Make a sharp shift to the center.
Back in February it seemed as if we were about to have one of the most ideologically polarized elections in American history. President Trump was rushing ahead with his populist/ego-trip/authoritarian whatchamacallit. The Democrats were shifting left: Medicare for All, Green New Deal, Bernie Sanders-style reimagining of capitalism. The great political/culture war was at hand! Instead, this has turned into the least ideological election in recent times. The campaign has largely shrunk down from grand ideological issues to two practical problems: How to get rid of Donald Trump. How to beat Covid-19. The shrinkage happened in three stages. First, Democratic primary voters decided that beating Trump was more important than the revolution. Second, the pandemic hit. Candidates imagine that if elected they will be able to implement their grand vision. But as George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump all learned the hard way, governing is usually about responding to crises you didn’t choose or foresee. Third, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris decided to run a professional campaign. Instead of trying to please those of us who consume large amounts of media, they have ruthlessly and effectively focused their campaign on the Exhausted Majority — people who are disgusted by and semidetached from politics in working-class homes in the Midwest, in retirement communities in Florida, in suburban cul-de-sacs everywhere. Kamala Harris’s debate performance was the perfect implementation of the strategy and the perfect illustration of why it is succeeding. A lot of the conversation about who “won” the debate misses the crucial question of who effectively implemented their campaign’s strategy. Harris did. The Republicans don’t have a strategy, so Mike Pence’s performance was beside the point. If you can stretch your mind back to the Democratic debates of last winter, you may remember a different Kamala Harris.
