Vice President Kamala Harris nodded awkwardly along as the crowd at a campaign event in Las Vegas Tuesday greeted her with an exuberant chant of “Four more years! Four more years!”
In normal times, such a refrain from a room full of supporters while a vice president stumps for a second term would simply come with the territory. Yet, with Joe Biden’s presidency hanging in the balance since his woeful June 27 debate performance, the words took on curious new meaning: Four more years for whom?
Hours before, more than 2,000 miles away back in Washington, divided House Democrats were conducting a rancorous meeting about Biden’s future. Though Biden’s critics inside the party have been unable to convince the president to step aside, one development did come into focus: If Biden relinquishes his hold on the presidency, or decides not to stand for reelection, the baton should be handed to Kamala Harris.
There were other signs of Harris’ newfound power and shifting allegiances within the Democratic Party. The press pack trailing Harris, usually quite small, has swelled to dozens, and far more cameras clicked away as she delivered a preview of some of the strengths she would bring to the role of campaigner-in-chief.
“The past few days have been a reminder that running for president of the United States is never easy,” Harris said, an oblique reference to the national debate over Biden’s fitness for office. She then used her platform at the event promoting Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities to lay into Donald Trump’s frequent criticism of illegal immigrants.
“Someone who vilifies immigrants, promotes xenophobia, someone who stokes hate should never again have the chance to stand behind a microphone and the seal of the president of the United States,” she said.
Although Harris began her remarks with a jittery nervousness, she found her comfort zone, warning that Trump would sign a national ban on abortion if given the chance.
“We’re not going to let that happen because we trust women,” she intoned. “When Congress passes a law that restores the reproductive freedom of Roe, our President Joe Biden will sign it.”
As a messenger for the Democratic Party, it was a far smoother and stronger performance than many of Biden’s recent public appearances – even those over the last week aimed at quelling calls for him to give up the nomination for the good of the party and the nation.
Questions are still swirling nearly two weeks after the June 27 debate despite Biden’s and his top allies’ attempts to stomp them out. As more Democrats call for the president to step aside each day, some high-profile Democrats are coalescing around the 59-year-old Harris as the rightful candidate to replace him – much more so than governors waiting in the wings, including Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Illinois’ JB Pritzker – along with an ambitious fellow Californian.
Over the last few days, surrogate Gavin Newsom’s spotlight has been fading just as Harris’ is shining brighter. Until the June 27 debate and the new focus on Kamala Harris, Newsom was widely considered Biden’s top surrogate and perhaps the Democratic Party’s star-in-waiting.
But many Democrats are acknowledging that it would be impossible to shift the millions of campaign funds to anyone other than Harris, and also that it would induce a backlash among the Democrats’ liberal base to leapfrog over an incumbent vice president who is not only female, but also black and of Asian descent.
“You can talk about poll numbers, you can talk about performance, you can talk about any aspect of her you want, but practically speaking, if it’s not Biden, there’s no other alternative than Kamala Harris,” said Garry South, a California-based Democratic political strategist.
“If someone other than Kamala Harris were to be placed at the top of the ticket, Democrats could not spend all the many millions of dollars that have already been raised by the Biden-Harris campaign and by the Democratic National Committee for the Biden-Harris campaign,” added South, who managed former Gov. Gray Davis’ gubernatorial campaigns in 1998 and 2002.
On Sunday, Rep. Adam Schiff, heavily favored to become California’s next U.S. senator, signaled during an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press that he was throwing his support behind Harris. Biden “should be mopping the floor with Trump,” Schiff said. “It shouldn’t even be close. And there’s only one reason it’s close, and that’s the president’s age.” Harris, Schiff added, could “very well win overwhelmingly.”
Even former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is two-and-a-half years older than Biden, refused to publicly back the president after the House Democrats’ Tuesday meeting.
In a Wednesday appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” she indicated the Democrats will be assessing Biden’s performance during this week’s NATO summit and his scheduled Thursday press conference.
“It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run,” Pelosi said. “We’re all encouraging him to make that decision. Because time is running short.”
Asked if she wants him to run, Pelosi pointedly wouldn’t say yes.
“I want him to do whatever he decides to do. And that’s the way it is. Whatever he decides, we go with,” she said. “Let’s just hold off. Whatever you’re thinking, either tell somebody privately, but you don’t have to put that out on the table until we see how we go this week.”
South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn on Tuesday fended off reporters’ questions after the Democratic caucus meeting by flatly repeating the line: “We’re ridin’ with Biden.” Behind the scenes, however, Clyburn has been open to Harris as the clear and rightful successor should Biden eventually succumb to party pressure.
Clyburn also warned against the idea of Democrats passing over Harris in favor of another candidate.
“This party should not in any way do anything to work around Ms. Harris,” Clyburn, the highest-ranking black member of Congress, told MSNBC last week.
While momentum for ousting Biden seemed to stall this week, three Democratic senators, Jon Tester of Montana, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Michael Bennet of Colorado, told their colleagues that they don’t think Biden can win reelection in November, Axios reported. Tester and Brown are two of the chamber’s most vulnerable members.
Biden loyalists have tried to sow doubt into any plan to dump the president for Harris, arguing that elevating the vice president to the top of the ticket is risky considering that her bid for the 2020 Democratic nomination flamed out before the Iowa Caucus. Then as vice president, Harris became a punchline with her uneven, cringeworthy performances and the worst approval rating of any vice president in modern history.
Still, under the current circumstances, supporters say Harris has what it takes to rise to the occasion. She has honed her skills and found some stable footing as the Democrats’ leading messenger on abortion rights, an issue that helped the party gain traction during the 2022 midterm elections and one they are counting on to drive voters to the polls in November.
