Democrats relish Harris vs. Trump contrast

• "The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the one that wins this election," former GOP candidate Nikki Haley, who later endorsed Trump, predicted in January.

Zoom in: For the past year, headlines about the 81-year-old Biden's historic polling weakness often have obscured public skepticism about Trump's own age and acuity.

• An ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll conducted after the June 27 debate, for example, found that 60% of voters believe Trump is too old to serve.
• In an AP-NORC poll released last week — the same one that sent Democrats into a panic about Biden's viability — 57% of adults said Trump should withdraw from the race.
• "The other side has a nominee that can barely get a sentence out, he's approaching 80, he brings us back to the past," Colorado Gov. Jared Polis argued on CNN Monday after endorsing the 59-year-old Harris.

Between the lines: Most Democrats are likely to be more tactful about the age issue, given that they spent years defending Biden from GOP attacks about his fitness for office.

• Some Republicans have accused Harris of concealing Biden's true cognitive state and are campaigning on her alleged "complicity."

State of play: Beyond the age question, Democrats are salivating at the obvious contrasts between Trump and Harris.

• Trump is a 78-year-old white male with a white male running mate half his age in Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio); Harris is the first Black, Asian American and woman vice president in U.S. history.
• Trump is a convicted felon who has been found liable for sexual abuse; Harris prosecuted alleged sexual abusers as district attorney and later served as California's attorney general.
• Trump has boasted about appointing three justices who helped the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade; Harris has made abortion rights her signature issue.

What they're saying: Harris previewed her message in a visit to the former Biden campaign's headquarters in Wilmington, Del., on Monday, telling staffers who are now working for her: "I was a courtroom prosecutor. In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds."

• "Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump's type," Harris said.
• "Donald Trump wants to take our country backwards, to a time before many of our fellow American had full freedoms and rights," she added, hitting a future vs. past theme likely to feature heavily in the campaign.

The other side: Trump insulted Harris as "dumb as a rock" on Truth Social Monday and demanded reimbursement for the many millions his campaign has spent attacking Biden.

• Trump and other Republicans have made clear they plan to attack Harris over the border crisis, calling her Biden's "border czar" because Biden tasked her with addressing the root causes of migration to the U.S.
• A strategy memo on Harris from the Senate GOP's campaign arm also included a "weird" category — mocking the VP's "habit of laughing at inappropriate moments" and her self-proclaimed love of Venn diagrams.
• Other Republicans indicated they would link Harris to other issues they were attacking Biden for — namely inflation — while casting her as an elite liberal from California.

The big picture: Virtually overnight, Harris has revitalized a Democratic Party that had spent weeks consumed by the threat of its elderly, unpopular nominee losing the presidency in a landslide.

• Recent national polls have suggested that like Biden, Harris trails Trump and has a narrow path in the Electoral College. But the difference in Democratic enthusiasm is palpable.
• In the 24 hours after Biden dropped out, Harris' campaign raised a record-shattering $81 million — more than the $53 million Trump raised in the 24 hours after his criminal conviction in May.