Kamala Harris Is as About as Unlikely as Biden Was to Beat Trump

When Harris loses, Biden can blame Nancy Pelosi, George Clooney, and the New York Times editorial board

“What can be, unburdened by what has been.” Vice President Harris’s official photo.

A CBS News poll of likely voters conducted July 16 to 18—after the assassination attempt but before most of the Republican National Convention—found President Trump leading President Biden, 52 percent to 47 percent, and Trump also leading in a hypothetical matchup against Vice President Harris, 51 percent to 48 percent.

That’s probably a reasonably good handle of what to expect, as far as the effect on the outcome, of the Democrats swapping out Biden for Harris as the presidential candidate.

Minutes after announcing, in social media posts, that he would “stand down” in the race for reelection “in the best interest of my party and the country,” Biden, also in social media posts, endorsed Kamala Harris with his “full support.” Bill and Hillary Clinton also put out a statement that, “We are honored to join with the President in endorsing Vice President Harris and will do whatever we can to support her.” Alex Soros tweeted a photo of himself and Harris and declared, “It’s time for us all to unite around Kamala Harris.”

The advantage of Harris over Biden is that she doesn’t have Biden’s age issue and Biden’s lack-of-clarity-in-communications issue. As a former prosecutor she might be able to make a case against Trump as a “convicted felon.” As a woman she might potentially help press the issue of a conservative-dominated Supreme Court’s overturning Roe v. Wade.

Yet Harris comes with drawbacks, too.

She performed poorly in the 2020 presidential race, as Biden effectively attacked her for wanting to eliminate private health insurance, and voters found her not particularly likable. She was Biden’s vice president, so the Trump campaign can attack her for all the failures they have been attacking Biden for: the chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Kabul, the inflation, the uncontrolled immigration. She has her own lack-of-clarity-in-communications problems, being fond of profound-sounding but vacuous lines like, “what can be, unburdened by what has been.” She dated California State Assembly Speaker Willie Brown for a couple of years starting when she was 29 and Brown was 59 or 60. She churned through staff as vice president. A 2021 Washington Post article reported, “Staffers who worked for Harris before she was vice president said one consistent problem was that Harris would refuse to wade into briefing materials prepared by staff members, then berate employees when she appeared unprepared.” And it could undercut the Democratic claim that “democracy is on the ballot” in 2024 that the Democrats are choosing their nominee without debates or much of a real contest, but rather in what Biden himself was only days ago denouncing as an effort by donors, elites, and the media to shove him aside. Harris will also have to answer questions about what she saw of Biden’s deterioration, and why she didn’t alert the public to it. Harris spent eight years of her life outside the U.S., in Canada. She’s from Berkeley, California, which for a lot of Americans stands for a far-left, culturally extreme place that’s at odds with mainstream middle America. Her parents were both academics, and she herself seems to have had hardly any work experience outside government. She frequently comes off not as deeply principled but as opportunistic; her presidential campaign’s policy initiatives seemed calculated at wooing interest groups—trial lawyers, teachers unions—more than substantively addressing problems. Harris lacks the deep personal relationships and negotiating experience with world leaders and on Capitol Hill that Biden touts. 

Harris doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. Her weaknesses as a candidate are probably one reason Biden decided to run for re-election. He thought he had a better chance of beating Trump than she did. Biden chose her amid the Black Lives Matter protests, after a process that reportedly involved picking among only women of color, and after public pressure to choose a black woman as a running mate. Her selection was seen at the time as a posthumous victory for George Floyd.

It’s certainly possible she might manage to beat Trump, who, even after surviving an assassination attempt and completing a strong Republican National Convention, has a tough time in a lot of places getting above 49 percent or 52 percent and reaching Reagan-1984-landslide, 60 percent levels of support. But it’s improbable. 

When and if Harris loses to Trump in a few months, Biden can console himself that had he stayed in the race, he might have won. He can tell the Democrats to go blame Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, the New York Times editorial board, George Clooney and the rest of the coastal elites who deluded themselves that some Democrat would have a better chance at beating Donald Trump other than the one politician in America who already did it once before—Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.