Momentum builds behind Kamala Harris
Endorsements are pouring in thick and fast today for Kamala Harris after Joe Biden made the bombshell decision last night to exit the race and endorse his vice president to take on Trump in the 2024 election.
The last 24 hours have been surprisingly smooth sailing for Harris. An endorsement from Biden does not make her the official candidate to replace him in the race, meaning this could have been a fractious day for the Democrats, with multiple candidates launching their bid to challenge her for the party’s nomination, ahead of next month’s convention in Chicago.
Instead, all of the serious rival contenders have rallied around Harris. California governor Gavin Newsom, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Senator Joe Manchin have ruled themselves out of the running and swiftly backed the Vice President.
The Democrats have also been boosted today by a big surge in donations, including from several of the party’s top donors who had previously withdrawn funding from a Biden-led ticket after his disastrous debate performance and joined calls for him to quit the race.
Liberal political action committee, ActBlue, revealed that, within seven hours of Biden’s bombshell statement, it had raised a staggering $46.7m, hailing it “the biggest fundraising day of the 2024 cycle.”
Why does there appear to be little appetite to challenge Harris for the Democratic nomination?
With so little time to spare, perhaps other contenders have decided that the party must appear united and immediately rally around a single candidate if it is to have any chance of keeping Trump out of the Oval Office.
Though their decision to back Harris is unlikely to be purely down to them putting the good of the party ahead of their own political ambitions. As Anthony Peters points out, they may well be holding off too for fear of being thrashed by Trump and spoiling their chances of running and winning in 2028.
Harris – with her net approval rating of 38.6 per cent – faces a herculean challenge taking on Trump, who has emerged as an even stronger candidate following his attempted assassination. And the fact that she has so little time to campaign means the odds are stacked against her.
The 59-year-old could benefit from suddenly making Trump appear like the elderly candidate, and she will slash away at him on abortion – a key battleground in the 2024 election. She is also a politician whose career has been a succession of firsts. She was the first woman and first person of colour to be elected as San Francisco’s district attorney in 2004 and later as California’s attorney general from 2011 to 2017. She was also the state’s first Indian-American and black senator, and she is America’s first ever female Vice President.
However her vice presidency has been dogged from the outset by negative press coverage, and, more recently, by the high staff turnover and reports of dysfunction in her office. Telling of her perceived weakness is the fact that Republicans have considered it a savvy move to campaign for months on the line: vote Joe Biden, get president Kamala Harris.
Biden may well have stepped down sooner if he felt he had a stronger Vice President. According to three of his aides who’ve spoken to the press anonymously, the President has dragged his feet partly because he and his senior advisers were worried that Harris wasn’t up to taking on Trump.
That may well be true. With less than four months until US voters head to the polls, no-one can be under any illusion about the scale of the challenge Harris faces.
But she has, at the very least, energised the race.
Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life