On Sunday, President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, effectively kicking off one of the shortest campaigns in modern political history. With only three full months to go before Election Day, Harris has an ultra-compressed timeline in which to build a policy platform, refine her message and define herself as a candidate to voters.
How do you run a three-month campaign in an era when presidential campaigns have become yearslong affairs? We gathered three top campaign managers to ask just that. We spoke with Patti Solis Doyle, who ran Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential primary campaign; Robby Mook, who ran Clinton’s 2016 general election campaign; and Stuart Stevens, lead strategist in Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.
In an hourlong roundtable discussion, the three drew on decades of campaign experience to hash out how Harris should define herself in opposition to Trump; how she should attack rather than go on defense or respond if Trump resorts to racist and sexist attacks; what her path to 270 electoral votes might look like; and who her VP pick should be. On that last one, all seemed to point in the direction of one governor in a key battleground state. “If I were on the campaign and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro brought me half a point,” Mook said, “I really want that half a point, because that might be the half a point you win the state by.”
The conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
What should Kamala Harris do differently in this campaign than in her unsuccessful 2020 campaign?
Patti Solis Doyle: I feel kind of odd offering any advice because she seems to not really need it. The last 72 hours have been unbelievable in terms of rollout. She locked up the nomination. Within 36 hours, she got the delegates. She got the endorsements from Congress. She got the money. And her first events have been through the roof.
I think she’s doing it. I think she is being forceful in her prosecution of Trump. I think she’s offering a hopeful view of the future. I think she’s doing the politics right.
Robby Mook: Your question is interesting because my initial reaction is, a primary campaign and a general election campaign, particularly one only 14 weeks out, are just totally different. But she’s brilliantly set up here because the staff were hired; the fundraising apparatus is in place; the politics are done; the nomination is secured. It’s like she turned the first 10 months into two days.
There’s a paradox here. This is a really short campaign, and that is great, because she is rested. She is ready to go. I think time is often your enemy on these, particularly as a quasi-incumbent. But on the other hand, time is short, so the imperative is to lock in, first of all, who is she? And second of all, what is her vision?
I think she’s done a very good job rolling that out right out of the gate. But there’s a question about calcifying that and pushing it deep. And we know that these — they used to be called double-haters but I think they’re just persuadable-again or either-way voters — we know that they have the least information about her and they get their news disproportionately from social media. One advantage she really has that we didn’t have on the Clinton campaign, and I don’t think Joe Biden really had, is the internet is a really safe space for her right now. It’s a great safe space for people to express support for her. So that’s great.
But the Harris campaign has got to drive that advantage because we’re already seeing the GOP going on TV. It’s almost like it’s March 15th — it’s after Super Tuesday, she’s secured the nomination. What can happen? The incumbent, which in this case is Trump, is going to try to go in and define you right away. And the Harris team has got to resist that. They’ve got to have that strategy, get it on the air and drive it in. And that’s the test, I think, over the next month.
Stuart Stevens: I think I would challenge the premise of the question that she didn’t run a good campaign because she didn’t win. Because most people don’t win. And she did end up on the ticket, which is the next best thing you can do. She won a very tough race for attorney general. She’s vice president of the United States, and now she’s the Democratic nominee for president. So how far would she have gone if she was a good politician?
Defining the narrative
By virtue of her position as vice president, many voters still don’t actually know her. How should Kamala Harris define herself?
Robby Mook: I think the challenge for her is going to be there’s this really tricky dynamic with the electorate right now. On one hand, the economy is doing really well. And on the other hand, people, particularly the folks she needs to bring in to win this election, are really unhappy with the economy. They’re very on edge. And the world has become much more seemingly dangerous and volatile. And she’s sort of an incumbent, but not totally. So she’s going to have to really address head-on that agitation in the electorate, because it’s very easy for Trump to say, “If you don’t like the way things are, time for a change,” right? And while Trump’s policies caused inflation, he wasn’t president when the inflation that his policies caused came into effect. So I think that’s going to be the maze she’ll have to navigate.
Patti Solis Doyle: My first presidential campaign was Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. And for a lot of reasons, he didn’t actually get the nomination until very, very late into the primary process. Which meant we had a very short general election. And that was a blessing in many, many ways.
