As Kamala Harris prepares for the biggest moment of her political life at the Democratic National Convention this week, I’ve been reflecting on a recommendation I once got from her future former boss, President Biden.

When I was an intern at the White House in 2014, I had the opportunity to pose a question to then-Vice President Biden. How did he balance a seemingly endless list of priorities and problems without losing faith in the potential to solve them? He left me with some cogent counsel: “Pick the fights worth losing.” His point was that regardless of an outcome, the most existential threats to our society demand our opposition.

As I have watched the incalculable suffering of Palestinians over the last 10 months, I return to that advice from the same leader currently providing Israel with billions of dollars in arms to conduct its devastating war in Gaza and who wields the leverage to end it. I have marched with students, made calls to representatives in Congress and donated to relief funds. In response, I see seemingly unshakable support for Israel’s war from this administration.

Almost a decade after I had that exchange with Biden, I was invited to attend a reception at the home of Vice President Harris — just days before Biden dropped out of the presidential race and Harris became the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination. It was an event celebrating Black economic achievements, in many ways a self-congratulatory affair for the Biden-Harris administration. It has provided more money to historically Black colleges and universities than any administration in history, shrunk the unemployment rate for Black communities by half and cut Black child poverty by nearly half from 2020 to 2021.

Regardless of those wins, I declined the invitation. I knew I couldn’t comfortably celebrate with the vice president while the administration she serves continues to send more weapons to Israel than humanitarian aid to Gaza. Rather than the president demanding that Israel allow aid trucks to reach starving Palestinians, we air-dropped food and killed people as the packages crushed them from the sky. The U.S. attempt to create a by-sea route for humanitarian supplies — building a floating aid pier — was a $230-million failure that shut down after operating for just 25 days.

The appropriate solution to this manufactured humanitarian crisis is clear: a lasting cease-fire and unconditional access into and out of Gaza for aid and aid workers. Yet the administration refuses to apply the necessary pressure, such as ending arms transfers or sanctioning ultranationalist Israeli Cabinet members over settler violence in the West Bank.

The Black community in critical elections is called on to coalesce. We’re asked to champion candidates that look like us, come from our neighborhoods and share our values. Harris and I come from the same hometown, Oakland. She has been my attorney general, senator and vice president for more than a decade. Now that she’s the Democratic nominee, a mix of pride and disaffection swells in me as I consider my vote, and as we all uneasily hope for the cessation of bombings in Gaza.

Candidate Harris has an opportunity to take the advice I received from her boss 10 years ago. I hope she will earnestly reimagine our relationship with Israel to make more space for the dignity and humanity of the Palestinian people. The horror of Oct. 7 cannot justify the heinous war Israel is conducting, which includes acts and policies the International Court of Justice and a U.S. federal court have ruled may plausibly amount to genocide. Each day, it becomes clearer that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to negotiate in good faith to reach a cease-fire and return hostages. Meanwhile, the world watches in horror as the death toll continues to rise.

There is room for optimism. Harris has met with activists calling for a cease-fire and expressed sincere concern for the well-being of Palestinians in a way that Biden has failed to do. She can chart a new foreign policy that centers human rights at this critical moment. Americans would enthusiastically support hearing that message of peace at the convention this week.

As I have in each election with her name on the ballot, I will support Kamala Harris for president. But I know too many people who will not. This genocidal war demands more than gestures. She should embrace, not dismiss, an arms embargo against Israel, as many human rights organizations have called for. She should honor the Foreign Assistance Act and promise to cut off funding to Israeli military units that the State Department finds have grossly violated Palestinian human rights, as the Leahy law requires. She should support justice for the Palestinian people. Research shows that many Americans would be more likely to vote for her if she did so.

Demanding an end to the slaughter in Gaza and freedom for the Palestinian people is a fight worth losing. It is also by all means a fight we can win.

Ron Busby Jr. is the head of product at ByBlack, which provides support for Black-owned businesses, and lives in Oakland.

PITTSBURGH, PA – Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz barnstorm through western Pennsylvania on Sunday, on the eve of the kickoff of the Democratic National Convention.

Hours earlier, former President Trump declared “I love Pennsylvania” as he held a rally at an indoor arena in Wilkes-Barre, in the northeast corner of the Keystone State.

