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.
Don’t expect the polls to carry the day.
Bush is a lot smarter than most Democrats, and realizes that polls mean only present support. Once he’s gotten out there and beat the drum for a while, the polls will change.
Unless Democrats respond in kind, with Kristoff’s advice… reject it sight unseen and declare there is no Crisis.
Cranky, Allen and others.
There are big political and mechanical differences between Iraq and pushing Social Security Privatization through. Once the decision is made to go to war the nation is on a speeding train with no way to control the engineer. And all kinds of wells are tapped: general patriotism “we are at war”, “support the troops”. And once you are engaged in combat it is in many ways too late, there is no easy way to extract yourself.
Social Security is different. No one enlisted in the War on Social Security. It may be true that this president has the iron grip over his party and the media that you suggest, and that he will be able to ram some plan through even in the face of productivity numbers that suggest no crisis at all. I don’t agree with the premises, but those are issues for another time.
The problem Bush and the Republicans face is time. Whatever plan is adopted, it will require months to actually put individual accounts into place and then to allow individuals to exercise whatever limited choices in investment vehicles they have. As the actual details of the plan start coming out, mainly the fact that future benefits even with returns on the private accounts will be much less than promised under the current plan, people will begin to murmer.
Now if they were able to maintain the sense of “crisis” they might sell this as being “better than nothing”. But the only way to do this is to stop reporting economic productivity numbers altogether. 4.0% economic growth for 2004, already in the bag, simply blows the doors off the productivity models of the Social Security Trustees, not just the Intermediate Cost (which called for 2.7% in 2004 and 1.8% in 2005) that produces the 2018 and 2042 dates used by all, but all the Low Cost one that shows no long term shortfall at all (2.8% and 2.1%).
By June it will be clear that doing nothing would have been a better deal than doing something, particularly this something. And Republicans will be staring up a hill at 2006. They will be faced with having broken something that never needed a fix, lurching ever closer to that Third Rail of American politics.
The beauty is that there is no downside to cut and run here. There is no way that accounts will be set up by June and the US will have invested probably a few million dollars in staff time. The Republican Congress will have two choices: repeal it, or ride it into the Valley of Death that will be the 2006 midterms.
Bush may not care, he is not running for reelection, but the firmer he grasps that veto plan, the better for Dems in 2006.
And? Not to be rude, but it appears to me that the general public is not going to be given a chance to express its opinion. Transfer of Social Security wealth to Wall Street is already scheduled to happen, and there will be a big “burst” of support at just the right minute to satisfy the media.
Cranky
OK, but since when does this administration need informed public support to achieve its goals? And the goal here of course is not to improve investment opportunities or retirement benefits for retired Americans – it is to destroy a successful and essential government program as part of an ideological crusade to deligitimize all government programs that do not redstribute wealth upwards. They will lie and distort and dissemble to whatever degree necessary unless Democrats stand up and call this for what it is, and contesting the issue on this terrain – what the American people really want – is not what the fight is about.
That is, of course, until they start the lying.
Actually, check out Talking Points Memo – Josh points out that the Post wrote up the poll quite badly and that the numbers look better for the Democrats.
LATEST NEWS IN THE WASHINGTON STATE GUBERNATORIAL RACE
Democratic candidate Christine Gregoire put together a string of victories Wednesday against Republican Dino Rossi. The race, which still isn’t over, has been extremely close.
Permanent Defense: King County reported +59 votes for Gregoire, giving Gregoire the overall lead in the statewide manual recount by 10 votes. This does not count the 725 ballots the Supreme Court said can be counted.
The especially good news about all of this is it shows Democrats are willing to stand and fight. We won’t be intimidated by the GOP….No more stolen elections! Christine Gregoire has held on for almost two months now – and we believe she will emerge from this as our state’s Governor.
He’s hoping to scare the public into supporting his plans, a la Iraq. The advantage he had that time was that a lot of Americans wanted to lash out at Arabs–any Arabs–in the wake of 911, so they were open to persuasion. The advantage he has this time is that the relentless talk of “Social Security crisis” has eroded the public’s support to some extent, since many are skeptical that they’ll ever get benefits. It’s not as strong a card to play as the post-911 anger was, so there’s hope. Given the Democrats’ disarray, however, I’d say he has a decent chance of prevailing. The real test is whether the Dems can wake up and finally start acting like an opposition party, and not get caught up in giving the Republicans fig leafs.