It’s official, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are running for a second term. There is something seriously wrong, however: they have bad poll numbers and there are big worries about Biden’s age.
Biden’s advanced age will put greater focus on Harris’ ability to lead if the president is incapacitated or unfit to continue in office.
Biden would be 86 if he were to leave office in 2029.
That means Kamala Harris and her abilities matter more than anything.
Kamala Harris Truly Matters in 2024
Harris has strong negatives due to her tendency to put her foot in her mouth and her failure to take charge of issues such as migration and the southern border.
“Fifty-three percent of registered voters view her negatively. On average, her net favorability is negative — and five points lower than Biden’s. It’s also lower than her predecessors at this point in their tenures: Mike Pence, Biden, Dick Cheney and Al Gore,” Bloomberg columnist Juliana Goldman wrote, citing a Los Angeles Times tracking poll from a few months back.
“Part of that divergence reflects how polarized the country has become in the last three decades. Biden’s and Harris’s numbers also reflect a mix of ageism, sexism, racism and misogyny.
Goldman continued: “And as my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Francis Wilkinson has pointed out, Biden hasn’t exactly set Harris up for success. As the administration’s point person on border policy, she has borne much of the brunt of the administration’s failure to control one of the most challenging political issues.”
And sadly, nothing had gotten any better in the polls. In fact, things might be getting worse.
Something Is Seriously Wrong for Joe Biden
Back in that same poll from March, Seventy percent of voters want someone other than Biden. Forty-eight percent do not want another four years of Biden due to his age, a NBC poll found. Only 41% said they would vote for Biden.
For the Biden team, the challenge will be casting Harris as someone who has the capacity to lead by giving her a bigger role in key policy goals and disproving that perception.
Goldman suggests that the Biden team place her in charge of more issues beyond abortion and immigration where she can look like a leader who deserves to remain a heartbeat away from the presidency. She concedes what that issue is remains to be determined.
“Recent polls make it depressingly clear that the nation is united — against a Biden-Trump rematch. That’s the main problem for the Biden-Harris ticket, and one way for the campaign to address it is to make a stronger case for the vice president,” Goldman wrote.
It seems the White House might take that advice, but will it actually make any difference?
John Rossomando was a senior analyst for Defense Policy and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award in 2008 for his reporting.
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