Harris in pole position for presidential nomination, Biden endorses her President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the November election clears the way for Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him, a prospect that would have seemed unlikely for most of the past three years, when she was seen as a drag on her reelection chances because of her low approval ratings.
But Democrats’ desperation and Harris’ recent performance as a dynamic administration spokesperson and loyal deputy have changed the game. If she wins, Harris would be the first woman of color to lead a national ticket and, if she wins, the first female president.
Several recent polls show Harris now within a percentage point or two of a head-to-head matchup with former President Trump. Republicans, bracing for a possible Harris candidacy since Biden’s poor performance in the June debate, have dredged up old video clips of her, sometimes mocking her awkward public speaking style, blaming her for “hiding” Biden’s weakness and linking her to the high number of arrests at the southern border under the Biden administration.
Many worried Democrats have called for other candidates, including Governors Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Gavin Newsom of California or Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, fearing that Harris would be too polarizing to win a majority of the vote.
She has to make up ground on Trump, and her national approval rating, while better, remains about 39%, compared with 50% of voters who disapprove, according to the 538 polling average. She also has to close the gap in key battleground states, according to polls. But Harris, 59, has the advantage of experience on a national ticket, direct access to the campaign’s fundraising apparatus and name recognition, making her the favorite to secure an unprecedented nomination for whoever wins. She can also build on the administration’s policy record, which Democrats consider popular even if Biden, 81, is not.
“Vice presidents have the advantage of depth and scope,” said Elaine Kamarck, a Democratic delegate and author of “Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates.”
Biden’s opinion carries weight. But once he releases his delegates, they are no longer bound by his wishes, meaning any candidate can try to win a majority of the party’s more than 4,500 voting delegates. In his letter Sunday, he praised Harris as an “extraordinary partner.”
He backed Harris in a subsequent tweet. “My very first decision as the party’s nominee in 2020 was to choose Kamala Harris as my running mate,” he wrote. “And it was the best decision I’ve ever made. Today, I want to offer my full support and endorsement to Kamala to be our party’s nominee this year. Democrats – it’s time to come together and defeat Trump. Let’s do it.”
Another advantage for Harris is that many delegates have said they are eager for a smooth process, given the chaotic weeks leading up to it. Whoever wins the nomination will also have to choose a running mate in time for the convention, likely from the same pool of contenders for the top job.
Despite Harris’s inherent advantages, someone else could certainly make the run, added Kamarck, a fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank who served as an aide to former Vice President Al Gore.
Harris, born in Oakland to immigrant parents from Jamaica and India, has enjoyed a steady rise in Democratic politics, going from elected district attorney of San Francisco to attorney general of California to U.S. senator and finally vice president. She now resides in Los Angeles when not staying at the vice president’s official residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington.
Harris entered the 2020 presidential primary with huge expectations, touted by many in the party as the fresh face of the future, only to see her campaign collapse before the votes were even counted, due to internal conflicts and a sense that Harris lacked deep ideological convictions. She struggled, for example, to explain her position on the debate over universal health care, which was a defining issue for progressives.
Biden, in choosing her as his running mate, reinvigorated her political career. She proved to be a good campaigner in a supporting role. But as vice president, she faced high staff turnover and had to compete for influence with former Biden aides — some of them wary of her after she attacked Biden in the 2020 primaries. As the first Black and Indian American woman in national office, she also faced racial and gender bias.
Her first major mission under Biden, to curb migration by improving conditions in Central America, has become a political headache as she has tried to evade responsibility for record numbers of migrants stopped at the border and distanced herself from political debates on Capitol Hill.
On a 2021 trip to Guatemala and Mexico, she told migrants, “Don’t come,” angering the left, and then laughed off questions about why she hadn’t yet visited the border, inflaming the right. The first impression was a setback given the rare opportunities vice presidents have to command public attention.
Harris improved her standing within the party in 2022, when the Supreme Court struck down the legal right to abortion and she became the administration’s leading voice in opposition, helping Democrats surpass expectations in the 2022 midterm elections. She also began traveling more abroad, representing Biden in Europe during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and in Asia as part of a broader strategy to counter Chinese influence.
Unlike other vice presidents, who had time to settle into their jobs during their first terms, Harris was immediately under pressure to show she could replace Biden, the oldest president in U.S. history, said Joel Goldstein, a vice presidential expert. She was also a rarity in the modern era, when most vice presidents had more government experience than their bosses.
“If Vice President Harris becomes the determined standard-bearer for 2024, I think she will have visibility and importance and people will look at her in a way that they have never looked at her before,” Goldstein said.
She will need that second chance. In focus groups, many voters say they don’t know what she’s doing. And she’s viewed similarly to Biden among major voter groups in recent polls conducted by David Paleologos of Suffolk University for USA Today.
Harris was viewed favorably by 30% of independents and unfavorably by 57% in a national poll taken after the late June debate, compared with a 35%-62% split for Biden.
Polls of black and brown voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania — two key swing states — conducted in early June showed that only 55% to 60% of those voters viewed her favorably, numbers similar to Biden’s. He and Harris won more than 90% support from black voters in 2020, according to exit polls.
Paleologos said Harris has a little more room to increase her support than Biden, but it’s still an uphill climb.
“Kamala Harris could generate some enthusiasm, maybe not to the level that Trump has,” he said. “That’s a big deficit right now.”
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