Facing declining poll numbers and an increasingly public revolt among the party’s front and back benches, President Joe Biden has ended his re-election big. For the first time since 1968, an incumbent President has halted their re-election campaign. Democrats have immediately coalesced around Vice President Kamala Harris, who has effectively become the party’s new presumptive nominee overnight.
The Harris campaign offers both opportunity and peril for the Democratic Party. With Trump leading in the polls, this amounts to an early Hail Mary. It may take several weeks to truly grasp the new state of the race, but one thing is clear now: anything can happen.
Harris has upsides
On paper, Harris has several advantages compared to Biden. At 59 years old, Harris was born at the fringe between Baby Boomers and Gen X. Given age proved to be by far Biden’s biggest vulnerability, Harris’s relative youth eliminates a major issue Trump intended to campaign on – and it’s clear his team is somewhat furious about this development.
Moreover, Harris presents an opportunity with minority and young voters. According to recent polling from our friends at Split Ticket, Harris has nearly double the net approval of Biden among black voters. Given Biden’s extreme among minority voters, having a candidate able to claw back support among them could be a key asset in major swing state.
Our own Joe Szymanski posits that Harris represents a tradeoff. While she might be a potentially stronger candidate in the diverse Sun Belt swing states (Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada), she could lose ground in the Rust Belt swing states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), which have higher proportions of white and older voters. In our most recent ratings, we regarded the Sun Belt states as Leans Republican and the Rust Belt states as Tossups. Strictly speaking, however, a tradeoff here wouldn’t be worth it, as the Rust Belt states have a larger electoral vote haul.
Harris also has major flaws
It’s no secret that some Democrats – including Biden – have been concerned about Harris’s electability, and these concerns didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree. They have been longstanding and apparent for years.
While Harris can cover some of Biden’s vulnerabilities, she has several of her own. Her previous presidential campaign was an absolute disaster, dropping out before the Iowa caucuses. Both progressives and moderates took issue with her campaign, with neither trusting her at a policy level. While she was ultimately selected as Biden’s Vice Presidential nominee, her term as VP has been fairly uneventful. Harris has generally been unpopular; her approval ratings have typically lagged behind Biden’s. Only in recent months has Biden begun to approach hers.
Harris is also likely to forfeit several advantages Biden has – specifically, his relatively higher support among elderly and white rural voters. Harris will be relatively easy for Republicans to typecast as an extreme liberal. Biden is already perceived by a majority of voters as too liberal, and Harris is undoubtably to his left. In her 2020 campaign, she endorsed the Green New Deal and a slew of other left-wing priorities. And while Harris has a history as a prosecutor, her 2020 campaign featured an aggressive criminal justice reform plan – a liability in today’s electorate, which is far more concerned about crime than justice reform.
Finally, she has actively engaged in election denial. In 2019, she falsely claimed that Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum would have won gubernatorial races without “voter suppression”. Republicans are sure to target her vocal support for the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a fund that bailed protesters arrested during the George Floyd protesters – some of which were accused of violent crimes, including murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault. However, it’s unlikely the Trump campaign will focus too much on either of these, due to their own vulnerabilities; Trump has promised a mass pardon of January 6 rioters, and Vance is an election denier who said he would have sided with Trump on overturning the 2020 election.
The path ahead
Nobody is sure what this election will look like now. While previous polls only covered the hypothetical idea of a Kamala Harris candidacy, this candidacy is now all but certain. How voters – and both campaigns – react to Presidential candidate Kamala Harris has yet to be determined.
For once, this may be an election where the Vice Presidential selection truly matters. It’s telling that the names supposedly at the top of Democratic shortlists – Governors Andy Beshear (KY), Josh Shapiro (PA), and Roy Cooper (NC) and Senator Mark Kelly (AZ) – are white, moderate or establishment Democrats from red or swing states. Unlike the Trump ticket – which doubled-down on Trumpism with the selection of Ohio Senator JD Vance – the Harris campaign has an opportunity to pitch a bigger tent.
Regardless of how the race develops, it’s clear that the expectations can now be somewhat reset. Both parties will have to figure out the best path forward if they want to win.