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Ross Douthat, David French, Michelle Goldberg and Lydia Polgreen

By Ross Douthat, David French, Michelle Goldberg and Lydia Polgreen

Mr. Douthat is an Opinion columnist and a host of “Matter of Opinion.” Mr. French, Ms. Goldberg and Ms. Polgreen are Opinion columnists.

Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, hosted an online conversation with the Times Opinion columnists Ross Douthat, David French, Michelle Goldberg and Lydia Polgreen to discuss where Democrats go from here — whether the party should coalesce unreservedly around Kamala Harris as its presidential nominee, what her strengths and weaknesses are, how she should run against Donald Trump, what it will take to beat him and who the Democratic V.P. nominee should be this year. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Patrick Healy: Michelle, Lydia, Ross and David, I’ll cut to the chase: Is the Democratic Party making a mistake by quickly going all in on Kamala Harris as its likely presidential nominee?

Michelle Goldberg: This is a hard question, because for the party to do otherwise would mean trying to restrain the passions, enthusiasms and calculations of its members. The instant flood of endorsements for Harris demonstrated that there is both a great deal of support for her among Democrats and, maybe more important, an enormous hunger to finally come together and go after Donald Trump.

Healy: Did that flood of support seem organic to you, Michelle, or orchestrated by Harris’s campaign?

Goldberg: It felt organic, for sure. No doubt Harris and her allies had a strong whip operation — which speaks well of their abilities — but there was also a spontaneous bandwagon effect that no decision maker could have held back. And the fact that Harris was the object of that outpouring of exhilaration and relief suggests no other candidate could compete or unify all the party’s factions as quickly.

Ross Douthat: It’s a mistake to go all in on Harris, obviously, because she’s still the exceptionally weak candidate whose weaknesses made President Biden so loath to quit the field for her. Potential rivals like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan are throwing away an unusual opportunity because they imagine some future opening for themselves — in 2028 and beyond — that may never materialize. And the party clearly has an interest in having a better-situated nominee: A swing-state governor who isn’t tied directly to an unpopular administration would be a much, much better choice for a high-stakes but still winnable race than a liberal Californian machine politician with zero track record of winning over moderate to conservative voters.

Healy: A few governors come to mind here. Go on.

Douthat: Right now it feels as though the party put so much effort into convincing Biden that Harris could be a strong replacement nominee that now it’s going to be stuck with the fruit of that argument: Harris for president.

Lydia Polgreen: I think Democrats falling in line behind Harris isn’t just closing ranks; it is genuine relief and enthusiasm. For weeks now, we have had a kind of mini-tryout for the top of the ticket, with Harris getting the best opportunity to show what she’s made of. There were recent chances for Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania to have a star turn — his response to the Trump assassination attempt — and for Whitmer as well — her book promotion tour. I think Harris has threaded the needle very well.

David French: It’s way too early to say if it’s a mistake. On the one hand, Democrats are not wrong to remember her disastrous 2019 primary campaign. On the other hand, there would be a real cost to a mini-primary, and any candidate not named Kamala Harris would have to be introduced to the American people in less than 100 days.

Healy: That small window presents a real gamble for any Democrat other than the sitting vice president.

French: It’s a gamble either way. Do you gamble that Harris is a better candidate than she was before and that, on balance, it’s better to unify now and go with the person who’s poised to take over? Or do you gamble that you can initiate a divisive and potentially chaotic selection process, unify immediately afterward and then make the new candidate a household name in three short months?

Healy: Right now, the nomination looks like Harris’s to lose, but she also says she wants to earn it. What can she do to secure the nomination and become the strongest possible opponent for Trump?

Goldberg: I can’t imagine a scenario in which she’s not the nominee. The convention is open in that I believe the delegates can legally vote for whomever they want. But so far, many are coalescing behind Harris. The only way to change would be for someone strong to run against her, and no one is stepping up.

Douthat: She needs to take the extremely boring, predictable, simplistic step of picking a set of issues and figuring out how to pivot to the center, ideally criticizing her current boss a little bit along the way. And make it specific: If Trump can stand up and denounce Project 2025 on the hustings, Harris should do the same for some unpopular liberal cause. There is no substitute for centrism.

Goldberg: She can lean into the thing that killed her in the 2020 primaries: Harris is a cop.

Polgreen: Her views on the issues that matter most are in line with a majority of Americans, already a strong contrast to Trump. She needs to remind people that she is a moderate, mainstream Democrat, as almost all Black Democrats of her generation are. She was attacked in the 2020 primary contest, quite effectively, from the left. It was sort of a fluke that she ran for president in the one cycle when her biggest selling point became a liability. Now it is not.

Healy: What do you think Harris should do, Lydia?

Polgreen: She needs to lean into her strength — sensible law and order — and pick a strong, complementary running mate. Stick to the fundamentals that have worked for her so far: abortion and defending democratic governance against right-wing extremists. I suspect she will telegraph a more dexterous handling of Israel and Gaza, even if the policy doesn’t change much. That will help, too, not so much with people on the left, who seem to have already fallen out of the coconut tree, but with voters across the Democratic spectrum who have been rightfully horrified by the seeming callousness of the Biden team toward Palestinian life.

French: Part of the reason she ran so poorly in 2019 was the strange ideological environment. The party — especially white Democrats — lurched way to the left, especially on criminal justice issues, and that’s a poor fit for a person whose biography revolves around a career in law enforcement. As Michelle notes, she lost the benefit of her best selling point: Harris is a cop. Now she can run as the cop versus the felon.

Healy: Would the Democratic left really accept that cop messaging, though?

French: There is much less pressure to tack to the left now. If anything, the environment is ripe for her to emphasize her past as a prosecutor. Ross is exactly right. Her best move is to offer a kind of solid centrism to contrast with Trump’s berserker personality. Even if Trump throws the Heritage Foundation and the pro-life movement under the bus, he still has his furious temperament, and he just can’t let go of his grievances. She has an opportunity to present herself as the adult in the room.

Healy: The Democratic convention starts four weeks from Monday. Is the Democratic Party best off — meaning, best positioned to beat Trump — if it closes ranks quickly around........

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