Democrats Begin to Make Moves for Life After Biden
“There has been a very notable shift.”
National Democrats are increasingly warming to the idea that Vice President Kamala Harris should replace Joe Biden atop the ticket.
Three party officials told The Bulwark that, in recent days, operatives and donors have begun discussing with them what it would take to help supplement a Harris-led ticket should Biden choose to leave the race. One of those operatives said the conversations have become far more pronounced in the last 24 hours, as questions have mounted about Biden’s handling of the post-debate aftermath.
“There has been a very notable shift,” said a prominent centrist Democratic official. “The vibe-shift thing is real. And I think people are very resolute that we need a change and that a chaotic scramble for the nomination would be bad. I think people also think she is a prosecutor and we have to hire a prosecutor to prosecute this criminal.” (The criminal being Donald Trump.)
Guy Cecil, a longtime Democratic strategist, said that if the president were to make the decision to step down, the options would suddenly become quite limited and center largely on Harris.
“We need to be realistic about who the options are and, frankly, who can get through the process,” said Cecil. “The minute this thing is open you will have 400 interview requests, 1,000 donor requests, a couple hundred delegates, 10 governors, and 50 senators. It’s a lot for anyone to take on. I’m not saying it can’t be someone else but we must be realistic.”
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Harris, for her part, has shown no signs of pining, maneuvering, or even contemplating replacing her boss. She has served as Biden’s top surrogate and chief defender following the debate. And the president, in turn, has projected a united front with her as he tries to forge ahead. The two joined a call for all campaign staff on Wednesday, in which Biden said, unequivocally, that he is running for re-election.
“I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win because when Democrats unite, we will always win. Just as we beat Donald Trump in 2020, we’re going to beat him again in 2024,” the president declared, according to a source familiar with the call.
Harris, the source said, chimed in as well: “We will not back down. We will follow our president’s lead. We will fight, and we will win.”
That Biden and Harris convened such a call underscores the surreal, chaotic turn that the campaign has taken. In interviews with half a dozen top operatives and allies of the administration on Friday, a theme of panic emerged—not so much over the president’s debate performance but for his inability to relieve the party’s fears and demonstrate that he retains full command as a candidate ready to face the most difficult stretch of the campaign.
One former Biden administration official likened it to being on a “rubber floaty in the middle of whitewater rapids, upside down.” Told of the analogy, the aforementioned centrist Democrat added: “And you’re counting on someone else to flip the raft over.”
Multiple people said the only parallel they could think of was when then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton suffered a health episode during a September 11 memorial in the midst of the 2016 presidential campaign. But Clinton wasn’t a sitting president of advanced age at the time. And nor did she and her team wait nearly a week to attack the problem.
While the past week has presented remarkable setbacks for Biden, it’s presented a slew of unique challenges for Harris as well. The vice president has struggled for years to find her voice and footing in the administration. She was tasked with difficult policy objectives, struggled with staff turnover, and hampered by a number of shaky public performances.
Allies say she has stabilized her operation and standing in the last year, helping lead the White House’s response to the fall of Roe, seeing more continuity at the staff ranks, and finding a comfort level on the campaign trail. They argue that she has a tested political operation to rely on if she’s thrust into the main role. Power brokers in the party, meanwhile, associate her with a legislative record that they love.
“We are supportive of the president,” Lee Saunders, the president of the powerful American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union, said in an interview. “We have a vice president. She has been very supportive of all the activities and successes the Biden administration has accomplished. But it is premature to say anything until we know what the president decides.”
Still, she remains a divisive figure among voters, with an approval rating often falling under Biden’s own historic lows.
The debate raging in the party right now is less about Harris herself and more about whether, and how, it would work to get her to step in for her boss. One top party official who has worked on the several of the most recent presidential elections said that Harris could not make any move at all that signaled anything other than complete support for the president.
“She can’t be the bitch that threw him over,” the official explained, speaking on anonymity to describe internal deliberations. “She also can’t be presented as a salvage operation or an improvement.”
But another party operative, currently working on several down-ballot races, said that it was imperative for Harris to begin operating as if she were atop the ticket, to the degree that even if Biden were to stay in the race, the focus of Trump world’s attacks would soon be her.
“Trump will run two ads,” the operative said. “Look at how out of it Biden is and look at the person who will really be president: Harris.”
Already many Republicans outside the official Trump apparatus have begun turning their sights on Harris. GOP lawmakers, conservative media personalities, and operatives emphasized the vice president’s record and perceived “complicity” in a “coverup” of what they allege to be unspecified Biden health issues.
The Republican National Committee’s social media accounts have started to post old Harris clips and warnings about “Biden today—Kamala tomorrow.” Republican lawmakers have also started fretting about Harris.
Chip Roy called for Harris to be impeached Wednesday afternoon “for lying to America about the state of President Biden’s mental capacity to carry out the powers and duties of the office - and shirking her unique constitutional obligation to take the necessary steps to invoke the 25th Amendment.”
Writing that it is “abundantly clear” that Democrats are preparing to push Biden aside or that he may step down ahead of the formal nominating process, Lindsey Graham advised:
It is equally clear to me that Vice President Kamala Harris will become the nominee and for the first time in American history, we could very well have an all-female ticket. Governor Gretchen Whitmer is a compelling choice for Democrats and hails from the swing state of Michigan.
The Trump Campaign and the Republican Party need to build on President Trump’s ability to expand the demographic reach of our party in 2024. Much is at stake.
Neither Harris’s office nor the White House responded to a request for comment. Aides at both entities have been busy, doing a job that their predecessors say is both historically rare (if not unprecedented) and unimaginably consequential.
“For this team in particular, there is just not any other situation where there has been more on the line,” said Jen Palmieri, who served as communications director in Barack Obama’s White House and was a top official on Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “People are taking seconds to make decisions that will impact the country for decades. It can be hard to imagine how quickly stuff can get out of control if you haven’t been through that before.”