Vice President Kamala Harris, who has struggled for nearly four years in President Biden’s shadow, was thrust into the center of a remarkable political drama Sunday that could culminate with her becoming the first woman of color atop a major party presidential ticket.
Mr. Biden’s decision to drop his reelection bid and endorse Ms. Harris to succeed him puts her in a powerful, if not secure, position to become the new face of the Democratic Party, charged with preventing former President Donald J. Trump from returning to the Oval Office for another four years.
“Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be our party’s nominee this year. Democrats: It’s time to come together and beat Trump,” Biden wrote in a social media post after announcing his decision to step aside. “Let’s get this done.”
Harris and her team were likely to move quickly to try to seize that mantle, even as uncertainty swirled over whether other Democrats would try to challenge her for the nomination at the party convention in Chicago next month.
In a statement, Ms. Harris thanked Mr. Biden for his support, saying his “legacy of accomplishment is unmatched in modern American history.” She pledged to “win this nomination” and prevent Mr. Trump from remaining in the White House for another four years.
“We have 107 days until Election Day,” Harris wrote. “Together, we will fight. And together, we will win.”
If she were to become the nominee, she would have just months to improve her low approval ratings, defend Harris’s presidency and mobilize voters against Trump, whom Democrats have branded an existential threat to democracy and a proponent of dangerous positions on guns, abortion, immigration, taxes, education and trade.
If Ms. Harris becomes the nominee, it would immediately upend the generational argument of Mr. Trump, who has spent years deriding Mr. Biden as a wobbly old man. Ms. Harris, 59, is 19 years younger than Mr. Trump, who is 78.
Ms. Harris would have no choice but to run on the Biden-Harris administration’s record over the past four years, which Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked. As the party’s nominee, she could take some credit for the president’s legislative successes, such as new laws boosting infrastructure spending, but would also be vulnerable to attacks for his failures, such as the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the spike in inflation and the difficulty of controlling the flow of migrants across the southern border.
After a first two years in office in which Ms. Harris was often ridiculed for failing to rise to the occasion, many Democrats have given her better marks more recently. The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down abortion rights under Roe v. Wade led her to become a leading advocate for abortion rights and women’s rights more broadly. After her disastrous debate performance, she was seen as more effective than Mr. Biden himself in defending him.
As a Democratic candidate, she could do a better job of appealing to key constituencies in the Democratic Party than Biden: people of color, young voters and progressives, all of whom have been expressing discontent with Biden for more than a year.
In a social media post, Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff, wrote: “Now that donors and elected officials have voted out the only candidate to ever beat Trump, it’s time to end the political fantasy games and unite behind the only veteran of a national campaign – our outstanding @vp, @KamalaHarris!!! Let’s get real and win in November.”
The arc of Harris’ political career took her from local prosecutor to California’s top law enforcement official to U.S. senator, breaking racial and gender barriers along the way with a melting pot story that encompassed her Jamaican-born father, Indian-born mother and her marriage to a white, Jewish man.
She would be the first black woman and the first South Asian woman to run for president as either a Democrat or a Republican.
In California and in Congress, she was a rising star whose ambition led her to seek the presidency in the 2020 race, joining a crowded field of contenders seeking a chance to oust Mr. Trump from office.
It didn’t go well. After struggling to translate his personal story and governing program into support on the campaign trail, he dropped out of the race in December 2019, weeks before the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries.
In August of the following year, Mr. Biden rescued his political career, choosing Ms. Harris to be his vice-presidential running mate. He called her “a fearless fighter for the little guy and one of the country’s finest public servants.” Overnight, she became a potential heir in a Democratic Party already looking to the future.
In a speech after she and Biden were declared the winners, Harris said, “While I may be the first woman to hold this office, I will not be the last. Because every little girl watching us tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.”
But as vice president, those lofty prospects seemed to fade quickly. She struggled with the limits placed on any vice presidential occupant. And she chafed at the lack of clear direction or support from Biden and his White House team.
Early missteps cost her dearly. After Mr. Biden asked her to address the root causes of immigration — a directive that was widely interpreted as making Ms. Harris the de facto border czar — she stumbled over the large waves of families at the border. Pressed by Republicans to visit the area, she told NBC’s Lester Holt that she didn’t understand why it was important.
“I haven’t been to Europe,” Harris said. “And I mean, I don’t understand what he means.”
The vice president’s approval ratings plummeted and have never really recovered. A recent poll by the website FiveThirtyEight.com shows his approval rating at just over 38%. More than half of those polled disapprove of his job performance.
Harris allies say that could change quickly as she seeks to take the top spot on the ticket and voters take a second look, with much higher stakes.
But the memory of her quickly faltered 2020 campaign remains fresh in the minds of many activists and others in the party, who are already worried about whether Ms. Harris has the popularity and charisma to carry Democrats across the finish line in the race against Mr. Trump and the effort to win control of Congress.
To do so, her team will likely try to take over the campaign apparatus built last year to re-elect Biden. But she will also have to quickly prove she can stand up to Trump on her own, whose campaign has already begun to step up its attacks on her.
And before she can be the nominee, she will have to navigate the delicate politics of the Democratic Party and the arcane — but now suddenly important — rules that dictate how the party ratifies its nominee.
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