A memo circulating among Democrats, purportedly written by a Democratic operative, lays out the reasons to promote Harris despite her “real political weaknesses.”
Allies point to a smattering of polls suggesting she could pose a more significant challenge to Trump than Biden. In a direct face-off with Trump, Harris trailed the Republican by only two points in a recent CNN poll, while Biden trailed six points behind him. The poll showed Harris outperforming three other potential candidates and suggested that Harris would have more appeal than Biden with independent voters and women.
Those promoting Harris’ candidacy will be buoyed by a new survey done for Politico by Bendixen & Amadi International, showing Harris running one percentage point ahead of Trump in a national mock faceoff, while Biden trails Trump by a single point.
Other polls have Harris lagging behind Biden when it comes to challenging Trump in a direct head-to-head match-up. An Emerson College poll released Tuesday has Biden trailing Trump, 43% to 46%, and Harris faring even worse, 43% to Trump’s 49%.
A YouGov poll conducted July 3-6 contradicts the CNN findings. In that survey, more Democrats and independents who lean Democratic said they prefer Biden over Harris as the nominee, 47% to 32%, while 21% said they weren’t sure.
Yet, in such a chaotic political environment, political sentiment, especially among Democrats who have cast the election as a referendum on democracy, could swing wildly. Harris, the child of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, clearly could help expand the base of Democratic voters with a strong appeal to black, Latino, and young voters, all constituencies where Biden is lagging this year.
But her California pedigree and reputation as a more progressive Democrat than Biden also could risk the union and blue-collar voters in key must-win battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Biden narrowly won these states in 2020, and both parties are working hard to woo voters there.
Garry South points out that not since two-term California governor Ronald Reagan won the GOP presidential nomination in 1980 (and again, as an incumbent president in 1984) has a politician from the Golden State been on the presidential ticket. As South has previously written, there has never been a California Democratic nominee for either president or vice president in the history of the Republic.
“Any candidate from California starts off with a liability, which is we are the big kid on the block that everybody else loves to hate,” he said. “California, for decades, has been called ‘La La Land,’ the ‘Left Coast,’ and ‘the Land of Fruits and Nuts.’ Jerry Brown didn’t help things when he was labeled ‘Governor Moonbeam.’”
Despite their longstanding rivalry in San Francisco politics, Newsom came to Harris’ defense earlier this week when the New York Post labeled her the first DEI president.
“This is flat-out racist,” Newsom said in a post on X.com, citing the article.
Newsom has been taking heat back home in California for traveling to D.C. to back Biden amid the debate fallout while wildfires are raging back home. The California governor and Harris have long tried to stay out of each other’s way as they both climbed the political ladder in Bay Area politics. Newsom’s surrogacy for Biden has privately irked Harris as speculation swirled that he could replace Biden on the ticket. Still, Newsom wholeheartedly backed the Biden-Harris ticket while raising his national profile over the last year.
“They make nice, but there’s a lot of friction there from the time when he was the mayor of San Francisco and she was the district attorney,” South said. “Anyone who thinks that they are bosom buddies doesn’t really understand the history.”
Even though South is not a big Harris fan, he acknowledges that, as governor, Newsom is more directly tied to the problems plaguing California than Harris.
“One thing about being governor is that gum sticks to your shoe,” South added. “Whatever problem happens in your state … people don’t blame their senators, they blame the governor.”
If Harris were to slide into the top spot, she could balance out the ticket by tapping Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro or North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper as a running mate as a way to appeal to more centrist Midwestern voters.
Republicans already appear to be ready to go to battle against Harris, with Trump conceding that he thinks the vice president is the frontrunner if Biden steps aside, actually predicting that she will likely be the nominee before voters go to the polls in November.
“Well, we prepared for him, but I don’t think it’s going to matter,” Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in an interview over the weekend. “I think that it will be her. I think they are very concerned about the vote if it’s not her.”
During the July 4th holiday weekend, a video clip emerged of Trump attacking Harris as “pathetic” and speculating that Biden will drop out of the election.
The video clip, obtained by the Daily Beast, shows Trump on a golf course, saying that Biden is likely quitting the race after his debate performance, adding, “and that means we have Kamala.”
In the footage, Trump says that Harris would be a better opponent than Biden, whom he described as an “old, broken-down pile of crap,” before assailing the vice president. “She’s so bad. She’s so pathetic,” Trump adds. “She’s just so f****** bad.”
Even before the clip emerged, the Trump campaign had issued a video poking fun at Harris’ various awkward statements as vice president. Donald Trump Jr. also tweeted out a second video montage ridiculing Harris on Tuesday.
Despite all the bravado from Trump World about either potential Democratic candidate, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina warned Sunday that elevating Harris, whom he called a “vigorous” candidate, to the top spot on the ticket could reset the race.
Graham then took shots at her “progressive” California brand, arguing that she would be closer to left-wing Sen. Bernie Sanders or New York Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and her far-left squad compared to the more centrist Biden.
Indeed, it could be difficult for Harris to shake the longstanding perceptions of Harris as a political liability to Biden rather than an asset. Her job approval ratings remain around 37%, below Biden’s 39.7% in the RealClearPolitics polling average and Trump’s 43.4%.
Speculation continues to swirl around Harris’ potential candidacy, but the talk is moot unless Biden agrees to move aside. And for now, the president doesn’t appear to be budging.
After a day of intra-party division about the ticket’s prospects this fall, the Biden-Harris campaign late Tuesday released a statement of support from the Democratic Mayors Association.
“The stakes of this election could not be higher, and the choice could not be more clear,” the association declared. “We need a president and vice president who will champion working families, defend our democracy, and protect our freedoms. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are that president and vice president.”
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