Handwringing over Harris masks worries aging Biden isn’t up for second term
Katherine Doyle
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Unwilling to question openly President Joe Biden’s ability to handle his job into a second term, Democrats are focusing their angst on Vice President Kamala Harris instead.
The concern masks worries about octogenarian Biden, who would turn 86 at the end of a second term if reelected, said a former swing state Democratic Party chair.
“It’s clearly a way of expressing a concern of frustration but not having the ability to do it directly,” said this Democrat, a longtime Biden supporter who believes the president should not seek reelection. “No man or woman has ever gotten up in the morning, yawned and stretched, looked out the window, and said, ‘I wonder what Kamala Harris is doing.’”
This person added, “If people are concerned about her being in charge because [Biden is] aging, they’ve had five years to sing that song.”
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Harris will likely face a crowded primary field if Biden forgoes a reelection bid, a sorting mechanism that has stymied her before. During the Democratic nominating contest in 2020, Harris’s presidential campaign ran aground before reaching her home state of California.
Questions over Harris’s political acumen spilled into public last month when Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) held back from a full endorsement when asked whether Harris should remain Biden’s 2024 running mate.
The Massachusetts senator later clarified her position, but the moment appeared to reflect Democrats’ complicated feelings about the race.
A House Democrat told Politico that “of course, Democrats should renominate the president” before telling the reporter to switch off their phone and “[demanding] to know who else was out there and said Harris wasn’t an option.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has seized on these concerns, charging on the campaign trail last year that Harris was Biden’s “insurance” policy against being removed from office.
But DeSantis’s jab raises another possible predicament for Democrats as the Republican nominating field grows. DeSantis has not said whether he intends to run for president in 2024, though he is one of several Republicans believed to be weighing their chances.
On Wednesday, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley entered the race calling for generational change and proposing to introduce a mandatory competency test for politicians older than 75 years of age.
In a recent Quinnipiac University poll, former President Donald Trump leads DeSantis 42%-36% among Republican voters in a crowded field of 14. But in a four-person primary, the field is a virtual dead heat.
Polls show Democratic voters want someone new despite the White House’s frequent and spirited defense of Biden’s abilities and the assurance that even his much younger aides can struggle to keep pace with him.
“The president always says this, which is, watch him,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Thursday. “You’ll see that he has a grueling schedule that he keeps up with that sometimes some of us are not able to keep up with.”
Behind the bluster, however, there are signs that the White House is trying to paper over the challenge of presenting an 80-year-old president as battle-ready.
According to Politico, “the Biden folks believe that Trump or any other Republican nominee will be reluctant to work with the Commission on Presidential Debates, lessening the chances, and risk, of a head-to-head debate.”
Haley is not alone in making a case for a generational shift inside her party.
The prospect of Biden pitted against a Republican decades his junior is giving some Democrats heartburn.
“It’s going to be a real thing, and I know it drives him nuts when people talk about it because he doesn’t view himself as older; he views himself as the same 55-year-old fighter,” said a Democratic operative. “But the optics and the reality are where the disconnect lies.”
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Biden once described himself “as a bridge” to a future generation of leaders, a message intended to appease worries about his age and interpreted at the time to mean that if elected, he would look to serve one term before passing along the baton.
According to CNN, aides are retooling this interpretation ahead of his anticipated announcement.
People around Biden suggest the words were not only about “getting Donald Trump out of the White House but getting past Trump and Trumpism,” the report said.