Coverage of Donald Trump once drove traffic to media outlets. Now it’s Kamala Harris’ turn

In Philadelphia and Houston, in Milwaukee and Atlanta, crowds of Democratic congressmen consistently answered “yes.” The “call and response” was the cheery affirmation of the Harris-Walz campaign: that the American dream is alive, if not well, and that a more perfect union is possible—that together we can preserve and defend multiracial liberal democracy in a world rife with authoritarian threats.

But that crowd-pleasing line wasn’t a new addition as Harris became the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee in the most unusual way. Long before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed his vice president, Harris was fielding questions from rallygoers in Manassas, Virginia; in Phoenix; in Jacksonville, Florida. Without knowing it, she was already rehearsing for her fall presidential campaign. year.

Then comes Kamala’s Summer. “It marked the moment when Democrats stopped playing defense and went on offense, figured out how to make Donald Trump’s campaign back down, and never looked back,” Mallory McMorrow told me. McMorrow is the majority whip in the Michigan state Senate, and so, given Michigan’s status as a swing state, she frequently appears on television news to assess the situation. She said the thousands of new Michigander volunteers, and even some homemade souvenir stands, were tangible signs of the summer surge. But what was more noticeable to McMorrow was what she called “a new energy in our more dedicated organizers.”

“They were always working, but it started to feel like a duty, a duty that got harder and harder no matter how much we believed in it,” she said. “Now it’s an opportunity and a joy every day.”

Happy This is one of the most captivating three-letter words in the English language. Harris’s fun campaign connecting with people who had all but given up on Biden. In the final weeks of the summer, the “Kamala push” suddenly appeared everywhere: in polls, in community donations, in TV ratings, in news subscriptions. Harris’s 2019 memoir, The truth we hold, climb back New York Times‘ bestseller list and stays there week after week. Billboard reported that “pop songs associated with Harris” such as “Femininomeno” by Chappell Roan and Beyoncé’s “Freedom” have seen streaming spikes. Politico referenced the surge in an article predicting a surge in women running for elected office. Trump confidante Kellyanne Conway even acknowledged it, indirectly, when she said that “Kamala’s surge is directly attributable to Biden’s decline.”

Stories about the campaign immediately went viral. Social media influencers were eager to get in on the action and cash in. So were legacy media companies: The Washington Post, desperately needed a boost, saying the July and August period that coincided with the Democratic nominee reshuffle was the first “sustained period” of positive subscriber growth in three years. CNN (where I now work as a chief media analyst) drew more than 6 million viewers for Harris and Tim Walz’s first joint interview.

“We’re going into 2024,” said MSNBC contributor Errin Haines, “with an unprecedented election that feels a lot like the status quo—until it suddenly doesn’t.” Haines, an editor at The 19th, a nonprofit newsroom that covers gender, politics, and policy, noted that voters were “ahead of the establishment” in the first half of the year. In poll after poll, focus group after focus group, voters signaled that Biden was too old to serve a second term. That’s why, in the minds of so many, Democrats needed to change their lead actor.

“We go through this all the time,” a veteran Hollywood producer grumbled to me days after Biden’s disastrous debate performance led to his departure. Executives and sponsors hate the process of casting new actors, but “we do it because it works,” the producer pointed out. Actors come and go for the good of the show.

George Clooney, who wrote a devastating and influential Time essay argued for Biden to step down weeks after hosting a fundraiser for the candidate, alluding to the fact that Harris is Biden’s apparent successor. “All the machinations that got us there,” for a candidate swap, “none of that will be remembered, and it shouldn’t be remembered,” Clooney said. “What should be remembered is the selfless act of someone.… It’s hard to give up power. You know, we’ve seen it all over the world, and for someone to say, I think there’s a better way forward, he gets all the credit, and that’s actually true.”