly, she also notched the endorsement of her fellow Californian, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose backdoor maneuvering was critical to ending Biden’s stalled reelection bid and revealed the 84-year-old is still the nation’s most skilled and influential Democrat. After Pelosi said her backing was “official, personal and political,” other congressional leaders fell into line behind Harris – ready to entrust their party’s hopes to a historic standard bearer who is nevertheless an untested leader at the pinnacle of American politics.

By Monday evening, the vice president had been backed by well more than the 1,976 pledged delegates she’ll need to win the nomination on the first ballot, according to according to CNN’s delegate estimate.

And after the freezing of donor cash helped force Biden out of the race, Democratic wallets have opened big-time. Harris raked in more than $100 million between Sunday and Monday evening, a campaign official said, boasting more than 1.1 million unique donors – 62% of them first-time contributors.

The vice president’s swift consolidation of power has been impressive. Her multi-hour phone blitz to Democratic Party power players on Sunday hinted at an operation primed ahead of time but that was kept secret and didn’t leak. The plan appears to have strangled any hope of alternative candidates and the aspirations of some in the party for a lightning primary to find a new nominee who could argue that they had won a contested bid for the party banner.

Source: CNN