Republicans are already shaping their message around Kamala Harris

The Republican National Convention is officially in the books. Ostensibly, much of the setpieces throughout the convention were meant to attack President Joe Biden, who remains the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, even if Democrats are increasingly trying to shove him out.

On Thursday, ahead of former president Donald Trump’s speech, Montana Senator Jon Tester, the most vulnerable swing-state Democrat whose state voted for Trump by double digits, said Biden needed to leave. And on Friday, Senator Martin Heinrich, a Democrat from New Mexico, also said Biden needs to go. That is a stunning rebuke, given that Biden treated Tester with respect, even inviting him to the Oval Office when Barack Obama refused to do the same. But Heinrich is from a state that is now endangered because of Biden’s weak performance at the top of the ticket.

Biden re-election campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon, for her part insisted on Morning Joe on Friday morning that Biden is not leaving the race. Meanwhile, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive vanguard, warned on an Instagram Live that the same forces who want to boot Biden also want to kick out Vice President Kamala Harris.

But throughout the four days in Milwaukee, Republicans seemed to sense that Biden might be on the out and that Harris might replace him at the top of the ticket. And they were already preparing the talking points.

Even the speeches seemed to pivot ever so slightly as time went on. When Harris ran for the Democratic nomination for president, many progressives sneered at her record as a prosecutor, calling her a cop. Conversely, Republicans sought to label her as weak on crime, citing her quote about “reimagining how we do public safety in America.”

On Wednesday evening, the RNC featured a speech that criticized Biden on one of his most controversial missteps: the US exit from Afghanistan that led to death of 13 US servicemembers. During that moment, Charlie Kirk, the head of Turning Point USA who has become Trump’s liaison to younger voters, muttered on the convention floor about how Republicans were criticizing a candidate who wouldn’t be on the ticket in November.

“If it’s Kamala, we’re ready to pivot,” he told The Independent. “If it’s Gretchen Whitmer or Gavin Newsom, we’re ready to roll. We’re unified, they’re not, and good luck figuring out who’s going to run.”

Multiple Republicans echoed that sentiment throughout the week. Representative Mike Lawler of New York, a freshman Republican who won a district that voted for Biden in 2020 and whom Biden has praised in the past, told The Independent that Harris would have to answer for Biden’s agenda.

“Right now, when you look at the dynamics in swing districts across New York, President Trump is up and part of the reason is is not so much about Joe Biden, but the policies,” Lawler said. “So regardless of what the Democrats try to do, it doesn't change the policies and Kamala Harris owns those policies. She was part of this administration.”

Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota opined that Democrats are in a no-win situation.

“If it’s not Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party unravels,” Cramer told The Independent. “If it is Kamala Harris, she has to defend the same record.”

Cramer also cited the fact that Harris’s presidential campaign did not go the way she wanted.

“Quite honestly, once the presidential spotlight gets turned on Kamala Harris, we’ll all be reminded why she got exactly the same number of votes as I did: zero,” he added.

Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s former counsellor and campaign manager, said essentially the same thing.

“The Democrats would position this — because this is what they like to do — they will position this as historic, ‘you have a chance to make history’,” she said, of the idea of Democrats putting Harris forward as presidential nominee. Conway then speculated that Harris could pick a running mate like Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro to take the Keystone state off the map.

But all of this remains hypothetical. Biden appears defiant, even as multiple news reports circulate about his exit. His campaign released an ad on Friday lambasting the media that appeared almost Trumpish in its tone: “Same old Trump, same old media”.

It’s clear that Republicans would have a far easier time running against Biden than the younger Harris. Polling alone can tell us that. But they are planning for all contingencies. They are already dredging everything up from her past in order to be prepared for the eventuality.

If she does take on the torch, certainly expect them to make hay out of the fact that Harris was tasked with handling migration at the US-Mexico border by Biden. On that issue, public opinion is firmly on the side of Republicans.

It turns out, contrary to what she’s fond of saying, Harris might not be able to be unburdened by what has been.

-Andrew Feinberg contributed reporting.