Vice President Kamala Harris is outperforming President Joe Biden and other potential Democratic contenders in a hypothetical matchup with former president Donald Trump following the incumbent’s disastrous debate performance, further fueling talks that Biden could be replaced ahead of his nomination.
In one of the first post-debate polls released Tuesday, Harris trails Trump by two points (47-45 percent) within the CNN poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Meanwhile, Biden trails Trump by six points (49-43 percent).
Immediately after the CNN debate, Democratic Party insiders and liberal media pundits once friendly to Biden called for his replacement atop of the 2024 ticket.
Those potential replacements — namely Governor Gavin Newsom of California, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, and Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan — all fell outside the margin of error, like Biden, when hypothetically pitted against Trump. Newsom and Whitmer remained behind the presumptive Republican nominee by five points (48-43 percent and 47-42 percent, respectively), and Buttigieg was behind by four points (47-43 percent).
The new polling bolsters the argument circulating among prominent liberal commentators and beginning to gain steam among elected Democrats: Biden is too old to do the job effectively and the stakes are too high for the party not to put forward its best nominee.
Former Democratic representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, for example, called for Harris to replace Biden in a Newsweek op-ed on Monday. On Tuesday, Democratic representative Lloyd Doggett of Texas became the first Democratic member of Congress to publicly call for Biden to withdraw. Two Wall Street Journal reporters also laid out the case for elevating Harris, while the editorial boards of the New York Times and Atlanta Journal-Constitution more broadly urged Biden to step aside.
Harris nonetheless publicly defended him, declaring at a Las Vegas rally on Friday that “we believe in our President Joe Biden” and “this race will not be decided by one night in June.”
Despite his poor polling numbers and public calls for him to drop out of the race, Biden’s campaign insisted he would stay. Additionally, Biden’s family urged him to keep fighting while stationed at Camp David.
During a speech in North Carolina on Friday, Biden acknowledged his weak debate performance: “I know I’m not a young man. I don’t walk as easily as I used to. I don’t talk as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. And I know how to do this job, I know how to get things done. And I know what millions of Americans know: When you get knocked down, you get back up.”