How Kamala Harris could save the Democratic Party (but probably won’t)

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July 9, 2024

By Keith Naughton, The Hill

Vice President Harris speaks at a campaign rally last month. (Photo: Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

Like it or not, it’s either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket this year for the Democrats — and it appears a lot of Democrats don’t like it at all, even as Republicans are thrilled.

But a look at the polls and the possible strategies for Harris should make Democrats more sanguine and Republicans more concerned. If Harris and her team approach the race in a clear-minded way, not falling to the neuroses and groupthink of the “resistance,” the vice president could flip the script and win.

Biden’s praetorian guard and Lady Macbeth cannot fix his fundamental problem — the incumbent president looks more and more like a loser. Nothing they have done has helped. Now, after bad interviews, gaffes and a debate face that’s gone from ashen to looking like he fell asleep under a heat lamp, Biden appears to be cooked.

He is losing ground nationally and in key states. Team Biden might take some solace in the recent Morning Consult state polls, but with a lot of sampling variance, some results are downright strange (Donald Trump is up just 1 point in Georgia but by 7 points in Pennsylvania? Really?). Meanwhile, Biden’s approvals have collapsed to their lowest levels yet. […]

The FiveThirtyEight collection of polls shows Harris doing a shade worse than Biden. While her lower percentage is expected, there can be a concern that Trump improves slightly when she is given as the alternative, by 2 points in the YouGov and Ipsos polls and 3 points in the Daily Mail poll. Harris does perform better in the CNN poll. Worth noting, Trump beats every Democrat tested in both the Ipsos and the CNN polling; independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is the only person on the left who does not have a negative approval rating (YouGov).

But it isn’t Harris’s numbers that matter as much as her strategic opportunities. Harris has two major assets: first, the contempt that Team Biden has for her, and second, the fact that she would be running against Trump.

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