With just a few weeks remaining until the election day, Kamala Harris’s campaign is leaving no stone unturned. Every possible action is being taken: participating in television and podcast conversations, campaigning with supporters, and reaching out to both, the Trump critics who believe in Nikki Haley, and the Bernie supporters. She is even discussing her openness to include a Republican in her cabinet, though revealing her possession of a Glock and reaching out to Liz Cheney might be viewed as efforts to appeal to conservatives. The campaign has in fact proclaimed that former President Bill Clinton, also known as ‘the Big Dog’, will be stepping up to support Harris.
Bill Clinton’s role is not to convince Republican supporters to switch sides, but to win the hearts of rural inhabitants and the younger African American population particularly in Georgia and North Carolina. The campaign’s decision is backed by their internal polling, which seems to indicate this strategy will prove effective. Nonetheless, existing publicly accessible data seems to counter this prediction and indicates that this decision might be somewhat surprising.
According to YouGov’s public opinion metrics, Bill Clinton’s approval rating isn’t particularly high. He is viewed merely 1% more favourably than current President Joe Biden, even after having a 25-year gap from his past controversies which marked his time in the office during his second term and eventually led to his impeachment. He lacks the popular favor of distinguished personalities such as Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton.
The endorsement of Bill Clinton appears to be a liability given the specific demographics of North Carolina and Georgia—particularly among rural voters and young Black men. Starting with the case of North Carolina, statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that due to Clinton’s legislation—particularly North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)—the state lost a substantial number of manufacturing jobs between 1994 and 2018. Furthermore, North Carolina was second only to California in terms of the number of manufacturing jobs lost.
The China–World Trade Organization agreement enacted by Clinton during his second term was another principal contributor to the job loss ruin. The triumvirate of the textile, clothing, and furniture industries, which had been the backbone of the state’s rural economy, took a severe hit. The upheaval took a long time and was full of challenges, with Bill Clinton’s name still associated with it.
The argument that Bill Clinton might be especially influential among younger Black voters also seems doubtful. Clinton passed the widely criticized 1994 Crime Bill during his first term—an important policy. This brought about stiff penalties and prolonged sentencing, cemented the racial disparities in drug prosecutions between crack and cocaine, expanded the possibility of the death penalty, introduced obligatory life sentences for three-time felons, and resulted in stricter sentences for young offenders. These effects were disproportionately felt within Black communities.
Harris, regardless, is enlisting Clinton’s help to garner the votes of young African American men in the south who might have been personally touched by the 1994 Crime Bill. It’s a reality that this strategy comes disregard of the fact that this law led to tougher sentencing and intensified policing. It is quite possible that many among them have a family member who encountered thorough punishment due to Clinton’s policies.
In 2022, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Sean Patrick Maloney found himself precariously positioned in a district that once favoured Biden by nearly 10 points just two years earlier. Bill Clinton, with his characteristic campaigning eloquence, was brought in to vouch for Maloney at an event. Unfortunately, despite Clinton’s endorsement, Maloney did not win.
In consideration of these facts, the entire decision of Kamala Harris’s campaign to bring in Bill Clinton appears to be a gamble. Despite his charismatic personality and past political success, the negatives associated with his policies continue to significantly affect certain demographics, and this might influence the perception of his endorsement, thus making him a potential liability.
While private polling might indicate some potential positive outcomes of the Clinton endorsement, they must be weighed against the publicly available data that suggests contrary findings. It remains to be seen whether his controversies, particularly in relation to economic policies and the criminal justice system, will outweigh his appeal, especially among those directly affected by those controversies.
Harris’s decision to roll out Clinton as a campaigner in these circumstances indicates an unexpected synthesis of strategy, which seems to believe in the disassociation of the individual’s charisma from his policies. However, it is incontrovertible that the decisions of his term have left a resounding impact on these communities, still echoing after all these years.
Ultimately, the decision of the Harris campaign to introduce Bill Clinton into the mix, particularly with rural voters and young Black men in North Carolina and Georgia, will be tested in the upcoming weeks leading to the election. The merits of this strategy have been a subject of intense debate.
The Harris campaign, in its final stretch, is aiming to appeal to a broad spectrum of voters through varied means and supports. This range of campaign strategies, while quite diverse, showcases the commitment of Harris’s team in trying to appeal to as large of a constituency as possible.
Despite all these complexities, one thing is certain—voter response in the coming weeks will be closely observed by individuals in both camps and may very well inform the political strategies of future elections. The results of this unique endorsement strategy hold the potential to affect the broader approach of political campaigns in the future.
Irrespective of the outcomes, this event will be a critical point of learning for all political campaigns in terms of how they engage historical figures and the public’s perception of them in active political campaigning. As the countdown to election day continues, the world watches with bated breath, wondering what the unpredictable world of politics will throw up next.