Is it time to shake up the campaign with a female candidate for US president? | El Diario Vasco

There has not been a good morning for Joe Biden since a week ago, when he offered an unprecedented image of weakness during his debate with Donald Trump on CNN. The polls that are multiplying these days in the American media show him increasingly behind his Republican rival. The tycoon has a lead of between six and eight points and if this already represents a serious problem four months before the elections, many in the Democratic Party think that it could be extended if their candidate suffers new setbacks.

The 23 governors of the party offered the president their full support at a meeting held on Wednesday night, where Biden appeared with his number two, Kamala Harris. “I need you now more than ever. I will continue fighting,” the candidate promised. He also said that the most important thing is to win the presidential elections in November, although he did not specify without him or with him. There are at least two people close to him to whom he has expressed his doubts about whether he should continue, although that happened in the hours after the debate and those around him assure that he has received an injection of encouragement. In fact, he is preparing thoroughly for the interview that he will face on Friday on ABC News and that everyone on his team considers crucial to restore his credibility and an image that he could lead the White House for four more years.

The problem is that this is not enough. Within the Democratic Party itself, and among US political analysts, there is a growing belief that it is too late to bolster Biden as a strong candidate, especially after so much talk about his weakness. And not just since last Thursday.

There is a noticeable eroding movement growing in Congress that is leaning towards his removal. Not only because of a question of whether he is credible or not. The candidate’s colleagues complain that neither he nor his team have done everything necessary since the beginning of the campaign to give an example of vigor, and that after the face to face with Trump, they chose to appear absent and hermetic at Camp David while the party did not know what to expect. Many donors, the key piece of any successful campaign, are also still in change mode under the warning of desertion.

It was a group of high-level sponsors who on Tuesday first expressed a preference for Biden to be replaced by his vice president and fellow candidate, Kamala Harris. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is of the same opinion, provided the octogenarian candidate withdraws. James E. Clyburn, a congressman for South Carolina and a personal friend of Biden, has also made similar statements and called on all Democrats to do “everything possible to support her (Harris), whether she is in second place or at the top of the list.” Polls weigh heavily in this possible replacement. According to them, Trump has 47% popular support compared to 45% for Kamala Harris. A gap that falls within the margin of error of any poll and that, in any case, would be overcome in the remainder of the campaign.

The outgoing legislature was presented in 2020 as a bridge that would serve as a transition from a veteran leader to a younger leader who would be able to move forward in the current elections after her time in the White House for four years. The reality is that Biden has monopolized everything and his vice president has worked in his shadow. So much so that at times the media wondered where he was. But he has always been there: he has managed a mandate full of problems, perhaps not those of his boss, more focused on reasserting himself as the guardian of American democracy and his leadership role in major international conflicts, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, growing competition from China and the need to erase Trump’s negligent image in NATO.

In this sense, this 59-year-old lawyer with Jamaican roots has been the one who has handled many of the “home” issues, the face of the Government with minorities and a promoter of the female fight against inequalities. She has also embodied the emotional side of the tragedy of firearms, interacted with the opposition and developed a rather domestic agenda with some notes on international politics. Against her plays her low popularity and a reputation for conflicts with her office. She is not entirely liked by donors, but she does have a growing sympathy from the Democratic base and some experts consider that her appointment would be a real boost for the current and disconcerting electoral campaign. 60% of the electorate thinks that the two proposals, Biden and Trump, are old, represent a policy that is already outdated and say that they would be happier with a third candidate different from both.

Her nomination would resolve a couple of important issues. She is more popular than any other possible candidate and would allow the remaining $202 million that she and Biden have accumulated in fundraising events to be used for the remainder of the campaign, and which it is not clear could be transferred to other candidates. In addition, Democratic analysis teams maintain that Kamala Harris would be a good rival to Trump, a dour, sour, foul-mouthed guy who is clearly in his late 70s and is even beginning to suffer from disturbing confusions. According to them, the vice president could attract the community of women and African Americans who were Democrats and are now sliding towards Republicanism.

In any case, his is the most natural but not the only name on the table if Biden finally collapses and takes the exit door. California Governor Gavin Newsom is the second best positioned ahead of his Michigan colleague Gretchen Whitmer. Newsom has already been sounded out by donors and even bloggers in China are praising him on social media as the perfect replacement. But on Wednesday he gave his full backing to the president at his meeting with the governors.

Newson, 56, started out selling orthopaedic devices and today, in addition to running California with a series of fairly liberal policies, he represents the entrepreneur’s success. In 1991 he set up a wine shop that grew into a group of businesses linked to restaurants and wineries. His beginnings in politics were also unusual, as traffic commissioner in the San Francisco City Council, of which he was mayor between 2004 and 2006.

The governor gained popularity in 2012 and 2013 when he starred on television’s ‘The Gavin Newson Show’. He is married to the prestigious documentary filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom, an Emmy winner and well-known guest at the Sundance Festival. She was also one of the first five women to denounce the producer Harvey Weinstein, now in jail, at the origin of the MeToo movement. As an anecdote, Gavin and Jennifer agreed that she would be treated as the governor’s first partner, understanding that the protocol term of first lady is not inclusive. Newson was previously married to San Francisco deputy district attorney and television star Kimberly Ann Guilfoyle, from whom he divorced in 2006. Paradoxes of fate Guilfoyle was later an advisor to the Republican magnate and is now the partner of his son, Donald Trump Jr. This Thursday, the governor posted the message on his networks: “Let’s continue like this. We need to defeat Trump, re-elect the president, and have the support of Democrats everywhere.”

The issue at the moment is that the Democratic Party is going through a period of great confusion, but it is already imagining a future in which Biden is not its leader. Everything depends on what the veteran president says now and his fight against nature. The president repeats that he has the spirit and the necessary faculties to remain on the ballot. However, in private he seems to be in a low mood and hurt by the continuous questioning to which he is subjected, even though some of his fellow citizens in Scranton, the town in Pennsylvania where he was born, are trying hard this July 4 to remind him with messages and memorabilia that they maintain their confidence in him.

Republican Complaints

The risk is that the campaign is already well underway and a new candidate will have to start almost from scratch, although if Kamala Harris is chosen, analysts highlight her greater familiarity with donors and the advantage of being able to take advantage of the legacy built by her partner in the electoral race. Even so, it is worth noting that it would be the first time since Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s that a presidential candidate has withdrawn in the middle of an electoral race and that history shows how this type of ‘in extremis’ replacement has never worked well. Neither with Sarah Palin in 2008 nor with Dan Quayle twenty years earlier.

If a change occurs, Democrats should step up their pace and make a temporary adjustment to nominate their successor as soon as possible. Biden is expected to be nominated on August 5 – at least three days ago – before the national convention at the end of that month. An Ohio election law, for example, requires parties to define their candidates for this election by August 7, which puts Democrats at risk of not being able to run in that state. Republicans are also already planning to file lawsuits in other territories to prevent their opponents from changing the names on the ballots.

Against that backdrop, it was inevitable that Trump would appear on his social network on Thursday to offer his own opinion. Riding a golf cart, the tycoon struts about the past debate, assuring that “I kicked that old pile of garbage.” He is convinced that Biden will throw in the towel, “I pulled it out myself,” and “that means we now have Kamala. I think she will be better (rival). She is fucking bad and pathetic.”