Can Harris overcome Biden’s problem with young voters?
The First Day of the 2020 State of the Union: When President Biden and his Team Rejuvenated After the June 27 Debate
“As a historical matter, very, very few people do this,” historian Jon Meacham, who has helped in writing speeches for Biden, including his 2023 State of the Union address, told NBC News on Sunday, “and in an era where so many of us privilege power over principle, where a lot of us would rather take than give, I think it’s a moment for the country to consider that the president has given us a lesson: that our own wishes, our own immediate desires, should not always be controlling.”
Many Democrats are calling Biden’s concession patriotic and selfless, in part an attempt to draw a contrast with Trump. This would be a hard decision for any president, especially for someone who has been around as long as Biden has.
Whatever the case may be, President Biden on Sunday made the historic announcement that he’s no longer running for reelection. And he endorsed his vice president, who was also his opponent.
The numbers can move things, even if politicians want to be the top dog. Both of them exerted huge amount of pressure on Biden to rethink. He was losing money in swing states after his disastrous June 27 debate.
A combination of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, current House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Jim Clyburn would likely get Biden to step.
Pelosi, one of the most savvy political operators in the Democratic Party, appeared to lead the charge. She pays very close attention to the polls and she listens to the swing-state Democrats who had seen a cratering in the numbers in their states and districts. Biden finally got past his prejudice to accept.
This has been among the worst three-and-a-half weeks of any presidential campaign — from the debate to former President Donald Trump’s convention to Biden contracting COVID-19.
The Democrats seem rejuvenated after this announcement, and they are smiling. It doesn’t mean they’ll win the race, but this has injected them with much-needed enthusiasm — and money. In the hours after Biden’s withdrawal, Democrats donated $46.7 million through ActBlue as of 9 p.m. ET, the largest site that processes Democratic donations. It’s the biggest single day of Democratic donations since the 2020 election.
The campaign has now been reset, and it’s clear Republicans, to this point, don’t quite have the message solidified on how they’re going to run against Harris.
They claim that Biden was too old, hadn’t been trained to run the country, he and his son are likely corrupt, and that he wasn’t qualified to be president.
The Republicans will run against a much younger candidate who could be the first Black president if Harris becomes the Democratic Party’s nominee.
Many people were trying to make up stories about the country not having a president who would be 83 at the end of his term after Biden’s announcement.
Kaala Harris: Rejiggering the Electoral Map in the Presence of a Democratic Candidate. She Has Been Popular for Two Years
For someone to challenge Harris at the convention they will need the signatures of at least 300 delegates to get on a ballot. Biden has 3,900 delegates. It is possible that someone challenges Harris.
Many of the big names that have been mentioned as a Biden replacement have come out and endorsed Harris — Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and others.
First, throw out the polls. We are all starting from scratch. Harris polling was the same as that of Biden before Sunday. The latest national NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, for example, had Biden up 50% to 48% over Trump, within the margin of error. Harris was also statistically tied, 50% to 49% over Trump.
At that point people were thinking of her as a hypothetical candidate. Now that Harris is going to be the nominee, he is going to be under a lot of scrutiny.
She didn’t do well when she ran for the Democratic nomination. She struggled to convey her core values, instead saying she saw herself as a problem solver. She has been caricatured by the right as a California liberal, while also facing criticism from the left as being too tough on crime as the state’s attorney general. She’s struggled with messaging at times as vice president, including on immigration, one of the areas Biden put her in charge of early on.
“Kamala Harris will be the next president of the United States,” said Jamal Simmons, who was Harris’ communications director in the second year of the administration. “She’s a better candidate than she was, with a great position on the most important issue to the Democratic coalition and a majority of Americans who are anti-MAGA.”
And she has the opportunity to rejigger the electoral map. Some of the names floated are white, male moderates such as North Carolina Gov. RoyCooper and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly.
He is a popular choice for Democrats because he is well liked, has dealt with issues that were difficult, and is from Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has seen more ad money than any state this election. The Trump campaign knows it has to take one of the blocks out of the Blue Wall — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. They’ve targeted Pennsylvania more than any other swing state, and, as of Sunday morning, were holding onto a narrow lead there in an average of the polls.
