Kamala Harris campaign is light on policy - but that's helped her transform the race

The month since Kamala Harris launched her presidential campaign has been a largely unprecedented spell in American politics: never has a modern general election campaign gone from a standstill to a full sprint so quickly.

In that time Democrats pulled together a well-scripted national convention with slickly produced promotional videos, political set-pieces and musical interludes, all done to boost the new nominee. It was a remarkable test of skill by party operatives under extreme pressure.

Over the course of four days in Chicago – and in the packed campaign rallies Ms Harris has held over the past few weeks – the outlines of her campaign strategy have begun to take shape.

And it’s not exactly what one would expect from a sitting vice-president who has occupied an office in the White House for three-and-a-half-years.

Ms Harris is pushing hard to be viewed as the candidate of change in this race. One who, as she said in her convention speech on Thursday, can "chart a new way forward".

This strategy is in part born out of necessity. Across the globe democracies have been roiled by voter unrest. As economies struggle to recover from the Covid pandemic, regional conflicts churn and tensions over immigration flare up, political incumbents have faced deeply unhappy electorates in Canada, the UK, Germany and India among others.

Polling indicated that President Joe Biden, before he abandoned his re-election campaign last month, was set to confront similar challenges.

The vice-president has turned this situation on its head.

Her background and personal story is a sharp contrast with both the current president and her Republican opponent.

It also helps that Ms Harris is running against a former president who, while also styling himself as a change candidate, has his own sometimes controversial, sometimes unpopular White House record to defend.

“This election, I do strongly believe, is about two very different visions for the future,” Ms Harris said at a rally in North Carolina last week.

“Ours focused on the future, and the other focused on the past.”

Why vagueness might suit Harris

For the most part, Ms Harris has shied away from describing in detail what her presidency would look like.

There’s talk of unity and a way beyond America’s divisive partisanship; a focus on strengthening the economy and reducing consumer prices; and a heavy emphasis on reproductive rights and abortion – an area of particular strength for Democrats.

But it is vague. And this vagueness may suit the Harris campaign just fine.

By largely being an empty policy vessel, Ms Harris has allowed various constituencies within the Democratic Party to project their hopes and priorities onto her.

If she can keep all those pieces together for the next few months, she might just win.

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Labour leaders expressed optimism that she would focus on union protections and bread-and-butter economic issues.

Climate activists touted the Biden administration’s clean energy legislation and expected the candidate to expand that effort.

Civil rights leaders predicted the first woman of colour to win a major party nomination would advance racial equality.

“The fundamental question people ask is, are you fighting for me, or are you fighting for someone else?” said Tom Perez, who served as secretary of labour in the Obama administration and has been an adviser to the Biden White House.

"I think people have a pretty clear sense that she's a fighter for everyone, not just certain people in certain zip codes or certain tax brackets, not just people of certain races or ethnicities, but everyone."

In other words, the vice-president’s policy vagueness has allowed her to cast as broad an appeal as possible in what is shaping up to be an election where every undecided voter counts.

It has been labelled by some as a "vibe" campaign - based at least in part on feeling and general impressions.

On Wednesday, former television host, author and international celebrity Oprah Winfrey, who identified herself as a political independent, said Ms Harris and her running mate Tim Walz were the candidates who would deliver “decency and respect”.

“I’m calling on all you independents and all you undecideds,” she said. “Values and character matter most of all, in leadership and in life.”

Throughout the week, a parade of Republicans – including former officeholders and Donald Trump supporters – also took the stage at the convention to pitch Harris as the best option in November.

“Harris will want to be centre-left, not far-left,” said Chris Shays, a former Republican congressman from Connecticut who attended the Democratic Convention this year.

According to Mr Shays, the vice-president will be pulled to the American political middle because that is where the nation is.

Ms Harris’s strategy is not without risk, however.

Just as Democratic groups are projecting their ideas onto the vice-president’s campaign, so are her Republican opponents. And they are using Ms Harris’s past, more liberal – and sometimes controversial – positions and statements as evidence that the lack of specificity is merely a cover for a left-wing agenda.

“Her speech was the perfect example of what happens when you have no solutions to offer for the problems you've delivered to Americans' doorsteps, so you gaslight and deflect,” the Trump campaign said in a statement responding to the vice-president’s convention address.

Ms Harris has also avoided sweeping press conferences and more pointed interviews with mainstream media outlets so far – interviews that could hold her to account for past positions and press her for further policy details.

Her speech last week addressing the economy was one of the few instances where the vice-president unveiled concrete new proposals.

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But over the past four days some nuggets of how she would govern have emerged.

She has proposed a $25,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers. She pledged to use the power of government to reduce the cost of prescription drugs and punish price-gouging for groceries. She backed bipartisan immigration legislation that was blocked in the Senate earlier this year.

Ms Harris also pledged to push for a federal law that would guarantee a basic right to abortion across the entire US, pre-empting conservative state bans.

For some Democrats the details so far aren’t enough.

“We need to hear some actual policy things,” said Lewanna Tucker, chair of the Democratic Party in Fulton County, Georgia. “She needs to be letting us a little bit more behind the curtain and talk about structural things that are going to be done.”

Perhaps more concrete policy details aren't necessary. At a time when American politics is viewed by much of the American public as divisive and toxic, there may be benefit to building a political campaign not around policy specifics, but rather one that appeals to emotion.

In 2008, Barack Obama successfully campaigned on hope and change – which is not exactly the makings of a four-point plan.

“It's a return to a level of hope that I don't think that we have collectively experienced since 2008,” said Yasmin Radjy, who runs the liberal grassroots organising group Swing Left.

She said there had been an exhaustion among volunteers on the left for the past eight years, but the switch to Ms Harris was “like a weight had lifted off their shoulders".

The willingness by Democrats to savage the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 – a sometimes controversial blueprint for a new Republican administration that Trump and his campaign have repeatedly disavowed – also shows the risks of being even tangentially associated with the nuts and bolts of governing.

In her Thursday night address, Ms Harris pledged to move beyond partisan divisions and find shared common ground.

"I promise to be a president for all Americans," she said. "You can always trust me to put country above party and self."

Those promises aren’t unfamiliar in American politics, of course. Similar assurances have been made over the last few decades. But something has been different about this Democratic nominee and Democratic convention.

The wattage of star power this week – with appearances by Pink, Stevie Wonder and Lil Jon, among others – and the campaign’s heavy reliance on pop culture connections, like Charlie XCX, suggest it is trying to position itself as a cultural movement rather than a political one.

It remains to be seen whether this will be an effective strategy.

But at least for now, it has pulled the Democratic Party out of the doldrums and despair of early July and into a dead heat with Trump and the Republicans heading into the crucial final months of this campaign.