The Kamala Gamble

Joe Biden had serious deficits as a candidate, but his likeliest successor has some, too.

(Photo by Chris duMond/Getty Images)

Joe Biden rocked American politics over the weekend with the news that he will be the first incumbent president since Lyndon Johnson in 1968 not to seek a second term. The obstacles against him—stubbornly weak polling numbers, a hostile media, defections from his own party, dried-up fundraising—ultimately proved to be too much to overcome. In his announcement, he endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, to be his successor.

Harris is not expected to face much serious competition for the nomination from other prominent Democrats, meaning she will likely lead the party’s ticket heading into November. But while shaking things up may offer Democrats a new lease on life, it’s far from clear that Harris is the strongest candidate to take on Trump. Democrats should consider her many vulnerabilities carefully before coronating her at their convention next month.

First, Harris has popularity issues of her own. Part of the argument for Democrats moving on from Biden was his dreary poll numbers—his approval rating had been underwater for nearly three years with no sign that it would ever bounce back. He has also consistently trailed Trump in head-to-head match-ups, which signifies a severe change from 2020, when he never trailed at all.

But Harris hasn’t fared any better than Biden. Not only has her own approval tracked very closely with Biden’s, sinking into negative territory in mid-2021, but she has also never cracked 50 percent (while Biden at least sat in the mid-50s for the first several months of his presidency). This is a good indication that Harris has been less popular than Biden from the start. And, at least in initial surveys, Harris doesn’t appear to do much better against Trump than Biden did, though there is still time for that to change. Suffice it to say, she will have to work to endear herself more to a skeptical public if she becomes the Democratic nominee.

Second, Harris has a concerning electoral track record. Her first election to a major office came in 2010. That cycle, she won a close race for California’s open attorney general seat, defeating her Republican opponent by less than one point, 46.1–45.3. Though some might be tempted to attribute this to running in a difficult midterm election, every other California Democrat in a statewide contest significantly outperformed Harris, earning at least 50 percent of the vote and winning their races by double digits.

However, her presidential campaign was perhaps an even bigger disappointment. Despite being a media darling for much of the primary race, her campaign flamed out before the first voters had the chance to cast their ballots in the Iowa caucuses. Some observers attributed this to the lack of a coherent message or reason for her candidacy—and the fact that her campaign became beset by infighting.

Another likely reason was her desire to placate her party’s activist base. For example, rather than touting her accomplishments as a prosecutor and explaining her pragmatic vision for criminal justice, Harris ran from her record, which some on the left viewed as too punitive. She also endorsed some deeply unpopular proposals, including the decriminalization of border crossings and the Green New Deal. All this may have stemmed from the fact that Harris surrounded herself with campaign staffers who seemed to embrace the notion that “Twitter is real life,” and that the platform’s more progressive voices were representative of the broader public.¹

If Harris wants to shed any part of her past as she looks for ways to appeal to median voters in swing states, she might consider rebuking these controversial stances in favor of a message that highlights her track record of prosecuting criminals—something that could set up a favorable contrast against Trump.

Third, although Biden will no longer be on the ticket, Harris will be forced to defend his administration, including its less popular facets. In 2021, Biden tasked Harris with the thankless job of trying to help resolve the crisis at the southern border. But far from successfully addressing the “root causes” of the problems there, they grew exponentially worse in the following years, with migrant encounters hitting a record high by the end of 2023. Recent polling has shown that voters trusted Trump over Biden to handle issues related to immigration and inflation, which are top of mind for many of them. Switching to that president’s second-in-command isn’t likely to immediately assuage voters’ concerns about Democrats’ ability to handle either one.

Fourth, while the latest polls have shown Harris mirroring Biden’s statistical tie against Trump nationally, this alone doesn’t leave Democrats in a particularly strong position. Consider: in 2020, when Biden defeated Trump, his national polling heading into the election was 8.4 points. Ultimately, Biden won by a more modest 4.5 points. As we know, though, presidential elections are decided not by national popular vote but the Electoral College, and Biden’s win at that level was actually extremely narrow. So simply tying Trump in the national polls still reflects a massive shift relative to 2020 and puts an Electoral College win very much within reach for him. To overcome that, Harris would need to move the needle back in the other direction and probably build a lead of at least a couple points to have a chance of winning.

Finally, in addition to issues related to herself and the Biden administration, Harris will be contending with broader problems that the Democratic Party has not fully reckoned with. For instance, survey data indicates that they have experienced substantial attrition among black and Hispanic voters, which may at least partially explain why important swing states like Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada have shifted in Trump’s favor this time around. Trump has also made more overt overtures to union voters, a longtime Democratic constituency that has shown cracks in recent years—and that could put other battlegrounds like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in play.

Democrats have also lost ground with rural voters, working-class voters, and even some young voters, a group that hasn’t been competitive in a generation. While Biden appeared to be attracting higher levels of support among seniors, a higher-turnout bloc that has historically leaned Republican, it’s not clear that those voters would stick with another Democratic nominee.

Some of these are longer-term issues that the party has been contending with since at least the start of the Trump era. Some may be specific to this cycle: third-party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for example, are disproportionately attracting younger and non-white voters. There is also early evidence that Harris may perform better than Biden with some of these groups and have more success pulling them back into the fold. Still, she’ll be confronting these bigger coalitional issues with less than four months to go in the campaign.

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Democrats’ best case for Harris is that she is a wild card: neither they nor Trump’s campaign know how her candidacy would shake up the race. If voters’ views of her aren’t as entrenched as they are for Biden, she might have a slightly higher ceiling. Given the opportunity to prosecute the case against Trump, she is also likely to be far stronger and more effective than Biden, which could level the playing field more in Democrats’ favor. And polls show that many Americans want someone, anyone, who isn’t Biden or Trump. Maybe all that is enough for someone like Harris to succeed.

Even so, a simple swap of candidates isn’t guaranteed to immediately put Democrats in a stronger position than they’re in today. Harris will need to distance herself from the perceived setbacks of the Biden administration, come into her own as a candidate, and develop a campaign pitch that will appeal to the handful of voters in swing states who will decide this election—all in the next three months (or less). It will still be an uphill fight, but if she can achieve these things, she might yet be able to pull out the win.

A version of this piece was first published on Persuasion.

1. Of course, this is not true. At all.