UPDATE (July 21, 2024 3:00 p.m. E.T.): President Joe Biden on Sunday announced that he is withdrawing his bid for re-election from the 2024 presidential race.
Questions about whether President Joe Biden could drop his candidacy for the White House have inspired a kind of fantasy football mindset among political junkies. Hop online or tune in to any water cooler conversation among Democrats who think Biden should step aside and you’ll hear people excitedly catalogue their favorite potential replacement tickets, listing the strengths and statistics behind the governors, senators, former first lady or Hollywood star who they believe should be drafted to lead Team Blue to victory.
These debates are fun, but they are indeed fantasies. People who think they know exactly how a candidate who holds statewide, local or no office would fare in a general election are dreaming. American presidential races are political contests unlike any other. Politicians can look good on paper in a specific milieu, but it’s impossible to predict how they will register with the general electorate. Or how they’ll endure oppo research and vicious negative messaging unlike anything they’ve faced before in their lives, backed by the best-financed agents of reactionary power in the world.
The goal is not to identify an obvious winner, which is impossible, but to manage risk.
The Democratic Party is at a juncture where every possible path is extremely risky. The moment demands humility and agnosticism; the goal is not to identify an obvious winner, which is impossible, but to manage risk. If Biden steps aside, Vice President Kamala Harris is most likely the least risky option.
The argument that Harris is less risky might strike some as counterintuitive. Her vice presidency has been marked by strikingly low favorability ratings. Biden assigned her a politically sensitive policy portfolio that led her to, for example, take positions on immigration that brought her under fire from both the left and the right. And reports indicating that Harris felt frustrated and sidelined by Biden’s team mar the narrative of a natural passing of the torch.
But taking a cautious position on what we can know suggests Harris has fewer unknown variables in her potential candidacy. She has been in the national limelight for years and thus has extremely wide name recognition, far superior to commonly floated alternatives. She has endured MAGA attacks for years and can clearly handle the pressure. While a presidential bid would most likely inspire new right-wing efforts to find skeletons in her closet, odds are that most of what could’ve been used against her would’ve been used in 2020 to torpedo the Biden-Harris ticket. Harris is also unequivocally qualified for the position with her background as an attorney general, senator and, of course, vice president. And at about 20 years younger than both Biden and Trump, she would instantly be able to shed Biden’s greatest political liability and shift the energy of the party.
The strongest counter to Harris is tied to her consistent unfavorability during Biden’s tenure. But that argument doesn’t take you particularly far when polling indicates that the most commonly floated names to replace Biden, such as Govs. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Gavin Newsom of California and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, do not perform more strongly than Harris in head-to-head matchups with Trump. Is it possible that over time these candidates would ultimately outperform these polls, once they were better known? Yes. But it’s also possible that they would do worse the more voters came to know them. Remember how countless pundits, reporters and Republicans thought Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would be a formidable Trump slayer, only for him to become a national laughingstock, mocked for his awkwardness and apparent attempts to enhance his height? Any gut instincts about the nebulous and hyper-subjective X factor of so-called electability are mere guesses.
What we do know is Harris is far more battle-tested than any alternative. We also know that Harris would be the strongest candidate to quell objections among Democrats that they’ve been disenfranchised. If Biden stepped aside and proposed an open convention, then party insiders would select the nomination for a party that’s used to the direct democratic input of the primary system. That selection process could be divisive. And it could mean that on Election Day a lot of Democrats could end up asked to vote for a politician they’ve never heard of and never would’ve cast ballots for. By contrast, Harris’ vice presidency confers a unique kind of legitimacy compared to any other candidate. Millions elected her in 2020 as Biden’s designated successor, and she was also backed by most Democratic primary voters this year (even if the primaries were mostly a formality). And she would be carrying out exactly what vice presidents are most important for — stepping up to serve as president if the president is unable to serve.
Last, one factor that’s almost certain is that the historic nature of a Harris candidacy would be likely to motivate women, Black voters and Black women in particular — indispensable constituencies for the Democrats — at exceptional levels. Former President Barack Obama drove record turnout among Black voters, and it seems likely that Harris could also tap into the special kind of energy that accompanies excitement for symbolic victories for marginalized communities. Most of the other names floated for president these days could not.
National polls for the Democrats are dire these days, and I have no confidence that Biden, Harris or any of the most commonly named alternatives can pull off a win against Trump. But in a high-risk situation, it is prudent is to minimize unknown variables to reduce the likelihood of worst-case outcomes. Harris, a competent and qualified candidate who could claim democratic legitimacy and rejuvenate the party, offers us just that.
