If you follow presidential politics, you may have noticed what can only be described as a profound shift in momentum since July.
The dominoes started to fall when Joe Biden’s poor debate performance rocked the political calculus and led to calls — not just from Republicans but from panicked Democrats — for Biden to abandon his reelection bid.
During this period, there was lots of hand-wringing among Democrats and the political commentariat as to who their party should put up against Trump. Many openly questioned whether Vice President Kamala Harris could truly muster the support she would need to overcome the momentum Republicans had seized in the 2024 contest.
And then, in what seemed to be the blink of an eye, everything changed. With roughly 100 days or so to go before the general election, Biden’s decision to step aside and Harris’ rise to the top of the Democratic ticket not only consolidated her party far beyond the predictions of armchair prognosticators, it completely shifted the political narrative.
So what accounts for the energy behind the Harris campaign – which this week announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate – and is it moving the needle in Texas?
Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston, said part of the momentum around this shift in candidates came because it was unexpected for so many voters.
“Democrats really felt like they were hemmed in, and the kind of history and tradition of how nominees got selected really hemmed them in for Biden, and they maybe preferred somebody different,” Rottinghaus said. “And so just a change [in candidate] was something that was going to really revolutionize the way Democrats approach the race. The energy shifted.”
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Others were surprised by the outpouring of support for Harris, given that her own presidential bid in the 2020 election cycle didn’t make it far.
“I think the answer is partly that politics is so fast these days that the cycle is so quick that people have forgotten about those moments. And so the kind of newness of all of this was really the most pertinent,” Rottinghaus said. “People tended to look past some of the past issues. Because you’re right, the fact that they didn’t choose Kamala Harris is certainly one big piece of why she’s struggled, at least initially, in the first few days, to kind of rally the troops. But it didn’t take long for them to fall into line.
“Polarization is another issue — the fact that there are such polarized parties, and people are so committed to their way of thinking that there really aren’t a lot of options for Democrats.”
The change at the top of the ballot does not appear to have challenged the message for Colin Allred, who is running against incumbent Ted Cruz for Senate. However, Rottinghaus said an energized base could still impact the election when it comes to turnout.
“Colin Allred is sticking to his left-of-center message,” he said. “So he’s been a little tight-lipped about supporting Harris, but I think he has to be really pleased about the general reset. They’re looking for a repeat of the 2008 election. And although that wasn’t successful for Democrats [in Texas], it did change the narrative. A bunch of counties flipped. You had the margin of victory reduced to under a million. So that was what they would like to see.
“What they don’t want to see is 2020 again, where you had almost 9.5 million Texans who didn’t vote. Rural Texas was out voting urban Texas. They were losing ground among white, college educated women. These are the kinds of dynamics that have to change if Democrats are going to be successful.”
For the next few months, Rottinghaus said the question is whether Democrats can capitalize on the newfound energy in the party.
“You’ve got to keep your people happy. You’ve got to keep the activists motivated. You’ve got to keep voters watching,” he said. “These are all just small things that add up to something big when it comes to the point where you’re asking people to go out and vote. So I do think that for Democrats that they’re looking for a boost and in some down-ballot races, they’re really struggling to find it.”