Stuart Stevens: I think this is a chance to really pose the question of, “Who are we?” To say that there are two competing visions of what America should be — a guy who wants to ban Muslims and says immigrants are murderers and rapists, or someone who embodies what the American dream is about.
I’ve always felt that when President Biden was still in this, that there had to be two things that needed to be accomplished that were critical to winning. One was that the Democratic candidate needed to represent the future. And it’s clear that the Harris campaign understands that. I mean, you’re running against a guy who’s against all mandatory vaccines in schools. So, like, that’s the pro-polio camp, the pro-whooping-cough camp, pro-measles. I think that’s a pretty small group. And the Democratic candidate needed to be the safe choice.
I think the model for this in a lot of ways is the Obama campaign in ’08. They did a magnificent job in setting it up so that when you voted for Barack Obama, it said something about who you were and what you wanted the country to be, not just who you wanted to be president. And I think that’s the challenge that Harris should run right into.
And I think the Trump campaign is completely ill-equipped to deal with this. Trump hates women, JD Vance hates women. They don’t know how to talk about women. And I think tonally, they’re going to be completely off as they have been in the past 72 hours.
Patti Solis Doyle: Robby and I have had the experience of trying to elect the first woman president of the United States and failing. With Hillary, she was predefined, and she came with a lot of baggage. Harris doesn’t have that burden. And it’s a real, real opportunity. And I couldn’t agree more with Stuart that they’re not going to know how to handle her. They’re just not going to know how to approach her, how to engage with her, how to define her. Hillary was a lot easier to do that with. And I think they’re not going to know what to make of her.
Attacking Trump’s weaknesses
What are the biggest vulnerabilities that you see in terms of how Trump will attack her? And is there anything specific in the Biden record that her campaign will want to avoid or should avoid?
Robby Mook: We’re seeing change elections everywhere around the globe right now. In Britain, it was from conservative to Labour, and in France, we saw the two poles against the center. In India, we saw change. So I do think they’re going to have the wind at their back on this question of change. I do think that’s an opportunity for Harris because I think she is her own person. She can both reach back to the accomplishments of the administration and talk about what’s worth protecting, but she can also propose a new direction. We’ve already seen that: She talked about pre-K and elder care and so on — new ideas that weren’t really associated with Biden.
I also just can’t emphasize enough how we’ve had so much change coming from the right via the Supreme Court, particularly the overturning of Roe v. Wade. So I think also this question of change is an opportunity for her to say there’s been a lot of really bad changes, and we need to push back on that. And we saw her doing that, just in the last two days.
Patti Solis Doyle: The two issues the Trump campaign is going to drive hard — and I would, too, if I were them — are the economy slash inflation slash cost of living and the border and immigration. It’s going to be very difficult for her to sort of disassociate herself from the Biden administration and the Biden record on those two issues, particularly the border because she was ostensibly put in charge of that early on in the administration.
But at the same time, I agree with Robby that she can pivot. She absolutely can pivot to her vision of the future. I think we’re going to see inflation get much better between now and the election.
The third issue that is very prominent is women’s reproductive rights. And she can just own that and really drive it all the way through the general election. So on the issues, I think she’s fairly well positioned. But ironically, this has been sort of an issue-less campaign thus far. This has been all about Biden being too old and Trump being a criminal. And we haven’t really talked about our vision for policy priorities, et cetera. I think Kamala will be able to pivot there as well.
Stuart Stevens: If I were on the Harris campaign, I would attack Donald Trump on his record with immigration. It was a total failure. Barack Obama deported more people than Trump. Trump said he was going to have Mexico pay for a wall. I would go in and say he’s the greatest failure that we’ve had. And that’s what the Biden administration handled. I would not defend; I would attack on that. But the bottom line is that if this is a referendum on immigration, it’s not going to be a great day for the Harris campaign. So you have to switch.
And if you look at that 100-day plan that the president rolled out in Michigan after the debate, which I thought was beautifully done and timed … and if you take Project 2025 and what Republicans were talking about at that convention … I mean, one tests about 80/20 to the good, and the other tests about 20/80 to the bad. So it’s not hard to take that 80/20 and run it against the 20/80. And do that all day. And I would attack, attack, attack. I think I’d run maybe one positive ad and the rest would be contrasts.
