The Biden team wants the country to have faith in Vice President Kamala Harris, but they clearly have limited faith in her.
The late economist Herbert Stein wrote, “if something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
The presidency of Joe Biden cannot go on forever, and there are really only two plausible ways it can end. The first is in defeat this November. If this comes to pass, many Americans, and in particular many Democrats, will have a severe hangover and ask themselves, how they possibly could have convinced themselves that a nearly 82-year-old man, who had initially pitched himself as a “bridge president” in the 2020 cycle, could have beaten Donald Trump in a rematch. They will wonder why an incumbent beset by runaway inflation initially chose to run on “Bidenomics,” how and why the Biden campaign team convinced itself that all the polls were wrong, and how it took Biden three years to realize that an insecure border and runaway illegal immigration was one of his most severe liabilities.
The second is with a Biden victory in November and Vice President Kamala Harris taking over some time in the next four years. A lot of Democrats really, really want us to believe that Biden will still be president when he is 86 years old. That would be nine years older than Reagan at the end of his second term.
In the latest New York Times poll, 70 percent of Americans agree with the statement, “Biden is just too old to be an effective president.” (Just 39 percent agree, “Trump is just too old to be an effective president.”) Of those who think Biden is too old, just 31 percent say Biden’s age makes him ineffective, but still able to handle the job; 66 precent say, “Biden’s age is such a problem that he is not capable of handling the job of president.”
If Harris becomes president sometime between January 20, 2025, and January 20,2029, people will legitimately ask whether the country spent enough time examining what a President Kamala Harris would do once she was seated behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. The vice president is always overshadowed by the president, but the Biden campaign has largely kept Harris doing fundraisers and focusing on abortion, African-American voter turnout, and gun control. (They sent Harris to hold an abortion-focused campaign rally in Maryland this week.)
It’s not quite accurate to say that the Biden campaign is hiding Harris, but they clearly are keeping her to the safest of topics and friendliest of venues. The Biden team wants the country to have faith in Harris, but they clearly have limited faith in her.
Harris is marginally even less popular than Biden, and quite a few Democrats have serious doubts about her ability to step into the role of commander in chief:
Harris faces pessimism about her future role in the party from a bloc of Democrats and a far larger share of independents. The poll found that a majority of voters don’t view Harris as a strong leader (48 percent to 42 percent). Nor do they see her as trustworthy (46 percent to 43 percent).
Harris scored in the high 70s with Democrats on both questions, but is in the mid-30s with independents. Voters overall were split when asked whether she is prepared for the job as well as if she cares about people like them.
She performed relatively well on issues like health care, gender inequality and LGBTQ+ rights, but is well below a majority in terms of how much voters trust her to handle immigration (40 percent), relations with China (37 percent) and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (35 percent).
Racism? Sexism? Or is it just that when an 81-and-a-half year old guy chooses to run for another four years, it’s seen as a de facto statement that he doesn’t have any faith in his vice president’s ability to run a winning campaign or serve as president?