One very central dynamic in the recent saga of Democratic anxiety over Joe Biden’s chances against Donald Trump, given the weaknesses he displayed in his first 2024 debate, has been the role of his understudy, Vice-President Kamala Harris. My colleague Gabriel Debenedetti explained the problem nearly two years ago as the “Kamala Harris conundrum”:
“Top party donors have privately worried to close Obama allies that they’re skeptical of Harris’s prospects as a presidential candidate, citing the implosion of her 2020 campaign and her struggles as VP. Jockeying from other potential competitors, like frenemy Gavin Newsom, suggests that few would defer to her if Biden retired. Yet Harris’s strength among the party’s most influential voters nonetheless puts her in clear pole position.”
The perception that Harris is too unpopular to pick up the party banner if Biden dropped it, but too well-positioned to be pushed aside without huge collateral damage, was a major part of the mindset of political observers when evaluating Democratic options after the debate. But now fresher evidence of Harris’s public standing shows she’s just as viable as many of the candidates floated in fantasy scenarios about an “open convention,” “mini-primary,” or smoke-filled room that would sweep away both parts of the Biden-Harris ticket.
For a good while now, Harris’s job-approval numbers have been converging with Biden’s after trailing them initially. These indicate dismal popularity among voters generally, but not in a way that makes her an unacceptable replacement candidate should she be pressed into service in an emergency. As of now, her job-approval ratio in the FiveThirtyEight averages is 37.1 percent approve to 51.2 percent disapprove. Biden’s is 37.4 percent approve to 56.8 percent disapprove. In the favorability ratios tracked by RealClearPolitics, Harris is at 38.3 favorable to 54.6 percent unfavorable, while Biden is at 39.4 percent favorable to 56.9 percent unfavorable. There’s just not a great deal of difference other than slightly lower disapproval/unfavorable numbers for the veep.
On the crucial measurement of viability as a general-election candidate against Trump, there wasn’t much credible polling prior to the post-debate crisis. An Emerson survey in February 2024 showed Harris trailing Trump by 3 percent (43 percent to 46 percent), which was a better showing than Gavin Newsom (down ten points, 36 percent to 46 percent) or Gretchen Whitmer (down 12 points, 33 percent to 45 percent).
After the debate, though, there was a sudden cascade of polling matching Democratic alternatives against Trump, and while Harris’s strength varied, she consistently did as well as or better than the fantasy alternatives. The first cookie on the plate was a one-day June 28 survey from Data for Progress, which showed virtually indistinguishable polling against Trump by Biden, Harris, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker, Josh Shapiro, and Gretchen Whitmer. All of them trailed Trump by 2 to 3 percent among likely voters.
Then two national polls released on July 2 showed Harris doing better than other feasible Biden alternatives. Reuters/Ipsos (which showed Biden and Trump tied) had Harris within a point of Trump, while Newsom trailed by three points, Andy Beshear by four, Whitmer by five, and Pritzker by six points. Similarly, CNN showed Harris trailing Trump by just two points; Pete Buttigieg trailing by four points; and Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer trailing him by five points.
Emerson came back with a new poll on July 9 that wasn’t as sunny as some for Democrats generally (every tested name trailed Trump, with Biden down by three points). But again, Harris (down by six points) did better than Newsom (down eight points); Buttigieg and Whitmer (down ten points); and Shapiro (down 12 points).
There’s been some talk that Harris might help Democrats with base constituencies that are sour about Biden. There’s not much publicly available evidence testing that hypothesis, though the crosstabs in the latest CNN poll do show Harris doing modestly better than Biden among people of color, voters under the age of 35, and women.
The bottom line is that one element of the “Kamala Harris conundrum” needs to be reconsidered. There should be no real drop-off in support if Biden (against current expectations) steps aside in favor of his vice-president (the only really feasible “replacement” scenario at this point). She probably has a higher ceiling of support than Biden as well, but in any event, she would have a fresh opportunity to make a strong first or second impression on many Americans who otherwise know little about her.