So what’s her strongest message here then? Is it the anti-Trump focus or is it pro-abortion rights? Is it something else? Change?
Stuart Stevens: To me, her strongest message is, “I am more like America than Donald Trump is,” which is true. Republicans keep getting into these culture wars, and they lose. They attack Nike and Colin Kaepernick. What happens? Nike makes $9 billion. They get in a fight with Disney? The happiness company? They’re sort of at war with the modern world, and I think you have to just bet on that. There’s more of her than there are of them. I would make that bet and take that bet.
Robby Mook: I think she’s going to need to talk to people’s pocketbooks at least somewhat. I think any presidential candidate ignores that at their peril. I think you’re going to start to hear her talking more about how Trump went in front of a bunch of oil executives and said, “You give my campaign $1 billion, I’ll give you whatever you want.” We’ll hear more about that, but also more about what she’s done for people. There’s a lot in the IRA — at least hundreds of thousands of jobs that have been created. I would put abortion in a special lane. I think that issue transcends in a way. It was such a rupture in our national policy. And it is so powerful that I think it deserves a special place in the messaging of the campaign.
On the other side of that coin, how hard should Harris be going after Trump? And how should she be responding to his more caustic attacks, particularly the ones that are going to have racist or sexist undertones, either from Trump or surrogates for his campaign?
Patti Solis Doyle: I think she should attack him and contrast with him every opportunity she has. Every day, 20 hours a day. In terms of how she reacts to his racist, sexist, misogynist attacks on her, I would just not even go there. Do not take the bait.
Robby Mook: I think Patti brings up an important point there, because I think sometimes when you do, it makes it about you. But she can have surrogates, certainly, push back on that.
On campaigns, there’s positive advertising and there’s negative advertising. I do think in many ways, this is shaping up to be a contrast campaign. It is not enough to just say, “Well, here’s what I think,” and then you wait. It’s really, “Here’s what I think, and here’s what the other person thinks, and here’s why I have a better deal.”
Stuart Stevens: Yeah, I mean, I think she just shrugs and says: “Is that all you got?” and just makes fun of it. That is a base play when they’re doing that. They’re basically telling jokes that they think are funny, that most people don’t think are funny, and you can’t make them think that it’s not funny. You just have to bet that most of the people don’t think it’s funny.
Patti Solis Doyle: I’m going to lose my Hillary card on this one. But Hillary was a very polarizing figure. So when Trump called her a nasty woman, half of the country was kind of like, “Oh, yeah, she kind of is,” and that’s not the case with Kamala Harris. She doesn’t have that sort of polarized perception from the American people. I think she can bring more people into the tent if he chooses to attack her in that way.
Gaming out a path to 270
I wonder if I could change directions a little bit here and talk a little bit about the Electoral College and the best map to 270 for Harris. One could argue that Harris has particular strengths that might reopen the Sun Belt path that seemed to be closed for Joe Biden. Am I off-base there?
Robby Mook: I do think there’s potential for the Sun Belt to open up a little bit. I think Arizona has remained in the hunt. I think the question was really more about Georgia and North Carolina and where they stood. And if Harris is able to drive up support with African American voters, that’s really key to pulling those states back in. To state the obvious, they’re so important because those states can replace losing, for example, in Wisconsin. But, and this is, to me, the key to the Electoral College: I don’t see a way that either candidate probably wins without winning Pennsylvania. It’s 19 electoral votes. I don’t see where else you get those. So I think we’re going to definitely see a focus on the so-called Blue Wall and on the Sun Belt. But gosh, if I were sitting in that campaign, Pennsylvania is a must-win.
Patti Solis Doyle: Almost immediately, with the Harris announcement, I think two things happened. One, it stopped the hemorrhaging. It was a tourniquet on all the support we were losing in the Blue Wall. The second thing she’s done is shore up the base and our coalition of Black people, brown people, young people, women. And by bringing those folks in — we won’t know until we see some credible polling in the next week or 10 days — but I believe strongly that we’re going to close the gap in those Rust Belt states as well, which gives us more paths to 270. It was very nerve-wracking to only have one path to 270 when we had Biden at the top of the ticket. And I think Harris, with whoever her VP selection is going to be, gives us more optionality and opportunity.
