After months of speculation, rumors, and drama, the wait is over. The woman many thought would get the nod from the beginning of Joe Biden’s campaign, Kamala Harris, will be Biden’s running mate.
Just by being named running mate, Harris has become the first non-white woman on a presidential ticket. A lesser-known fact about Harris is that while her father was born in Jamaica and had African ancestry, her mother was born in India. The two met in college in Berkeley. She’s the first person of Asian ancestry on a presidential ticket. If Biden wins, Harris would become the first woman on a presidential ticket. Harris is a woman of many firsts.
Does Harris Improve Biden’s Re-Election Chances?
In June of last year, Kamala Harris shot up to 2nd place in primary polling for a hot minute after she famously attacked Joe Biden for working with pro-segregation Senators and opposing school busing in the 70s. But as California Attorney General, she chose not to intervene into local investigations regarding police shootings, a choice that would make some progressive-leaning voters cringe in the post-George Floyd era. I’m not convinced that she’s the best running mate to turn out the black vote. After a brief spike in June, she was polling 4th or 5th place among black voters in the month before dropping out. She didn’t even make it to the Iowa caucuses. Now given, Joe Biden polled 1st among black voters throughout the campaign, but it’s well-documented that a segment of black voters aren’t particularly excited about Joe Biden. A lot of them were just convinced that Biden was the only one that could beat Trump.
However, Kamala Harris is one of the party’s most skilled speakers and fundraisers. She has the potential to perform excellently at the Vice Presidential Debate in Salt Lake City on October 7th. When Biden announced Harris would be his running mate, he effortlessly raised $26 million in 24 hours, his biggest fundraising haul yet. Harris helps Biden close the base enthusiasm and money gap he has with Trump. Some credit Harris’ story: from the daughter of two immigrants from different sides of the world to Senator from the most highly populated state, as a big part of her appeal. It could be that she has to be careful to not overshadow or out-charisma Joe Biden.
Kamala Harris won’t do much to draw conservative-leaning voters to Biden. To them, Harris has become the representation of a woke cancel culture, where expressing support for right of center views about topics like race relations or religion, or pointing out inconsistencies with the liberal positions on these issues, will get you retribution. As I talked about earlier, she tried to “cancel” Joe Biden for something he did in the 70s. She played a big part in the failed attempt to deny Kavanaugh a spot on the Supreme Court in 2018. Harris has previously been called out by people in both parties by refusing to vote to confirm Court justices partly because they were members of the Catholic Knights of Columbus organization.
Harris’ enduring issue seems to be that her appeal is too spread out. There really isn’t a demographic or idealogical group that would find her especially appealing, and a lot of them can find offense in her past actions if they want to. Even in liberal California, she has never gotten more than 58% of the vote in any multi-party statewide election, and she came very close to straight-up losing in 2010.
For now, I’ll hold my presidential rating at Likely Biden. I don’t think the person Biden chose to be his right-hand woman will matter all that much in the grand scheme of the election. Harris will be both an asset and a liability to Biden. A lot of the people that take offense to Biden’s pick have probably already decided who to vote for. However, if Biden had picked someone like Tammy Duckworth, Gretchen Whitmer, or someone else with a new policy perspective that isn’t necessarily a household name yet, someone with experience winning elections in the Midwest, Biden would be in a little more secure spot. Harris doesn’t do much to help snuff out bad stereotypes people have about Biden, making Trump’s attacks against him more likely to land.
Kamala Harris, 2024 Democratic Nominee?
Before Joe Biden announced his campaign in early 2019, there were substantial rumors that he didn’t particularly want to be President. He viewed the 2020 election as a battle for the heart and soul of our country. In his mind, if Trump wins again, then that shows that America has rejected compassion and fairness. Biden viewed himself as the only person that could beat Trump.
If he wins in November, then he will be 81 years old during the potential 2024 re-election campaign. That’s above the average life expectancy for males in the United States. The height of his power will likely be in his first term, before Democrats have to defend a bunch of swing-state Senators facing re-election in 2024. In his mind, he will have served his main purpose: beating Donald Trump and turning America in a more compassionate, optimistic direction. Unless Donald Trump tries to pull a Grover Cleveland and run again in 2024, or the GOP nominates another far right-wing candidate, I wouldn’t be surprised if he retires after one term. This would make Kamala Harris the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2024.
Harris generally lies in the middle of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders on the political spectrum, supporting watered-down versions of Medicare For All and the Green New Deal that aren’t as damaging to the private healthcare or energy industries. She’s left-wing on race and gender-related issues, while she’s more moderate on criminal justice. Harris is much more a darling of the Democratic elite.
We’ve witnessed before Harris’ underwhelming election performances. Some moderates who may vote for Joe Biden are also wary of cancel culture, Medicare-For-All, or the Green New Deal. They won’t be compelled by Harris the same way Democrats running on centrist, common-sense platforms do. While I believe that the performance of Joe Biden during his first term, the extent to which Americans believe he has repaired the country, matters much more than the intricacies of Kamala’s positions in the 2024 election, they could be the difference in a close election, especially if there’s another divergence between the popular vote and Electoral College.
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