After the disastrous performance of the US president Joe Biden in the televised debate against his opponent Donald Trumpseveral voices have been raised in American public opinion – including that of the New York Times – who ask the 81-year-old occupant of the White House to take a step back and resign before convention Chicago Democratic Party on August 19. The president’s staff has already denied this last hypothesis: in other words, Biden has no intention of withdrawing from the race, even if the media pressure could increase over the coming weeks.
Why Harris Is Not a Winning Card
House Republicans have asked to invoke the 25th Amendment, an article – brought up, at least in part, several times in American history – according to which the president “is unable to discharge the powers and duties” of his role , thus allowing the vice president Kamala Harris to assume the role of president. Net of the suggestions that see the center Michelle Obama or California Governor Gavin Newsom, the vice president is the most concrete and credible hypothesis for the Dems in the event that Biden were to change his mind and withdraw. The US President could in fact ask the more than 4,000 delegates who supported him in the primaries to channel their votes to Harris. A step that would be facilitated by Biden if he were to resign before the convention in August.
The vice president’s flop
There is a problem: Kamala Harris he has largely disappointed expectations in recent years in the White House alongside Joe Biden and is very unpopular: his approval rating, in fact, is steadily below 40%according to the average FiveThirtyEight. “His polls – notes the New York Times – have remained stubbornly low, in line with Biden’s. And as recently as last year, some Democrats privately worried that she was a campaign liability.” Voters wondered where the Harris they had met during the 2020 presidential campaign or during her time as a senator had gone.
This has not always been the case for US vice presidents in the past: Dick Cheney he essentially managed George W. Bush’s foreign policy, while Joe Biden himself, with Barack Obama, had the chance to shine. Kamala Harris no: she has always remained in the shadows and this can weigh heavily from a future perspective. As she explains UsaTodayaccording to the average of RealClearPolling Harris would be at an even greater disadvantage to Biden if she were to run against Donald Trump. The former president leads the vice president by 6.6%, 49.3% to 42.7%. The averages of RealClearPolling show that Trump leads Biden by just 1.5 points, with 46.6% to the president’s 45.1%.
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59 year old lawyer born in Oakland, in California, from a father of Jamaican origin and an Indo-American mother, the first woman to become vice president of the United States, former attorney general of California and before San Francisco, Kamala Harris seemed to have all it takes to become the new star of the Democratic party but in recent years she has never managed to connect with the electorate and is more unpopular than Joe Biden. She first she angered i liberal of the party when, in 2021, on his first trip abroad to Guatemala and Mexico, he gave a speech in which he appealed to Guatemalan migrants, urging them to “stay at home”; then an investigation by Politico revealed how Harris was substantially incapable of managing a staff of 22 aides and former collaborators and officials, who described “a dark and often very tense atmosphere” in the offices of the US vice president.
The post-Biden dilemma
There is only one piece of data that gives us hope Kamala Harris. In a recent poll, 41% of Democratic voters chose her as their hypothetical candidate for the 2028 presidential election, above Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (15%), and Newsom (14%). “Harris’ aides and aides believe the vice president has strengthened her profile in recent months, becoming more skilled and confident after months of official travel and campaigning,” he writes Politicoreporting the chaotic situation in the dem house after the debate aired on Cnn. Strengthened image? Perhaps, but certainly not such as to represent that wild card to be pulled out of the hat at the moment of maximum difficulty for the Democrats, who seriously risk handing over the keys to the White House to Donald Trump next November.
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