According to CNN (USA), Ms. Kamala Harris quickly erased some of the advantages that former President Donald Trump had over current President Joe Biden when it came to important personal qualities that voters value in a President . But the most formidable personal quality that voters saw in the former President was his perceived strength, which still exists as an important obstacle for Ms. Harris to overcome to win the White House.

Voters have long viewed Mr Trump as a strong leader capable of protecting them, and as they have grown more skeptical about Mr Biden’s physical and mental abilities, Mr Trump’s advantage has only grown.

But Ms. Harris’s energy and confident, forceful speaking style at her rallies over the past three weeks have fueled optimism among Democrats that she can reset the debate about strength and neutralize, or at least reduce, Mr. Trump’s traditional advantage.

If Ms. Harris wins the election race this November, she will be the first female President of the United States. Can she create a miracle?

“Weaker sex but not weak”

“American politics over the past decade has been shaped by a framework that Donald Trump has imposed on it and that has worked to his advantage, which is this framework of power,” said Democratic pollster Evan Roth Smith, who leads the Blueprint project, which aims to measure voter attitudes on key issues in the 2024 presidential race. “ Kamala Harris came into the race and a big change has taken place in this race. That includes removing the political framework around the power that Donald Trump imposed on our politics. Not just the man himself, but the framework.”

But to do that, Harris will likely need to counter a growing Republican push to portray her as weak. That attack could focus on issues related to Americans’ physical security, including crime, immigration and national defense. Some Democrats believe that Trump’s plan to undermine Harris’s momentum could echo elements of the 1988 presidential campaign, in which George H. W. Bush and his feared campaign manager Lee Atwater used devastating language to portray his Democratic opponent, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, as a soft, criminal liberal.

Ms. Harris is expected to win the election.

“If they decide to go that route and use every tool at their disposal and lie as much as Trump does every day, it could be a very powerful attack,” said longtime Democratic adviser Tad Devine, who served as a senior strategist on the Dukakis campaign. “I think the Harris campaign has to be prepared for that.”

The two sides have been competing fiercely for power. Trump campaign spokespeople have often portrayed Harris as weak; the main pro-Trump super PAC recently released an ad describing her stance on criminal justice issues as “dangerously liberal .” In an interview on Fox News, Trump implied that Harris’s gender made her too weak to stand up to other world leaders. “She’s going to be easy for them. She’s going to be like a toy ,” Trump insisted. “They’re going to stomp on her . ”

Ms. Harris, by contrast, is airing an ad in swing states that touts her credentials on the two issues Republicans are most determined to use against her. “Kamala Harris has spent decades fighting violent crime ,” the ad begins, before concluding: “Fixing the border is hard. So is Kamala Harris.”

Convincing Americans that the vice president is weak is crucial for Republicans, in part because on a number of important personal qualities, polls show voters rate Harris more favorably than Biden and, in many cases, even Trump.

In a national poll released last week by Marquette Law School, for example, nearly three-fifths of voters said they believed Harris had the right temperament to succeed as president. That’s higher than the half who said the same about Biden in a Marquette poll this spring, and much higher than the roughly two-fifths in the new survey who said Trump had the right temperament to succeed.

Similar to the Marquette poll, just 35% of voters said Harris had “behaved corruptly .” That’s far below not only the 61% who said the same about Trump, but also the 44% who applied that description to Biden.

It’s time to turn joy into votes

Elsewhere, the Democratic National Convention is underway and the party’s most decorated members have spent the first two days of the convention doubling down on their exciting new presidential bid.

Now it’s all about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

The vice president and governor of Minnesota are largely unknown to many people across the country and have never experienced anything like the tornadoes that are looming in his election clash with former President Donald Trump.

But they cannot hope to get more help than the Democratic giants have over the past 40 years.

President Joe Biden has ended his 50-year political career.

Former President Barack Obama called on a polarized nation to renew what Abraham Lincoln called the “bond of attachment” and unite behind Ms Harris.

Hillary Clinton, who came so close to breaking the male monopoly of the presidency, looked through the crack in the highest and hardest glass ceiling and envisioned Harris being sworn in as the first female president.

Another former first lady, Michelle Obama, declared “hope is back” while calling on voters to “do something” to stop Mr Trump’s recovery.

Over the next two nights in Chicago, Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz will begin to answer the question of whether they can develop into a serious electoral movement as their campaign enters a crucial new phase.

Mr Walz will be under pressure to make the leap to the national political stage. Then it will be Ms Harris’s turn, as she seeks to combine her transformation into a 2024 campaign with restoring her own political reputation after a difficult vice presidency.

Ms Harris has erased much of Mr Trump’s lead in the polls. She has revived Democrats’ hopes of taking back the House and holding the Senate. And she has projected an optimistic path for America, away from the dark vision of a nation ruled by a strongman endorsed by the Republican nominee.

She has adopted a mantra that her party, fearful of Mr Trump’s return, is eagerly embracing: “We are not going back.”

But that’s the easy part.

Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz now need to turn the new momentum, unity and purpose stirring in the Chicago convention hall into a campaign that can win the presidential election.

Walz will take the stage at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday. Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, delivered an underwhelming speech at the Republican National Convention last month that sent his approval ratings plummeting, contributing to the decline of Trump’s campaign.

Vice presidential nominees don’t decide elections, but Mr. Walz, with his suburban demeanor, could act as a counterweight to Kamala Harris, who could alienate some voters opposed to change.

Mr. Walz also makes an example of middle-class men who have a political alternative to MAGA conservatism. Democratic strategists hope he could be especially valuable to the ticket in courting rural voters who respond to his down-home views in a way that could reduce some of the margin in districts where Mr. Trump is running strongest.

“Here’s a guy who can speak anywhere and people can connect with him as a person, as a coach, as a former teacher,” former Montana Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock — who was known for connecting with culturally conservative voters even as his party moved to the left — told CNN on Tuesday. “He’ll talk to people where they are. He’ll talk to them about the issues that matter in their lives.”

But although Mr. Walz is a former House member, he enters this test with much less time on the national stage than some of the other vice presidential candidates in recent years, including Mr. Biden, who was a longtime senator when he joined Obama in 2008, former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, who teamed up with George W. Bush in 2000, and Sen. Al Gore, who was picked by Bill Clinton in 1992.

The Trump campaign recognized the threat, and Walz was immediately criticized for the timing of his retirement from the Army National Guard just before his unit deployed to Iraq. (Minnesota’s governor said he was not informed of the deployment.) The former president’s vice president, Vance, attacked him for falsely suggesting he carried a gun in a war zone, prompting the Harris campaign to investigate and correct the allegations. On Monday, the Ohio Republican, risking further alienating female voters, accused Walz of being dishonest about his and his wife Gwen’s use of fertility treatments. The Trump camp is also highlighting Walz’s liberal tenure as governor, which threatens to complicate the Harris campaign’s efforts to highlight his healthy temperament as a sign of moderation.