Even though US President Joe Biden has endorsed Kamala Harris, with the Clintons following suit, Kamala Harris, the US Vice-President, may have to work hard to win over fellow Democrats in order to become the party’s candidate against Republican Donald Trump.
The Democratic Party will hold a “transparent and orderly” process to pick a new nominee, the party chair said Sunday after President Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the White House race.
“In the coming days, the party will undertake a transparent and orderly process to move forward as a united Democratic Party with a candidate who can defeat Donald Trump in November,” chair Jaime Harrison said in a statement praising Biden.
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris has vowed to win the nomination and ‘defeat Donald Trump’ and praised Biden’s ‘selfless and patriotic act’ in dropping reelection bid.
In more than two centuries of democracy, American voters have elected only one Black president and never a woman. Harris, 59, is two decades younger than Trump and a leader in the party on abortion rights, an issue which resonates with younger voters and Democrats’ progressive base. Proponents argue she would energize those voters, consolidate Black support, and bring sharp debating skills to prosecute the political case against the former president.
In a hypothetical head-to-head matchup, Harris and Trump were tied with 44% support each in a July 15-16 Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted immediately after the assassination attempt against Trump. Trump led Biden 43% to 41% in that same poll, though the 2 percentage point difference was within the poll’s 3 percentage point margin of error.
Harris’s approval ratings, while low, are a tick higher than Biden’s. According to polling outfit Five Thirty Eight, 38.6 percent of Americans approve of Harris while 50.4 percent disapprove. Biden has 38.5 percent approval and 56.2 percent disapproval.
“If you think that there is consensus among the people who want Joe Biden to leave that they will support Kamala – Vice President Harris – you would be mistaken,” Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, a Biden supporter, said on Instagram. “There’s no safe option.”
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