Beshear, 46, is a popular Democrat. He won praise from both sides of the aisle for the way he worked with both parties, but he is in a Republican presidential state.
Kelly is from a swing state. He’s an astronaut married to former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot in 2011 at a constituent event; he’s shown he can raise a lot of money for Democrats, and he could help, to a degree, blunt Republicans’ immigration attacks since he is from a border state and has separated himself some from Biden on border policy. He isn’t from a swing state with as many delegates as Pennsylvania or North Carolina, though.
When Barack Obama walked away from the House of Representatives, Benjamin Biden vowed to stay a little bit longer than he had planned
This is all Biden has ever known. He was vice president after winning seven terms in the Senate from Delaware. He ran for the presidency twice. He dropped out in disgrace in 1987 after a plagiarism scandal and did not get many votes in his 2008 campaign before being plucked by Barack Obama to be his running mate.
He has always wanted to be president and has been told by plenty of people in his life that he couldn’t do a lot of things. In 2020, he defeated Trump, and Democrats credit him with saving democracy. Reality set in that the path forward would be narrowed or possibly even non-existent at this time.
In the hours after President Biden announced he would be stepping off the ticket and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, Gen Z voters sprang into action online.
“Despite how amusing the coconut meme was, I hope VP Harris isn’t taking young voters for granted” said Driggers.
In about 100 written responses to NPR, voters overwhelmingly applauded Biden’s decision to exit the race, though some remained cautious and undecided about how Harris’ message and policy platform may differ from Biden’s.
Berly used to be a Republican but now he’s a Democrat. He voted for Biden in 2020 but didn’t vote for Trump. Over the past few weeks he began to become more concerned with the state of the president’s health, and he began to become less hesitant about Harris as a potential replacement for the ticket. Harris spoke in North Carolina last week, and Berly saw it and supported him.
In the fall, the 19- year old from Morris County, N.J. had planned to vote for Biden, but admitted she was not sure if he could pull off another victory.
He explained that people were asking him to vote for either a third party or no party at all. “I’m not sure that has fundamentally changed, but I do think Kamala [Harris] has the ability to reach people that Biden never could. The question is; will she make an effort to?”
Biden has long repeated the phrase, “Don’t compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative,” but over the past year, some young voters have bristled at having to choosebetween Biden and Trump.
Young voters overwhelmingly voted for Biden in 2020, and the administration acted on a number of political issues that have previously motivated young voters to get politically engaged, including taking steps to establish an office of gun violence prevention, relieving billions in student debt and tackling climate change.
But Biden has still struggled with Gen Z and millennial voters in national polls. He was criticized for his decision to give military aid to Israel in its war against Hamas, as well as for his approval of an oil drilling project in Alaska last year.
There are some critical young voices. The 22-year-old heads the youth-focused group Gen Z for Change, which advocates for progressive policies online and has nearly 2 million followers on TikTok. The organization had not endorsed Biden, but after he exited the race, they quickly supported Harris.
“Our endorsement of Vice President Harris is a broader representative endorsement of the Democratic party’s decision to listen to its constituents and unite around a candidate with newer and younger vision for this country” and the “necessary energy to defeat Donald Trump,” she said in a statement to NPR.
But how Harris may address issues like the Israel-Hamas war is still a concern for some young voters. She supports Biden’s policy, but she did publicly support a temporary ceasefire before Biden did. Some voters who aligned with the uncommited movement remain in a tough place. The Uncommitted National Movement endorsed Harris.
Mason wanted to see if her stance on Gaza would be better than that of Biden.
If Biden could not be moved to the left on foreign policy, then Harris can, according to Crudete, be moved to the left in other ways.
“I was really looking at third parties if I had to vote and there had not been a change in the democratic nominee,” Crudete said. “I had even started just focusing on down-ballot races in the hopes that even if Biden lost, at least we’d have a chance with keeping the House and Senate.”
In just over a day after Harris announced she would seek the nomination, her campaign reported raising $100 million. Harris received a general response from Crudete.
It was hard to see Biden step down, but it had to be done. I wish he wouldn’t back up from the start and let the delegates decide the nominee.