Stuart Stevens: Republicans have won Pennsylvania once since 1988. And that was with Trump. So I don’t think there’s anything that’s happened inside Pennsylvania politics that has made it more likely that Trump would win now. I think it’s the opposite. This Trump-like candidate ran for governor and got crushed. You have a very popular governor who seems to be pretty good at politics. Demographically, the state has not trended in a way that would be unfavorable, I think. And you have a very fractured Republican Party in that state. So I like the odds Democrats can win it.
How about from a campaign mechanics standpoint, within this compressed time frame, what doesn’t the vice president have time to do that a normal campaign would? What can’t she do now because of the nature of the time left?
Robby Mook: You could argue they lost some time in fundraising in July, and time matters for fundraising. But, gosh, I’d like to think that was made up for in the last few days when they broke $100 million. So I’m not concerned about that.
She has a staff in place. It was a prepared, capable campaign that had plenty of time to get set up. The DNC and the party were in good shape. She is vastly outmatching Trump on ground game right now. The only things I could point to is it would be nice to have more time to think about a VP, but I think the ones she’s looking at are excellent. And I just don’t think that’s really going to have much impact.
I don’t see a lot of downside, personally.
Patti Solis Doyle: I agree with you. She’s not starting from scratch; she inherited a campaign apparatus and structure. I don’t think she really has the burden of not having enough time. I like the sprint to Election Day from now until November. I think it works to her advantage.
The stakes of the veepstakes
Okay, let’s talk about vice presidential options. Who do you think has the biggest upside for Kamala Harris? And are there any prospective candidates out there who haven’t been mentioned that might have a catalytic effect?
Patti Solis Doyle: I think you’ve got to view it from the prism of what do you actually need? What are the goalposts that you need to be able to clear? First, obviously the person has to be able to do the job, should something happen. I think all the people that she’s looking at check that box. Then there’s who helps you electorally. I think all the people she’s looking at check that box. And then, there’s the chemistry. I don’t put a lot of stake in that just because the very nature of the relationship is that there’s just tension there, right? I mean, I don’t think Bill Clinton and Al Gore got along very well, and I don’t think Barack Obama and Biden got along very well. There’s just natural tension in that dynamic. Then there’s the balancing of the narrative. For Kamala in particular, I think you’re looking for someone who’s a little more moderate, who’s a little whiter, who’s a little maler. I think all the people on her list do that.
Robby Mook: We were talking about Pennsylvania being paramount to the math of the Electoral College. I’m in the camp that doesn’t believe the VP choice makes a whole lot of difference, but if I were on the campaign and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro brought me half a point, I really want that half a point, because that might be the half a point you win the state by, right? It was won and lost by so little in the last two cycles. So that I just find interesting. Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly to me is also interesting. Unfortunately, his wife was the victim of an assassination attempt. He is such a unique American. And his military service, being an astronaut. But any of the people being talked about I think would be very solid.
Stuart Stevens: You know, if you held a gun to my head and said who to pick, my heart would say Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. And my brain would say Shapiro.
Patti Solis Doyle: That’s what heart and head would say, too.
What it will take on Election Day
If you had to guess who wins the presidency, and you could have just one post-election data point to make that call, what would that data point be? I’m talking about, is it turnout in Philadelphia? In Detroit? Is it turnout in Madison? Is it TV spending? Is it fundraising? What would that one data point be that you’d want to have in making that call, if you could have only one?
Robby Mook: I would say Bucks County, Pennsylvania. If that’s just not where it needs to be, then that’s probably a pretty good bellwether.
Patti Solis Doyle: I’m shocked this is coming out of my mouth because two weeks ago, I was despondent, but I think Kamala Harris is going to win this election. And that’s because the double-haters now have an alternative. They don’t have to hold their nose and either vote for Trump or hold their nose and vote for Biden. They have an alternative that is pretty amazing. The way they shift in the battleground states is going to call it.
