The Framing of Kamala Harris

Happy Thursday. We just are hours away from Kamala Harris wrapping up the Democratic National Convention with the biggest speech of her life. Here’s what is on our podium today:

• Vital signs: The ticking health care time bomb
• Bye-bye, asylum-seekers
• Rail shutdown threatens supply lines
• DNC vibes & partisan fervor
• Plus: Brace yourself for record-breaking hurricane season

But first, it’s Harris’ moment to lead the Democratic Party, and what she does tonight will shape the campaign over the next 75 days. What are her goals? How will this set up the rest of the campaign? And is the most surprising political battle of this cycle about which party really owns the word “freedom”?

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Harris has three jobs as she takes over the ticket:

1. Unite the party: Check

Any thought there was lingering bitterness after Joe Biden was, um, Nancy Pelosi’ed to step down, has been banished. Harris has raised over $300 million and is currently fracking Bakken Formation–levels of enthusiasm from what many thought were dry Democratic wells.

Democrats will emerge from the convention — as Republicans did from the RNC — with big momentum, flush with money and a sense of hope and possibility that was nowhere to be seen when Biden was starring in the political version of “Thelma and Louise,” driving the party off an electoral cliff.

Hope matters in politics because it fuels volunteers to drive the get-out-the-vote machine, boosts fundraising, and resonates with key voting blocks like suburban women, Black and Latino voters, and young people, the core of the blue machine.

Harris’ biggest challenge remains connecting with white, working, and middle-class male voters in the seven swing states. The gender gap is a significant element of the campaign, and Democrats have been losing these voters by the bale load. Enter vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, whose folksy pep rally speech last night ditched virtually any mention of his years in Congress in favor of focusing on his military service, his hunting, and his football coaching career. Walz doesn’t bring a swing state like Pennsylvania with him, but he does bring the regular dad-in-flannel authenticity factor meant to move middle-class and working-class men back to the Democratic Party.

2. Define herself before the opposition can define her: Check

Elections are about framing three kinds of narrative. First, frame the narrative about your own candidate, then frame one around your opponent to create contrast, and, finally, frame the ballot box question urging a call to action.

The Obama folks used to call this Public Narrative theory, based on the work of a guy called Marshall Ganz. The idea is to first tell the “story of self” — why you are here and what your purpose or mission is all about. Then tell the “story of us,” which is why we all have a common cause in the mission, and end the campaign with a call to action, the fierce urgency of the moment, which Ganz calls the “the story of now.”

You can track the four days of the DNC by how they hit these three key objectives, showing that the Ganz book is still very much the DNA of the party with Harris at the top.

Harris is essentially new as a presidential candidate, which means she is balancing both the celebration of Biden’s record and taking credit for its successes while distancing herself from it enough to introduce herself as an agent of change.

This is why she starts with the story of self. Ironically, Harris is helped by the fact that she was a somewhat invisible vice president, even if she was very present on the abortion issue. Her lack of public persona began as a shield issue (Who is she? What did she accomplish in three and half years?), but now it’s very much a sword. Harris is a blank slate, so her team has been able to define her with the story of a joyful warrior, a protector, a prosecutor, and someone who fights for the middle class. Tonight, she will try to set that frame in stone — and then put one around the Trump campaign, as her running mate, Tim Walz, started to do last night. Trump as “weird,” Trump as “felon,” and Trump as only about Trump.

The framing issue is bedeviling Trump, who until now has been a master at it. “Crooked Hillary.” “Sleepy Joe.” Those adolescent nicknames have worked because they have a ring of truth for his audience. Biden really is, well, kinda sleepy. On Wednesday, Trump admitted he’s having a really hard time trying to frame Harris. “I think her name will be Comrade,” he said, going off script. “Because that is the most accurate,” he continued, thinking out loud. “You know, I’ve been looking for a name, and people have been saying, ‘Sir, don’t do it’ — you know, all my names, they have all worked, they have all been very successful — and I really didn’t find one with her!”

So far, “Comrade Kamala” is not sticking, though the strategy of calling her and Tim Walz radical communists is the playbook. But until Trump can figure something out, Harris has time to set her own frame.

Why hasn’t it worked for Trump?The “Commie” stuff is a stretch because it’s not the 1950s anymore. The Red Scare is generationally out of touch — and, besides, it’s Trump who has closer ties to Putin than the Democrats. Harris also has put out so little policy to date — a weakness in many ways but an asset in this instance — that there is no hook on which to hang the name. Meanwhile, the Harris team has adopted a kind of “haters-gonna-hate, shake-it-off” vibe, and instead of ignoring Trump (they’ve hopped off the “they go low, we go high” bandwagon), they have countered with a name of their own: “Weird.”

Trump has managed to avoid being defined by opponents because he’s always the one on offense, but the Harris folks have sidestepped him, effectively using the extreme parts of the Trump movement and his own bizarre conspiracy theories to push him out of the mainstream and marginalize him. Right now, she is winning the framing battle.

3. Set the ballot box question: The toughest task ahead for both Harris and Trump

This is the story of now, and what this campaign is all about. Trump is counting on the salience of issues like immigration, the economy, security, and the culture wars against “woke-ism” to define his campaign. He is back to his American carnage, “Après moi, le déluge” phase. It’s ominous stuff, but it works for him, and he is still very much in play in this election. But Trump’s support is not growing. Harris is pushing issues like abortion, anti-corporate greed, and anti-Trump to define her campaign. She wants the election to be about Trump because Dems believe he is an increasingly volatile liability, especially as he deepens his dive into conspiracy theories, comments about her racial identity, and simply lies about what he says are her AI-generated crowds.

There is one more fascinating framing battle going on: the battle over the word “freedom.” Freedom has classically been the rallying cry of the right — freedom from big government, freedom to bear arms, freedom of the individual against the tyranny of Big Pharma, Big Tech, the Deep State, etc. It is the cornerstone of the victimization narrative and what is supposed to underpin the “fight, fight, fight” rallying cry.

“The right has traditionally owned patriotism and freedom in both its narrative and in how people view parties on the right or center-right,” pollster and CEO of Abacus Data David Coletto told me. “But I think freedom likely means different things to different people, which is why I think it’s smart for the left to try to gain some share back on it. This is especially true in the US, where abortion rights and freedom to make decisions about one’s life are salient.”

That’s why the Democrats have openly tried to yank back the word and flip the script. As you heard Walz last night repeat his Minnesota slogan, “Mind your own damn business,” the Dems argue that it’s Republicans who are infringing on freedoms for women and the LGBTQ community and infringing on the right to health care. On a more meta level, they are arguing that Dems will protect the institutions that are there to protect freedom — like safeguarding the US Capitol from an insurrection.

While Biden focused his campaign on the word “democracy,” under Harris, everyone from Walz and Oprah to Obama to Shapiro to Buttigieg has made sure the word “freedom” has been front and center. A recentWashington Post article pointed out that “at 100 campaign events since launching his reelection in April 2023, Biden referenced “democracy” 386 times and “freedom” about 175 times. By comparison, in nine campaign rallies since Biden dropped out, Harris referenced “freedom” nearly 60 times and “democracy” around a dozen.

“The fight over the word matters,” says Coletto. “As the world has become more insecure, and as people witness the return of authoritarianism, we are less likely to take freedom for granted. I think the concept is on the ascendency again as people contrast their own lives and how they want to live with how they see others living in less free countries.”

At this moment, who protects freedom and who curtails it is not the ballot question — likely the economy will still be the decider for independents — but the freedom debate is the proxy war here.

As she speaks tonight, expect Kamala Harris to try to hang the “freedom” frame around the campaign.