U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at an event in Jacksonville, Fla. on May 1. Harris could soon become the first Black woman to head a major party's presidential ticket after President Joe Biden’s ended his reelection bid.John Raoux/The Associated Press
Kamala Harris has not been very visible during the past 3½ years, as is often the case with U.S. vice-presidents. Despite a robust set of responsibilities, she rarely makes front-page news. A scattering of memes and gaffes have given Americans a sense, however inaccurately, that she is awkward. Her public-favourability ratings are not very strong. When she ran in the presidential primary in 2020, she was seen as a lacklustre campaigner.
But she is the best hope the Democratic Party has of defeating Donald Trump now that President Joe Biden has abandoned his re-election bid. She is the party’s only truly viable candidate, and needs to be running for president now.
To understand why better-informed Democrats have come to that conclusion, it may be worth looking at polls – but not the ones we usually see. In those, Mr. Biden has consistently averaged several points behind Mr. Trump since his shambolic June 27 debate performance gave voters a sense that he was suffering a serious impairment.
Ms. Harris has generally fared a bit better. When voters are asked about a hypothetical Trump-Harris election, she has sometimes come out ahead by a couple points, sometimes behind. But those polls aren’t that useful, because most Americans know little about their Vice-President.
More important are surveys that pit Mr. Trump against what pollsters call “generic Democrat” – that is, any opponent who isn’t Mr. Biden. The last time this was asked directly in a large-scale poll, in November by NBC News, Mr. Biden lost by two points to Mr. Trump while the generic figure won by an impressive six points. Another poll this month showed “generic Democrat” figures, albeit at the congressional level, leading Republicans by three points. Such polls have generally shown Democrats ahead of Republicans all year. Indeed, CNN found earlier this month that three times as many U.S. voters believed “someone else” would have a better chance of winning an election than Mr. Biden.
In other words, if you erase voter concern about Mr. Biden’s appearance of advancing age and incomprehensibility, and replace him with any Democrat who doesn’t have those liabilities, you probably have a winning candidate.
Ibbitson: A Kamala Harris presidency would be better for Canada than another Trump White House
And Ms. Harris is the only person who can plausibly put on this “generic Democrat” T-shirt in time to win the election. In an imaginary world where Mr. Biden had quit the race in January, other candidates might have fared better during the eight-month-long ritual of primaries and caucuses leading to the late-August Democratic National Convention.
Given the threat posed by Mr. Trump, there is no way the Democrats can wait a month to field their presidential candidate. Nor could they survive a contested convention in which a field of candidates say negative things about one another on national airwaves.
Any other candidate would take additional weeks to build up a campaign and gain public recognition – and there are only 10 weeks between the Democratic convention and the Nov. 5 election. Ms. Harris, as the sitting Vice-President, has been viewed by leading Democrats as the natural replacement candidate since June, and was endorsed on Sunday by Mr. Biden himself.
Besides, senior Democrats have reportedly warmed to the possibility that Ms. Harris might be a very strong candidate indeed in 2024, given the contrast she strikes not only against Mr. Trump but against Mr. Biden, who is a weak candidate against Republicans and has also disillusioned key sectors of Democrats.
To understand her strengths, it’s worth revisiting the TV ad she aired during her 2020 primary campaign, which portrayed her as “the anti-Trump” in every way:
“He’s a world leader in temper tantrums; she never loses her cool. She prosecuted sex predators; he is one. She shut down for-profit colleges that swindled Americans; he was a for-profit college – literally. He’s owned by the big banks; she’s the attorney-general who beat the biggest banks in America and forced them to pay homeowners $18-billion.”
As a figure seen as somewhat to the right of Mr. Biden, as a former tough-on-crime prosecutor and California attorney-general with little interest in the very online identity-politics issues derided by Republicans as “woke,” she has strong prospects with moderate Republican and independent voters. She also lacks some of Mr. Biden’s liabilities: She does not share his polarized stand on the Israel-Hamas war, which has driven away younger voters in important states such as Michigan. She does not have any family scandals such as the one involving Mr. Biden’s son Hunter, convicted of unlawful gun possession this year, that have dragged down Mr. Biden’s popularity among swing voters.
Ms. Harris’s perceived liabilities tend to be things having little to do with her actual performance. Some Democrats fret that American voters may not be ready for a woman of colour – especially given Mr. Trump’s evident popularity despite his overtly misogynist and often racially charged views.
But big majorities voted for a Black president, Barack Obama, twice in 2008 and 2012. A majority voted for a female candidate, Hillary Clinton, in 2016. This suggests that most Americans, except those deeply tied to Mr. Trump’s candidacy, have no problems with Ms. Harris’s identity. (Indeed, a recent poll showed that Michelle Obama, a former first lady who has expressed no interest in entering politics, would be by far the strongest Democratic candidate against Mr. Trump were she to run, and the only one sure to beat him.)
Ms. Harris’s identity as a Californian could be more of a liability. Mr. Trump and his vice-presidential candidate, J.D. Vance, both routinely denounce California as a failed state filled with street poverty and flaky gender-identity politics.
But she could just as well characterize them as two Ivy League-educated millionaires from the ultra-elite worlds of finance and real estate.
As a starting position in what will be a brutal, everything-on-the-table battle for the future of America and the world, that’s not bad – and she is the only candidate who is anywhere near the starting blocks.