Most of the Democratics running for President are calling for the repeal of the “Bush Tax Cut for the rich”. Has everyone forgotten that in 1963 President Kennedy gave a 20% tax cut to the 1% richest Americans? Makes the 3.5% Bush cut seem like small change to me. Besides, in 1963, the richest 1% were only paying 10% of total income taxes and today they are paying 37% of total income taxes. Looks like hipocracy to me!!
Thanks for posting Bush’s approval rating in this poll. It’s not on http://www.pollingreport.com
BTW, Dean trails Bush 51-46, which corresponds exactly with the likely/unlikely numbers. It’s also encouraging to read how Bush isn’t doing so well with independents. That’s a trend that was very pronounced before Saddam’s capture.
Chris Matthews was going on this weekend about popular and unbeatable Bush is. What a clueless fuck.
About the failure to publicize the poll results, democrats.com has encouraged people to send a graph to CNN of the trends in their own poll. This I have done (though I looked up CNN’s procedure for this first; it’s at http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form12.html?1).
I suspect that much of the media bias against Democrats is structural more than it is intended. I have noticed, especially on television, that “journalists” waste almost all of their coverage on the “meta-campaign”. In other words, they talk about the campaign, rather than about the statecraft for which the campaign exists.
A perfect example was the clownish performance of Ted Koppel at the Democratic debate a few weeks back. Koppel asked, for instance, questions about how much money the candidates’ campaigns had, how well or badly they were doing in the polls, etc. More recently, C-SPAN had coverage of a local Iowa political chat show, and the commentators were discussing the same sort of campaign nuts and bolts, with nothing about the actual conduct of government. This is appalling. It is infantile for the primary sources of public information to neglect the topic of statecraft so completely. You could make a “Davey and Goliath” episode out of this: “Davey misses the point of delivering news, but learns from his mistake.”
So how does this work against Democrats? Pretty simply, actually. Watching the way things are going now that the Republicans are mostly in charge, it is evident that Republicans, as a whole, are about as capable of running the country as second and third graders; if you included Lisa Simpson, then the grade schoolers would be vastly superior. If one party is more statesmanly than the other, and the information sources are unable or unwilling to discuss statecraft, then the more idiotic party is going to get better coverage.
It does my heart good to see polls indicating that Bush is not where he wants to be. But I think we make a grave error by gleefully proclaiming them as having much importance, especially at this point in time. If we sit back waiting for Bush to self-destruct, we lose again.
It’s time to start planning on how we can WIN the election. If we wait for Bush to lose it, we’ll be sorely disappointed yet again.
Greg,
Good point, and I have to ride my Dean hobby horse here: Democrats will not win by proclaiming to the world that Bush’s war is a huge success that’s made Americans much, much safer. This is just folly, especially when polls show that between 60 and 78 percent of Americans already believe that Saddam’s capture didn’t make us safer. Dean’s comment was controversial only within the deeply conservative confines of the mainstream commentariat.
Steve,
Yes, I too am frustrated by the relative lack of media coverage of polls that show bad news for Bush. In fact, I am in even more despair lately over the state of the media in our country. I thought perhaps that Gore’s mauling had to do mostly with personality issues — the Beltway Heathers just didn’t like him. But now, we begin to see how the press gangs up on all the Democrats (have you seen the AP coverage of the Sunday debate? covered extensively here in the blogosphere — kos, atrios, calpundit). Just depressing. I continue to write letters to the editor just to make sure somebody gets the message that Democrats are watching.
One of the more interesting aspects of this just released poll is how little publicity it received over the weekend. Any uptick in the Bush numbers is typically headlined in USA Today and the networks while this poll barely received a mention.
One of the more interesting aspects of this just released poll is how little publicity it received over the weekend. Any uptick in the Bush numbers is typically headlined in USA Today and the networks while this poll barely received a mention.
This bears out what I’d always assumed about Saddam’s capture – it would be politically insignificant. What we’re fighting in Iraq is much more complex than just “Baathist holdouts,” and involves Islamists and nationalists as well.
Exposing the deceptions in the case for war has to be part of the Democrats approach, of course, but the bottom line question is, after investing significant blood and vast treasure — has the Iraq War make Americans safer from terrorism? I think we Democrats have a very good shot at convincing people in the center of the political spectrum that the answer is a resounding “no.”
Greg Priddy