The race is now a whole new ballgame.
One of the big reasons why there wasn’t more of a concerted effort among Democrats to keep President Biden from running for reelection a year ago, when it would have been a lot easier, was the widespread perception that Vice President Kamala Harris was unelectable. Now, many Republicans are licking their chops about the prospect of running against her.
It isn’t hard to see why. Harris has been one of the most unpopular vice presidents in history. She owns all of the failures of the Biden administration (especially inflation and a lax border policy), and, on top of that, she will now have to answer for her involvement in the cover-up of the president’s mental decline. Harris has an odd and inauthentic demeanor (from the cackle to odd musings about the “coconut tree” and being “unburdened by what has been”) that turns people off. In her previous run for presidency, she performed so poorly (including among women and black voters) that she was forced to drop out before Iowa.
Having said all that, the race is now a whole new ballgame. None of the polls, which have shown Harris doing marginally better than Biden on average but still trailing Donald Trump, are very predictive at this point. Democrats have spent the last several weeks attacking each other over Biden’s mental acuity. In another few weeks, they will be over that. They will nominate Harris and a new vice-presidential candidate and come out of their convention unified around the common goal of defeating Trump.
Harris will also have an opportunity to introduce herself beyond the embarrassing viral clips, and the media will be inundated by stories about the “new Kamala.” Now that Biden is out of the race, the negative stories about Democrats will stop and it will be hard to find any critical coverage of Harris. She will also be able to turn the age issue into an asset, with Republicans now running a candidate who will be in his 80s during the next term, while she won’t turn 60 until October.
Republicans, having just had their convention, will miss out on what would have been the best opportunity to message against her.
Unlike Biden, she can be given a list of talking points and offer a more focused line of attacks on Trump, who still remains hugely unpopular. Even after receiving a bounce after the assassination attempt, an ABC poll showed Trump with a 40 percent approval rating, compared to 51 percent who have an unfavorable view.
I’m not saying I’d place her as the favorite. But at the same time, I won’t assume she has no chance, and will not be taking polls seriously that say otherwise until after Labor Day — when Democrats will have had a chance to unify around her at the convention.