Following President Biden’s underwhelming performance in the debate, all eyes are turning to Vice-President Kamala Harris as they seek a campaign role that will get them ready for November.
All of a sudden, Harris stands to have an outsized impact on the campaign in its final stretch as her critics – including some Democrats fretting about November – cast deep doubts over a vice president who looked like red meat for Republicans just days ago.
Such attitudes upend President Harris inspiring calls for the vice president to leave the ticket as recently as March, and a column in The Washington Post demanded that she “step aside” for “the country’s sake.”
Now there are some who wonder if Harris should be at the top of it after Biden’s debate performance. Even before last week, the visibility of the vice president had already been on an upswing.
The attention from media outlets has resulted in a wave of good press for the vice president over the past several months. In an article last month, Harris was named “Biden’s secret weapon in North Carolina,” as the author notes that the vice president has made five visits to the battleground state of North Carolina and led outreach to Black communities where Biden was off-performing his 2020 race against ex-President Trump.
“She’s one of the administration’s best spokespeople to the Black community,” Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons told The Hill. “The president has been making the case to the Black community as well, but obviously the VP has a different kind of appeal.”
The Los Angeles Times went so far as to say in a February report that Harris had “found her groove,” citing the vice president’s appeal to younger voters and her voice on issues such as abortion.
“She’s become a top fundraiser for Democrats, an emissary to groups that are lukewarm toward President Biden — in particular Black and younger voters — and emerged as the administration’s most forceful voice on abortion, women’s health and, as Harris frames it, the threat Trump poses to freedom and individual choice,” the story said.
The New York Times reported a few months later that the “Harris moment has arrived” and called her “the perfect messenger” for issues such as providing new support in pushing back against Trump administration policies, on areas from police reform to reproductive rights.
Indeed, some polls seem to have caught up with the vice president increasingly earning above-50% favorability among significant demographics.
It marked a shift for Harris, who had lagged behind Biden with Black voters dating back to the 2020 primary. But she is now four points ahead of the president in the crucial Democratic voting bloc.
“She’s been good at energizing active bases that Democrats have really needed — young Black voters, Black women. These are constituencies that Democrats can never take for granted,” Democratic strategist Trip Yang told Politico.
If anything, Harris has become more high-profile since the debate — as president of the United States defense on airwaves post-debate (and literally during) with all manner of acclaims for Biden. In the days since the debate, she has also pumped up her presence on the campaign trail holding events in Las Vegas and Utah as well as Southern California.
Most leading Democrats have come out in support of Biden, but momentum is building to replace him with Harris at the top of the ticket. One of the earliest prominent Democrats to declare themselves for Harris stepping in was former U.S. Representative Tim Ryan, who hails from Ohio.
“We have to rip the band aid off! Too much is at stake,” Ryan said in a post on X Tuesday, adding that Harris has “significantly grown into her job.”
Stepping into uncharted political territory, Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett Tuesday became the first actively-serving Democrat on Capitol Hill to publicly urge Biden to give up his presidential bid.
“Our overriding consideration must be who has the best hope of saving our democracy from an authoritarian takeover by a criminal and his gang,” he said in a statement. “Too much is at stake to risk a Trump victory – too great a risk to assume that what could not be turned around in a year, what was not turned around in the debate, can be turned around now.”
Doggett – unlike Ryan – did not say whether he favored Harris to replace Biden.