President Joe Biden’s stumbling debate performance on Thursday night has led to calls from his party to step aside, leaving his campaign in peril just weeks before he accepts the Democratic nomination.
The situation has also sparked speculation about how Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor, would fare if she were handed the torch and faced off against Donald Trump, the first former president to be both charged and convicted of a crime.
If the 81-year-old Biden were to heed those calls, his 59-year-old running mate could potentially become the first woman and woman of color to lead the nation.
Despite questions of age and impairment dogging Biden throughout the campaign, he has faced no real competition for the nomination. In Thursday’s debate, Democrats hoped Biden would demonstrate the vigor needed for a second term. Instead, they witnessed rambling answers in a raspy voice, sentences trailing off as if he lost his train of thought.
Prominent Democrats quickly rallied around Biden, while pundits and commentators demanded he step aside for another candidate.
Michael Tyler, the president’s campaign communications director, told reporters Friday that there is no internal discussion about Biden stepping aside.
“There are no conversations about that whatsoever. The Democratic voters elected, nominated Joe Biden. Joe Biden is the Democratic nominee,” Tyler said.
However, Congressional lawmakers and even Biden’s Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, offered lukewarm support Friday, raising questions about who could step in so late in the election process.
Former Iowa U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, a former presidential candidate, criticized Biden harshly on Friday, calling the debate “a disaster from which Biden cannot recover” and suggesting Biden release his delegates to support another candidate at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.
“Stay the course. Chill out,” said Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., whose support was pivotal to Biden securing the nomination in 2020. “I’m a Biden-Harris person, so I’m not getting away from that. I’m for Biden-Harris. I’m going to be for Biden if Harris ain’t there and I’m going to be for Harris if Biden ain’t there,” he said.
Harris was the most vocal surrogate supporting Biden on Thursday night, appearing on multiple cable news shows to push back on the panic over his performance, repeatedly calling it a “slow start.”
“I’m not going to spend all night with you talking about the last 90 minutes when I’ve been watching the last three and a half years of performance,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper when he asked if she had concerns after watching Biden.
After pivoting from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s questions about Biden’s performance to talk about women’s reproductive rights, a topic Democrats want at the forefront of the campaign, Harris noted that Biden was the only candidate on the stage endorsed by their vice president.
That was a jab at the split between Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence after Pence refused Trump’s request to halt Congress’ certification of Biden’s 2020 win.
Afterward, Maddow said, “They need to start trusting Vice President Harris to cut her own path, because she does very, very well and the more you get of her the better it is.”
During the first half of the administration, which began during the pandemic, Harris, like Biden, was largely out of public view, leaving Americans to form opinions of the vice president based on scripted virtual events. Voters questioned where the Harris they knew during her 2020 presidential campaign had gone or the one they knew as a senator, when she made her mark as a forceful and even combative progressive Democrat who asked tough questions and held people to account for their policies and positions even when they tried to dodge them.
Harris has been intensely campaigning for months, making many of the expected retail politicking stops, especially in swing states like Georgia and Nevada, that get less national media attention. On Friday, she did campaign events in Los Angeles and Salt Lake City and spoke at an event aimed at Latino voters in Las Vegas.
At the Nevada event, a Biden campaign aide tried to end interviews when attendees began criticizing Biden and his debate performance, according to a White House pool report.
Democratic voter Amy Nelson said the debate was “terrible,” the report said. “You can’t tell me that there’s not anyone better —” Nelson said of a candidate who could take Biden’s place. Stephen Stubbs, an undecided voter at the event, criticized Biden’s “mental acuity.” “Who’s running the country?” Stubbs said of the presidential debate. “Let Kamala in!” he said of the possibility that Biden could step down and nominate Harris.
House Republicans, who have attempted for months to make Biden’s age central to the campaign, on Friday floated the idea of calling on Biden’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment and declare the Democratic incumbent unable to serve after his shaky debate performance, allowing Harris to assume the presidency. The 25th Amendment has never been invoked.
Newsom, Whitmer in spotlight as potential Biden backups
Of course, if Biden were to abandon plans for a second term, Harris isn’t guaranteed the nomination because she is vice president. Other names floated as viable backup options include California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
On X, formerly known as Twitter, Johanna Maska, a senior Democratic operative loyal to Obama and Biden, said Friday it was time for Biden to step aside. But she noticeably didn’t include Harris in her list of potential alternatives.
RealClearPolling averages show limited surveys suggesting that Harris has an even bigger disadvantage than Biden if she were to run against Trump. The former president leads Harris by 6.6 percentage points, with 49.3 percent support to the Democrat’s 42.7 percent. RealClearPolling’s averages show Trump ahead of Biden by just 1.5 points, with 46.6 percent to the president’s 45.1 percent.
Those polls were on Trump’s mind Friday during the presumptive GOP nominee’s first post-debate rally in Chesapeake, Va. There, he lumped Harris and former First Lady Michelle Obama into a group of possible replacements before noting, “It’s hard to believe, but ‘Crooked Joe Biden’ polls better than those people.”
Regardless of the names pundits speculate or lawmakers whisper about, the party could find it difficult to bypass the sitting vice president in favor of an untested candidate, said Bowdoin College government professor Andrew Rudalevige.
“It’s kind of weird to jump over her for a bunch of people who have not been vetted on a national ticket. You know also, not for nothing, obviously, she’s a woman of color, and women of color are the most energetic and loyal part of the Democratic Party base, and to skip over her for a Gavin Newsom or a white male I think would be pretty off putting to the parts of the base that the ticket would need most to energize,” he said.
Still, Harris would need to quickly find a message that could resonate with voters. In the 2020 election cycle, Harris’ presidential campaign flamed out before even getting through 2019.
“That’s the tough part, right?” Rudalevige said. “It can’t simply be that you are more coherent.”
Just over two weeks after the Democratic National Convention in late August, the two major party nominees are scheduled to meet again for the second, and last, presidential debate. And in that moment, the difference between Biden and Harris would be particularly clear.
Boston University Communications Professor Tammy Vigil, an expert on political rhetoric, said Harris’ experience as a former prosecutor and San Francisco district attorney would be invaluable should she end up being the nominee who is debating a rival who has been impeached twice, indicted four times, and convicted once.
“She would probably have Trump for lunch. She would definitely be able to hold him to account a lot more effectively than I think Biden was able to last night,” Vigil said. “I think she has the skill sets and the experience to be able to be more effective at calling out Donald Trump’s false statements and also then pivoting into the information that she wants to give.”