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“President Joe Biden insists that only ‘the Lord Almighty’ can convince him to quit the presidential race. But should he change his mind, Vice President Kamala Harris is by far the best positioned to replace him… She’s already been on a winning presidential ticket with Biden, has years of goodwill banked with core party constituencies and would likely control a huge campaign fund amassed by the Biden reelection [campaign]…
“The vice president, as his official running mate, can access the $91 million cash on hand the president’s campaign has raised — which grows to $240 million when including allied Democratic organizations — in ways Democratic alternatives likely can’t.” AP News
The left is generally supportive of Harris, arguing that she is the best alternative to Biden.
“While I think you can still make a strong case for voting Biden, the only people who will find that case compelling are people who are comfortable with the possibility that Harris will take over if Biden’s health continues to decline — which is very likely given the linear progression of time…
“Under the circumstances, we’d be better off letting Harris assume the nomination and make the case for herself. She’s slightly more popular than Biden right now, has dramatically more upside, and could get a mini-burst of positive attention from becoming the nominee…
“Harris is good enough. And the leak that she would look to Roy Cooper or Andy Beshear as VP was, to me, a good sign that she sees the basic dimensions of her political problem clearly. You don’t achieve as much political success as she has without some form of political skills, but she’s never had to get swing voters to vote for her. Beshear and Cooper have, and either would be the right kind of person to add to her team.”
Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring
“It’s hard to argue that Harris is the weaker candidate at this stage. She is part of an administration that has accomplished a great deal, and she’s the most visible member of that administration who is capable of talking about abortion, the one issue Democrats are strongest on. (She’s also capable of simply talking for more than a few minutes at a time and past 8 p.m., which is a plus.)…
“She has enough distance from Biden on foreign policy that she may be able to avoid being totally hamstrung by the Israel/Gaza issue, which deeply divides Democratic voters and seems guaranteed to disrupt the Democratic convention. Her weaknesses in 2020—primarily her history as a tough-on-crime prosecutor, which was summed up by the leftist jeer of ‘Kamala is a cop’—were specific to an extremely odd election year, and look a whole lot more like assets in a 2024 race against a convicted felon.”
Jill Filipovic, Slate
Some argue, “An automatic coronation of Harris would be a grave mistake… A peaceful transfer of power is meant to happen after the disorder of debates, dueling op-eds, ad wars, backroom politicking, and actual voting, not before. In a bid to save democracy, you can’t just skip the democratic part of the process…
“Britain just concluded a momentous election campaign in six weeks. In France, President Emmanuel Macron called snap elections on June 9; a month later, the country has undergone two rounds of voting… Communicating to voters who you are and letting them make a decision does not have to take more than a year…
“[Another] common argument for why the party should coronate Harris in Biden’s absence is that skipping over her would be racist—or be perceived as such by Black Democratic voters. Yet Black voters have shown time and again that their interests are practical and that their demands are strategic: Give us a candidate who will win. Many were initially cool to Barack Obama in 2008… Democrats would not be bigoted to ask of Harris what they would demand of any other replacement for Biden.”
Jerusalem Demsas, The Atlantic
The right is critical of Harris, arguing that she would be a weak candidate.
The right is critical of Harris, arguing that she would be a weak candidate.
“Just 10 months ago, Harris told Americans that Biden was not only mentally fit for the job but effectively the sharpest person she knows… Harris must be accountable for three obvious facts. First, Harris knew all along of Biden’s lack of competence to serve as president. Second, Harris knew the serious inherent dangers facing the country as a result of Biden’s mental state. Third, Harris disregarded those dangers and intentionally concealed them from the American public for political reasons…
“Gavin Newsom, Andy Beshear, Josh Shapiro, or fill-in-the-blank-with-any-other-Democrat governor can at least claim plausible deniability: ‘We are hundreds (or thousands) of miles away from Washington and can only go by what White House insiders say.’ Not Harris… Harris has no excuses. She simply elected to lie to the American people about the most serious issue facing the country — the mental fitness of its chief executive officer.”
Joseph LoBue, The Federalist
“Harris laid out her view of the presidency clearly when talking about gun control… ‘Upon being elected, I will give Congress 100 days to get their act together and have the courage to pass reasonable gun safety laws, and if they fail to do it, then I will take executive action,’ Harris said. She, as president, would ‘give’ Congress 100 days to pass the exact laws that she wants. If not, she would just do what she wanted anyway, unilaterally, in defiance of the legislature. That is Harris’s view of how the presidency should work…
“Harris did not misspeak here, either, because she has a record of authoritarianism. She laughed at Biden during a debate for saying the president couldn’t erase the Second Amendment with an executive order. She made it clear she does not think Catholics should be able to serve in the judicial branch. Her career reputation as a prosecutor was less about locking up violent career criminals and more about how she abused her power and the law to get the outcomes she wanted.”
Zachary Faria, Washington Examiner
“Beyond her blunders and ambition, she’s simply not a gifted politician. She was polling at a measly 3% before dropping out of the 2020 presidential race…
“Her management style has been called into question as staff defections mounted in the first two years of the administration. Some described her as unprepared, saying that she doesn’t read briefing materials and lashes out at her staffers when things go pear shaped. Then there’s the glaring migrant problem. She was appointed the border czar in March 2021, and failed to visit the U.S. Mexico border for months…
“It’s a political pickle of the Democratic party’s own making. Biden, in the heat of the 2020 racial madness, promised to pick a running mate, not by qualifications but by immutable characteristics — a woman and as the pressure mounted, a woman of color. She is reportedly the only person who can cleanly inherit the dems’ $240 million war chest. And how do you pass over a woman of color in a party that has made identity its central tenet. But she is simply not presidential material.”
Kirsten Fleming, New York Post
