The month since Kamala Harris launched her presidential campaign has been an unprecedented period in American politics: Never before has a modern general election campaign gone from standstill to full steam so quickly.

At the time, the Democrats put together a well-scripted national convention with slickly produced promotional videos, political stage sets and musical interludes, all to promote the new nominee. It was a remarkable test of skill by party officials under extreme pressure.

During her four days in Chicago — and at the packed campaign rallies Ms. Harris has held in recent weeks — the contours of her campaign strategy began to take shape.

And that’s not exactly what you’d expect from a sitting vice president who has held a White House office for three and a half years.

Ms. Harris is pushing hard to be seen as the changemaker in this race, someone who, as she said in her convention speech on Thursday, “can chart a new path forward.”

This strategy was born partly out of necessity. Democracies around the world have been roiled by voter unrest. As economies struggle to recover from the Covid pandemic, regional conflicts flare, and tensions over immigration boil over, incumbents have faced deeply unhappy voters in countries including Canada, the UK, Germany, and India.

Polls showed that President Joe Biden would face similar challenges before he suspended his re-election campaign last month.

The Vice President has turned the situation around.

Her background and personal story contrast sharply with those of both the current president and her Republican opponent.

It also helps that Ms. Harris is running against a former president who, while casting himself as a candidate for change, must also defend his own sometimes controversial and occasionally unpopular record in the White House.

“I believe very strongly that this election is about two very different visions of the future,” Ms. Harris said at a rally in North Carolina last week.

“Ours was focused on the future, and the other on the past.”

Ms. Harris has typically shied away from detailing what her presidency would look like.

There is talk of unity and a way to overcome divisions in America. There is a focus on strengthening the economy and lowering consumer prices. There is also a strong emphasis on reproductive rights and abortion, an area that Democrats are particularly strong on.

But it’s vague. And that vagueness could suit Harris’ campaign just fine.

Ms. Harris was largely an empty political tool, allowing various constituencies within the Democratic Party to project their hopes and priorities onto her.

If she can keep all those pieces together over the next few months, she might just win.

Labour Party leaders were optimistic, saying they would focus on protecting trade unions and on key economic issues.

Climate activists praised the Biden administration’s clean energy legislation and expected the candidate to expand those efforts.

Civil rights leaders predicted that the first woman of color to be nominated by a major party would advance racial equality.

“The fundamental question people are asking is, are you fighting for me, or are you fighting for someone else?” said Tom Perez, who served as secretary of Labor in the Obama administration and has been an adviser to the Biden White House.

“I think people know very well that she is a fighter for everyone, not just for certain people in certain zip codes or certain tax brackets, not just for people of certain races or ethnicities, but for everyone.”

In other words, the vagueness of the vice president’s policies has allowed her to reach the broadest possible audience in what appears to be an election in which every undecided voter counts.

It has been labeled by some as a “vibe” campaign – at least partly based on feeling and general impressions.

On Wednesday, former television host, author and international celebrity Oprah Winfrey, who identified herself as a political independent, said Ms. Harris and her running mate Tim Walz were the candidates who would exude “decency and respect.”

“I appeal to all independents and all undecideds,” she said. “Values ​​and character are the most important thing, in leadership and in life.”

Throughout the week, a parade of Republicans — including former officials and supporters of Donald Trump — also took the convention stage to pitch Harris as the best option in November.

“Harris is going to want to be center-left, not far-left,” said Chris Shays, a former Republican congressman from Connecticut who attended this year’s Democratic Party convention.

According to Mr. Shays, the vice president will be drawn to the American political center because that is where the country finds itself.

However, Ms. Harris’ strategy is not without risk.

Just as Democratic groups are projecting their ideas onto the vice president’s campaign, so too are her Republican opponents. And they are using Ms. Harris’s earlier, more liberal — and sometimes controversial — positions and statements as evidence that the lack of specificity is merely a cover for a left-wing agenda.

“Her speech was the perfect example of what happens when you don’t have solutions to the problems you’ve delivered to Americans, so you gaslight and ignore them,” Trump’s campaign said in a statement responding to the vice president’s speech at the convention.

Ms. Harris has also so far avoided broad press conferences and more focused interviews with the mainstream media — interviews that could hold her accountable for past positions and pressure her to announce further policy details.

Her speech last week on the economy was one of the few times the vice president presented concrete new proposals.

But over the past four days, some clues have emerged about how she would govern.

She has proposed a $25,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers. She has promised to use government power to lower the cost of prescription drugs and punish overpriced groceries. She sponsored bipartisan immigration legislation that was blocked in the Senate earlier this year.

Ms. Harris also pledged to push for a federal law guaranteeing basic abortion rights across the U.S., making conservative state bans redundant.

For some Democrats, the details so far aren’t enough.

“We need to hear some real policy stuff,” said Lewanna Tucker, chair of the Democratic Party in Fulton County, Georgia. “She needs to let us go behind the scenes a little bit more and talk about structural things that are going to be done.”

Perhaps more concrete policy details are not necessary. At a time when American politics is seen by much of the American public as divisive and toxic, it may be useful to build a political campaign that is not about policy-specific issues, but rather one that appeals to emotions.

In 2008, Barack Obama successfully campaigned on hope and change – hardly the basis for a four-point plan.

“It is a return to a level of hope that we have not collectively experienced since 2008,” said Yasmin Radjy, who leads the liberal grassroots organization Swing Left.

She said there had been a burnout among volunteers on the left over the past eight years, but the move to Ms Harris was “like a weight had been lifted off their shoulders”.

Democrats’ willingness to destroy the Heritage Foundation Project2025 — a sometimes controversial blueprint for a new Republican administration that Trump and his campaign have repeatedly rejected — also highlights the risks of becoming even tangentially associated with the details of governing.

In her speech on Thursday evening, Ms. Harris pledged to look beyond partisan divisions and find common ground.

“I promise to be a president for all Americans,” she said. “You can always trust me to put country before party and yourself.”

These promises are, of course, not unknown in American politics. Similar pledges have been made in recent decades. But there is something different about this Democratic candidate and Democratic convention.

This week’s star-studded lineup – with performances from Pink, Stevie Wonder and Lil Jon, among others – and the campaign’s heavy reliance on pop culture connections like Charlie XCX suggest that the campaign is positioning itself as a cultural movement rather than a political one.

It remains to be seen whether this will be an effective strategy.

But it has at least for now lifted the Democratic Party out of the malaise and despair of early July and into a neck-and-neck race with Trump and the Republicans as the crucial final months of the campaign enter.