Pennsylvania has been and will continue to see plenty of campaign trail traffic. With 19 electoral votes up for grabs, it’s the largest prize among the seven battleground states that will likely decide the outcome of the presidential election.

“We’re winning by a lot in Pennsylvania,” Trump declared on Saturday. 

TRUMP RUNNING MATE VANCE AIMS TO TURN BLUE WALL STATES RED

But an average of all the polls conducted in Pennsylvania since Harris replaced President Biden at the top of the Democrats’ 2024 ticket four weeks ago indicates it is all tied up.

And both campaigns have been placing plenty of emphasis on the Keystone State.

Harris made Philadelphia her first stop of her first battleground state swing after announcing Walz as her running mate.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at Girard College on Aug. 6, 2024, in Philadelphia. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

And Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, both return to Pennsylvania on Monday for separate events focused on the economy.

HARRIS AND TRUMP TRADE FIRE IN BATTLE FOR THE BLUE WALL STATES 

Pennsylvania, along with Michigan and Wisconsin, make up what’s known as the Democrats’ ‘blue wall,’ which the party reliably won in presidential elections for a quarter-century before Trump narrowly carried all three states in 2016 en route to winning the White House.

But four years later, in 2020, Biden won back all three by razor-thin margins, to defeat Trump and claim the presidency.

Both campaigns have invested heavily in Pennsylvania, spending big bucks on ads and outreach. (Getty Images)

On Sunday, Harris and Walz will be accompanied by their spouses, second gentleman Doug Emhoff and Minnesota first lady Gwen Walz. The bus tour will depart from Pittsburgh’s airport and make stops, according to the Harris campaign, in Allegheny and Beaver counties, which are considered swing areas in the battleground state.

Both campaigns have invested heavily in Pennsylvania, spending big bucks on ads and outreach.

The campaign bus for Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz at Pittsburgh International Airport in Pennsylvania, Aug. 19, 2024. (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)

But the Harris campaign touts that their grassroots outreach and get-out-the-vote infrastructure – with 36 coordinated offices in conjunction with the Democratic National Committee and the state party – dwarfs the presence of the Trump-Vance campaign in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania will not only see plenty of stops by the candidates between now and November, it will also be the site of what’s likely to be the first and possibly only debate between Harris and Trump, which is scheduled to be held at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on Sept. 10.

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

Vice President Kamala Harris enters this week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago with a small lead over former President Trump in national polling averages that few would have thought likely even a month ago.

The truncated nature of the race — initially thought by many to present an added hurdle — has played to Harris’ strengths, while minimizing her flaws.

The Nov. 5 election will take place just 75 days after the convention ends on Thursday. Voting begins even earlier in many states, including prized battleground Pennsylvania, where some counties will begin handing out ballots next month.

Before President Biden dropped out of the race in July, many Democrats saw Harris as a risky candidate, while also worrying that anyone taking his place on the ballot would face logistical challenges.

Here’s why the snap election, unprecedented in modern American politics, has been helpful to Harris so far, and how Trump could reclaim a contest that is still up for grabs:

No primary, no problem with defining core beliefs

Harris started her race for her party’s 2020 nomination with the type of excitement she is drawing from Democratic voters today. More than 20,000 people showed up for her January 2019 announcement rally in Oakland, and she raised big dollars as she established herself as a top-tier contender.

By December of that year, before ballots were cast or caucuses held, she had dropped out. Harris had trouble defining her core beliefs compared with those of others in a big field of Democratic hopefuls. As a result, voters lacked a sense of what she stood for.

Was she a lefty competing for progressive populist votes with Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts? Was she a centrist sparring with Biden and Pete Buttigieg, who is now Biden’s transportation secretary?

“She’s not necessarily easy to pigeonhole as being a progressive or centrist or moderate,” said Brian Brokaw, a former Harris advisor who ran a group supporting Harris in the primary. “She’s confounded people.”

Her attempts to straddle the party’s ideological divides — with her own universal healthcare plan and a partial embrace of the movement to reform or abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency — failed to win over her party.

She doesn’t have to worry about those fights now that the race is a binary choice — with brighter lines between her and Trump on issues such as abortion, democracy and the economy.

“She’s benefiting so much from being a foil against Trump, in a particularly compelling and positive way, that everyone’s looking at her differently,” said Faiz Shakir, a senior advisor to Sanders.

