As students return to campus, they are preparing to resume their studies in a political environment that has seen little change in the issues but is also drastically different from when they left in the spring.

The most notable change is that, despite casting votes to reelect President Joe Biden in the spring, he was not the candidate that ended up giving the acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week. 

With negatively trending poll numbers and increased scrutiny of his mental facilities, Biden made a hasty withdraw from the 2024 presidential election via social media before disappearing from public life for few days over the course of a weekend this summer. 

This led to the ascension of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for the big ticket this November, despite never having received a primary vote and polling between 1-3 percent for most of her short-lived run to be the party’s candidate in 2020.

Harris is a last-resort option for Democrats. She was never adept on the campaign trail and was once voted “the least popular vice president in the last 30 years.” This has not stopped her from getting off to a strong start, as most recent polls show Harris in the lead. 

While part of this can be attributed to the honeymoon period most candidates enjoy after accepting their party’s nomination for a race, there are only 10 weeks until the election. The Harris campaign will probably work overtime to keep the Chicago convention spirit.

But the vice president has one glaring vulnerability: She is vice president. The Biden-Harris administration has overseen a haphazard Afghanistan withdraw, record inflation, record illegal border crossings and the outbreak of conflicts in Ukraine and Israel. At some point, she will have to say what she plans to do differently without implicating her work under Biden, won’t she?

Harris dodged those details during her acceptance speech at the DNC last week and no one seemed to notice. Reutersdescribed Harris’s speech “muscular” and “forceful,” before boasting about how “Chicago’s United Center brimmed with energy and people,” and was so crowded that the fire marshal had to declare the building at capacity. The New York Times defined her campaign as “the art of the possible.” MSNBC crowed, “Trump’s election nightmare comes true,” as Harris accepted the nomination. With coverage like this, one can only assume that the party raged so hard that the invitations had a question mark listed as the end time. 

This gives Donald Trump the opportunity to stoke the populist sentiment that the media is biased against him. This only rallies his base, regaining none of the voters that may have defected when Harris joined the ticket and took the polling lead. The more effective play would be to challenge Harris on policy, the discussion of which is not Trump’s forte.

Instead, Trump wants to continually remind voters why they gave him a pass in 2020. Taking to Truth Social, Trump responded to Harris’s speech by saying, “There will be no future under Comrade Kamala Harris, because she will take us into a Nuclear World War III! She will never be respected by the Tyrants of the World!” This is in addition to his usual taunts about his opponents being weak. This bloviating is not in Trump’s best interest, and neither is his continued obsession with the 2020 election. 

Trump is missing the obvious trap. If he cannot tie Harris to the Biden record, he will have no chance if Democrats pull an October shakeup and push Harris over the top. His biggest challenge will be maintaining a polling lead should he regain it. All Biden has to do is resign if Harris falls behind, and fresh energy will swirl around Harris as not only the first female president, but one who is an incumbent. It is not out of the realm of possibilities. Biden was already essentially forced off the ballot by the party to the cheers of many. If Republicans want to avoid another Trump defeat, they will have to tackle the nigh impossible task of keeping Trump on task. 

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