Hollywood was the first to react. After Joe Biden's disastrous debate with Donald Trump at the end of last month, actor George Clooney published an op-ed in the "New York Times" calling on the Democrat to withdraw from the race. The publication itself announced the same, reacting the fastest among the liberal media. Since then, information has periodically appeared in the media that the current institutionally charged leaders of the Democratic Party - the leader of the party in the House of Representatives Hakeem Jeffries and the speaker of the Democratic majority in the Senate Chuck Schumer - have urged Biden to "pass the baton". Along with them, Nancy Pelosi, who continues to be among the most influential authorities in the party, was also mentioned as one of the politicians urging Biden to find a dignified way out (when Congressman Adam Schiff said that Biden should withdraw, it was actually Nancy Pelosi's voice). Meanwhile, information appeared - of course, controlled - that Barack Obama also had his "concerns" regarding Joe Biden's re-election chances (except that the aforementioned article in George Clooney's "New York Times" was also interpreted as a warning shot from Barack Obama, with whom the actor is in a close relationship). At that time, over 30 sitting Democratic congressmen called on the head of the White House to drop out of the race. In the hours immediately before the sitting president announced his decision to withdraw his nomination for re-election, the axe was "flying" and on CNN - the selected questions, comments and guests of Jake Tapper and Fareed Zakaria spoke about the fact that the media had also pronounced its verdict on Joe Biden. On the air of the network in question, Senator Joe Manchin (the pariah man of independent voters, until recently a Democrat) was the next voice calling on Biden to reconsider his candidacy for the White House. In other words, the cycle was closed - the film industry, the media and the political establishment of the Democratic Party had already made their decision: Joe Biden had to withdraw.
And this seems to be a reasonable and logical decision, for which there are abundant and various arguments. After the debate between Biden and Trump, the mobilization of Democrats to support their presidential candidate began to fall, and after the assassination attempt on the Republican, that of Republicans registered the opposite movement, increasing. In fact, for the past three weeks, the Democratic Party has been having a conversation not so much with voters as with its various echelons, regarding the condition of its candidate. At the end of this conversation, it turned out that Biden's candidacy was based mostly on the support he received from the progressive wing of the party, which is deeply paradoxical, given that four years ago it was from there that the Democrat's biggest problems came. The crisis of confidence in him developed to the point that an unprecedented 60% of Democratic Party voters said that Biden should withdraw from the race. This was shown by the latest sociological data from ABC News/IPSOS from yesterday, which conducted its survey between the 19th and 20th of this month. In fact, Biden's critically low approval rating of 32%, again according to ABC News/IPSOS, summarizes the bad position in which the incumbent president finds himself.
If Joe Biden's decision to withdraw from the election race - an action motivated by the party establishment - is logical given the difficulties he was facing, the possible nomination of incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris is far less reasonable. The latter has already been supported by Biden, but in order to become the Democratic Party's presidential candidate, she must also be approved by the party's convention, which will be held in August. From a formal point of view, the current US vice president is doing better in a direct confrontation with Donald Trump: she loses by only 3% to the Republican, while Trump's lead over Biden was 5%. This is shown by the data of CBS News/YouGov, whose survey was conducted between the 16th and 18th of this month. In general, sociology registers something else - Harris manages to mobilize the minority vote in the country to a greater extent than Biden does. But the main argument in favor of the US vice president's candidacy is different and it is twofold. First, due to the position she holds, Harris has the greatest recognition compared to all other Democratic personnel options. And given the already narrowing window of time until the election, public recognition is not an unimportant fact. Second, Harris registers the greatest degree of support among Democrats as a candidate among the party's possible alternative nominations (in parallel with Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Gavin Newsom and all others tested by the demoscopic studies).
Harris is certainly already in pre-election mode and has gathered campaign momentum. She can also bring the energy that was missing in Joe Biden's pre-election events. Harris - as Biden's vice president - is also a relatively worthy outcome of the race for the current head of the White House, insofar as she will demonstrate a continuation of his power chronology. With the very fact of Biden's replacement, one of the main themes of the Republicans in the election campaign, related to the mental condition of the Democratic president, will also be eliminated. Now conservatives will have to behave more like politicians and less like psychoanalysts. It will also be interesting to see who will be nominated as Harris' vice president, although this is usually not decisive for the electoral dynamics in the country.
Despite all this, the possible candidacy of Kamala Harris actually remains deeply problematic in terms of the prospects of the Democratic Party to maintain its control of the White House. Moreover, this reshuffle of Biden with Harris looks like a step forward and two steps back on the part of the formation in question.
First of all, it does not seem at all that Harris can bring a positive dynamic for the Democrats in the main electoral topos of this year's elections - that of the so-called "rust belt" (mainly Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin). In each of these states, Donald Trump had a lead over Joe Biden. The very choice of the Republican as vice president in the person of Ohio Senator James David Vance, whose biography corresponds to a key electoral segment of the states in question - white workers losing out to job outsourcing and cultural relativization - demonstrates the importance of this "rust belt" for the upcoming elections. Kamala Harris and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, to which the vice president is related, can hardly offer anything to this type of voters, although they have common ground in economic protectionism and populism; on the contrary, they rather see them as part of the causes of their problems.
Secondly, Kamala Harris is already a well-exploited target for criticism by Republicans, who, since 2020, have been saying that Biden is actually an avatar of the radical policies of the progressive wing of the Democrats, personified by his vice president. If Harris takes over, it will be like a dream come true for this type of speech from conservatives. In this spirit, during the Republican convention held these days in Milwaukee, Senator Marco Rubio said that if it comes to replacing Biden with Harris, it will portend an even easier victory for conservatives, because the former California attorney general is a radical leftist. (Beyond party talk, the issue of Harris and her positioning on the Democratic Party's ideological spectrum is more complicated: she sits somewhere between the party's center and Bernie Sanders/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which certainly puts her to the left of center in the party. She is considered a progressive by both Republicans and her fellow Democrats, but not by progressives themselves, who accuse Harris of being a moderate politician connected to the party's elite and donors.)
Third, Harris will face the difficult task of defending the policies of the current administration, while not being able to distance herself from Biden, given that the majority of American citizens do not approve of the direction of this Democratic government. To the extent that Harris cannot offer a credible solution to the two most important election issues in the country - the economy and illegal immigration, she will find herself in the role of the new bus driver, whose passengers, however, have a problem with the direction of travel at all.
Last but not least, the fact that she has better recognition than other Democratic options does not necessarily mean that she is associated with a positive perception. In fact, her approval rating is similar to Biden's, with a negative net value of 18% (that is, 32% have a positive attitude towards her and 50% - negative, according to NBC News data from earlier this month). And if she manages to mobilize the African-American vote to a greater extent against Biden, Harris lags behind in the white vote, again in line with the incumbent president. These numbers and the trends behind them may change during the campaign, but at this stage they are indicative of the lackluster start she will make as a presidential candidate.
Kamala Harris's main task, if she is made official as a presidential candidate, will be to show that Joe Biden's crisis is actually only his crisis, but not the Democratic Party's, since, in parallel with the presidential elections, there will also be elections for one-third of the Senate and the House of Representatives. In this sense, Harris's minimum plan will be, if she cannot help, then at least not to hinder the party's candidates for seats in the country's Congress. The maximum plan is also possible and will be considered, but only when empirical data emerges to show us that it is not simply hypothetical.