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Kamala Harris is a cipher to most Americans. Despite her being attorney general and a senator from the largest state in the Union, a candidate for president in 2020, and vice president for three-and-a-half years, Harris’s outline is fuzzy.
This presents an opportunity for Democrats as well as extreme peril. In 2008, Barack Obama was similarly unknown. Hillary Clinton wasn’t worried enough about him to try to portray him in a negative context. She could have highlighted his radicalism, his connection to Chicago politics, and his extremely limited experience.
Instead, Obama was able to define himself for Democratic primary voters first. The consequences for Clinton were catastrophic. Whereas the Obama campaign portrayed the candidate as a moderate who gave nice speeches and said everything that Americans wanted to hear, Clinton got clobbered in the primaries. She never knew what hit her.
Confederate Civil War general Nathan Bedford Forrest is often quoted saying about his success on the battlefield, «I got there firstest with the mostest.» The same applies to politics. The ability to define your opponent before they’re able to counter their obvious weaknesses makes it very difficult for the opposition to shed that definition.
