US Vice-president Kamala Harris will launch her nascent presidential campaign in earnest Tuesday with a rally in Milwaukee seeking to answer the biggest question on skittish Democrats’ minds: How does she plan to beat Donald Trump?

Harris, thrust suddenly into the fray after Joe Biden announced Sunday that he wouldn’t seek reelection, has spent the last two days clearing the field of other potential contenders. She has secured the endorsement of nearly every major Democrat and announced a record-breaking fundraising haul of more than US$100 million during her first day as a presidential candidate.

By Monday night, a majority of delegates had pledged to support Harris at the party’s convention, sealing her status as the likely nominee.

“Tonight, I am proud to have secured the broad support needed to become our party’s nominee,” she said in a statement released by her campaign. “I look forward to formally accepting the nomination soon.”

Now, her biggest challenge as she lands in swing-state Wisconsin will be convincing everyday voters that she can mount a winning campaign - with just over 100 days before election day.

It’s a sizable challenge for Harris, who must re-introduce herself to the country and demonstrate how she’ll be able to reverse a widening gap with Trump in the polls. That task will require reassembling the coalition of moderate and progressive voters that Biden rode to the White House four years ago and overcoming dissatisfaction over the administration’s handling of the economy.

At a meeting with campaign staffers on Monday, Harris previewed her approach - saying she would use her background as a prosecutor to define Trump.

“I took on perpetrators of all kinds - predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain,” Harris said. “So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type.”

Harris does enjoy a head start in terms of campaign operations - inherited from Biden’s operations - and donors, having taken over the Biden campaign’s US$96 million in cash on hand. Biden vowed he would continue to campaign on her behalf.

“I won’t be on the ticket, but I’m still going to be fully, fully engaged,” he said in a call to campaign aides. “I’ll be doing whatever Kamala wants me, needs me to do.”

At least one issue that is sure to remain front-and-centre for Harris on the trail: women’s reproductive rights, for which she’s been an ardent advocate on multistate tours to highlight efforts to re-establish Roe versus Wade and to accuse Trump of being part of a “full-on assault on reproductive freedom”.

Economic messaging

It’s a winning issue for Democrats, as Republicans struggle to secure votes among suburban women who have shown waning enthusiasm for another Trump term.

Among battleground state voters, 52% judged abortion a “very important” issue for the November ballot, according to the Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll conducted July 1-5. At the time, 47% across the swing states said they trusted Biden more to handle the issue, with 35% for Trump.

As she makes her case in Wisconsin, which just hosted Trump and Republicans for their national convention, economic issues loom especially large in a state that has seen some signs of prosperity - one of the lowest jobless rates in the country in May and bigger pay gains - but where a majority of voters still think even the state economy’s on the wrong track, with an even bigger cohort saying so about the national economy.

That sort of disconnect has been a continuing dilemma for the Biden administration, which has struggled to convince voters of the post-pandemic rebound while even improving inflation is still hitting Americans’ pocketbooks hard.

Harris’ trip on Tuesday will be her ninth visit to the state since becoming vice president and her fifth this year.

Among other major unfinished business, Harris must now select her own second-in-command, with rumours swirling around who might best balance the ticket. Speculation has turned to Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, and Mark Kelly, a US senator from Arizona.

More broadly, the vice president will have to fill in the blanks on how a Harris administration would confront other domestic and foreign issues. She’s been a punching bag on immigration, given that border issues landed in her portfolio early in Biden’s term. That’s proved a particular vulnerability as border crossings surged and bipartisan negotiations floundered for months before Biden took executive action earlier this year.

As a former prosecutor, Harris has a long public record on criminal and social justice stances, and has been fiery on climate issues. She’s appealed to young voters as she highlighted the administration’s student loan relief efforts. And she’s long been outspoken on the underpinnings of what became known as Bidenomics: an emphasis on the middle class and higher taxes on the wealthy, starting with a reversal of Trump’s first-term tax cuts.

Harris will also have to gird herself for a highly personal campaign mounted by Republicans, who have openly predicted for weeks that she would become the nominee even as Biden remained defiant in the face of pleas to step aside. Her failed 2020 presidential campaign and notoriety for high staff turnover are ripe targets.

This will be “the most negative campaign in the history of American politics,” and a Trump-Harris sparring would be “the most contentious debate ever,” pollster Frank Luntz said Monday on Bloomberg Television’s Balance of Power.

Still, Luntz said Harris has a real shot at beating Trump and that she has the opportunity to cast herself anew before American voters, who are now tuning in more closely.

“She has the chance to redefine herself,” he said. “Everything begins fresh, right now.”

  - Bloomberg