There are two potential liabilities that Harris faces. It seems that she is already being seen as distinct from Biden's inflation problem which is interesting. The switch from Biden to Harris might allow people to re-boot their estimations of the economy just as it starts to register that the economy is pretty good.
No, the two liabilities are "California" and "woman". The first is going to be interesting as I think the Trump campaign will try and tar and feather Harris over every crime - real or imagined - that occurs or occurred in California. Painting her as a radical leftist Californian is going to be their best bet. However, as we've seen, they won't be able to help themselves from going full racist/sexist. We are back to the scorpion and the frog, it's simply in their nature.
Will misogyny sink Harris the way it sunk Hillary Clinton?
The first reason to think it won't is the Dobbs decision, the E.Jean Carroll verdict and Trump's decision to pick Vance as his running mate. There's really an extraordinary amount of outright misogyny from the Republican ticket right now, of the kind that I think even White Dudes can see and get angry about. Vance's line about Harris being an "childless cat lady" is not going to motivate voters who weren't already voting for Trump.
(Of course, that's the central flaw of Vance: he brings no voters with him. I saw someone - maybe Walz - say that a landlord and a venture capitalist don't make good champions for the working class.)
The other thing is the simple lesson of 2016. "Everyone" knew Clinton was going to win. There's no way that Trump could beat someone as accomplished as Hillary Clinton! And yet...
The final thing that I think works in Harris' favor is the other lesson from 2016. Clinton took control of a badly divided party after Bernie Sanders picked the worst people in the world left of Attila the Hun to run his campaign and crash and burn party unity at the convention. (I don't think Sanders himself was directly responsible, but the people around him? Sheesh.)
Harris looks to be moving towards an extremely unified and excited party, one that wants to symbolically overthrow the stench of 2016.
Will that be enough to hold the Blue Wall? Let's freaking hope so.
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