Stuart Stevens: The one data point I’d look at is the white vote. Trump has to get 58 or north of the white vote to have a chance in this race. His coalition was 85 percent white in 2020 in a country that is 60, 59 percent white — less so since we’ve been talking. If Trump gets 54 percent of the white vote, this thing is going to be a rout. He’s got to get closer to 60. There’s one dynamic I think we don’t focus on enough here: He lost by 7 million votes in 2020. He needs new customers. So where is he getting those new customers? And I don’t think he is. And I think that’s why he keeps getting stuck at this number. This guy has won one election in his life with 46.2 percent of the vote. Romney lost with 47.2 percent of the vote. He would have to crush numbers with white turnout. And I think he’s not because I think he’s going to lose the higher-educated white voters who would have voted Republican in a lot of local races and can’t stomach Trump.
Robby Mook: I need to mark the tape. I do believe that Harris will win, but Stuart brought up an important point here, which is back in the day, if there was exceptionally high turnout, that was really good for Democrats. And I think that equation is starting to change. And so, Stuart, I hadn’t thought about it this way until you said this, but I think his best source of new customers is turnout. And you were alluding to that.
I think that’s part of why he picked Vance. If on Election Day we’re seeing exceptionally high turnout, that’s a bellwether that’s helpful for Trump. We saw this in 2016; Florida looked like it was in the bag for Hillary going into Election Day. And then the turnout on Election Day was exceptionally high.
More people vote early now than in 2016. That really changed over Covid. But we need to be careful about making too many predictions before Election Day, because that in-person turnout is Trump’s secret weapon — if it exists for him, I don’t know. We have to assume the worst always until it’s over.
Stuart Stevens: It can’t be overemphasized what Trump has done gutting the RNC. There is no Trump organization out there. Of any magnitude. And they’re not going to create it. I just don’t know where he gets more white voters.
What is Trump’s biggest advantage against Harris right now?
Robby Mook: Inflation — that’s the drum that he’s going to beat. And as we all know, he opposed a very conservative bipartisan agreement on immigration and killed it for the express purpose of perpetuating what’s happening at the border. So those are two cudgels that he can use.
In this new era where particularly the kinds of voters that are harder to turn out are really getting their information and living their political life on social media. Trump’s superpower is marketing. I think it’s fraud, but it’s marketing, and he’s good at it. If he were to win — I don’t think he will but if he were — it’s going to be because he was able to turn people out just through this.
Even more important than the money that Harris raised over the last 72 hours was this explosion of online content and this community that’s been built around her, the memes about her, that you cannot buy, you cannot hire someone to create. It’s priceless. And so, my hope is that she will compete just as much as he can in that space.
Patti Solis Doyle: People aren’t happy. I think that’s his strongest advantage. If people aren’t happy, why are they unhappy? In presidential politics, it is always a referendum on the sitting president. I think that’s the advantage that Trump has. But we’ve just sort of switched it up 72 hours ago, so I think that very clear advantage on issues and the mood of the country is flipping on him a little bit.
Stuart Stevens: I’d say Trump’s greatest advantage is that there are still a lot of racists in America. For all the talk we have about how race impacts our politics, I don’t think we talk about it enough. In 1964, Goldwater got 7 percent of the Black vote. In 2020, Trump got 8 percent. That’s one point every 56 years. So, when I see these polls where, you know, he’s getting north of 14, 15 percent of the Black vote, I can’t tell you how many times and races with really good pollsters, I saw those numbers right up to the end of Republican races. But I can tell you how many times it happened. And that was never. So I’d take any of these polls, I would model it at 8 percent of the Black vote. I’d give him 34 percent of Hispanic vote. And that’s what’s going to happen. There still are a lot of racists in America. And this is going to be a referendum on that.
Here’s a lightning-round question: Do you expect we’ll have a presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump?
Robby Mook: I’m going to dive in and say yes, but it will be negotiated directly with the networks; that would be my guess.
Patti Solis Doyle: I hope so, because I think Harris will be very effective against Trump, and he’ll fall for some foolish traps. I think yes, because Trump won’t want to look like he’s dodging it.
Stuart Stevens: Yes. Almost absolutely. Donald Trump would come and appear at your kid’s birthday party if you invited the guy. He can’t say no. I wouldn't be surprised if there’s more than one debate.