“In a primary process, voters would be asking, ‘Could she be the nominee? Should she be? Is she the best?’” Shakir added. “Here, you’re either for Trump or Harris.”

Less need for an ‘Etch-A-Sketch’

Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign was famously undermined when a top advisor said the Republican could erase some of the conservative positions he espoused in the GOP primary with an “Etch-A-Sketch” to appeal to a more moderate electorate in the general election.

Harris is doing a bit of that now, leaving behind her support four years ago for a universal health plan and a ban on fracking as she tries to win votes in Pennsylvania and other swing states. Republicans are trying to remind voters of her more liberal stances, but it’s harder than it would be if her shifts were more recent, and if Harris didn’t have her Biden administration record to run on.

She’s also facing less pressure from the left in her party than she would if she‘d competed in the primaries, when interest groups tend to use their leverage. She’s been leaning into her support for Biden’s bipartisan border enforcement deal, for example, avoiding some of the criticism from within the Democratic Party that Biden faced this year when he negotiated it with Senate Republicans. Trump pressured Republican lawmakers to kill the deal because he wants to keep the border as a political issue.

A turnkey operation

Harris inherited Biden’s entire campaign apparatus, avoiding the management clashes and staff turnover that hampered her 2020 campaign and early tenure as vice president.

The campaign was designed around Biden’s strengths and loyalties, which presented a challenge. But the tone has shifted quickly toward Harris’ style, which is more confrontational yet lighter as she tries to contrast her sense of joy with Trump’s grievances. The campaign was also built around a ground game, in anticipation of a tight race in which turning out core voters will be crucial.

Catching Trump off guard

Trump designed his campaign around Biden’s weaknesses, including his advanced age. Now Trump is the candidate facing some of the same questions.

Trump’s advisors believe Harris is a ripe target and have urged him to focus attacks on immigration and the economy — two areas where he holds polling advantages over her. But he has so far been unable to avoid distractions.

“I think I’m entitled to personal attacks” on Harris, Trump said Thursday at a news conference.

The calendar has kept the honeymoon going. Can it last?

Harris has lucked into great timing. She got a boost of excitement from relieved Democrats when Biden withdrew, and again with the announcement of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, and is now entering a convention that will bring media focus including four nights of network airtime.

She’s been on the road almost the entire time, avoiding sit-down interviews and other unscripted encounters, which have given her trouble in the past.

Trump’s allies have been furious over what they see as an unfair glide path.

“The only thing that’s in Harris’ favor — the only thing — is the nonstop gusher of adoring coverage she’s getting from the media, who don’t seem inclined to wonder why she won’t answer a single question or explain the radical, leftist record she’s running from,” said Tim Murtaugh, Trump’s 2020 communications director, who recently joined his 2024 campaign. “She’s a weak vice president from a failed administration, but the media chooses to write about her ‘vibe’ instead.”

Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, Bill Stepien, said he was dubious that Harris’ momentum could continue, arguing that the dust had yet to settle following the Democratic campaign shake-up. Harris’ perceived advantages could backfire, he argued.

“She’s been offered a honeymoon period, which has certainly put some wind in her back,” Stepien said. “On the other hand, going through a primary process, running the gamut against a slate of opponents, tests you. It tests you on the debate stage. It tests you on the stump. It allows you to tweak and refine messaging.”

The pressure is still on

For all of Harris’ good fortune, polling shows that the race remains winnable for either candidate — tighter than it was eight years ago, when Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the electoral college despite losing the popular vote. That gives Trump plenty of room to rebound and Harris time to stumble.

Her lack of sit-down interviews or full-scale news conferences since winning the nomination will increase the stakes when she does agree to one, or holds her first debate with Trump, on Sept. 10. She could also suffer from a twist in the news, such as a national economic setback or a shift in the war between Israel and Hamas.

“You have no room for error,” said Karen Finney, a Harris friend who served in a senior communications role for Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. “Everybody is always bringing your A-game to an election. This is your A-plus-plus game. There isn’t time.”

Finney argues that Harris has more than just luck and timing: She worked as vice president to build a message and a political coalition that would not have been there had another Democrat stepped in for Biden. But if she makes an error in a debate, she will have less time to rebound, Finney said.

“Joe Biden stepped down so we could have our best chance to beat Donald Trump,” she said. “Of course that creates pressure.”