When Kamala Harris arrived at a high school in North Carolina, she was enthusiastically greeted by a marching band, a DJ and a performance by a group of cheerleaders.
It was the sort of energised, uplifting welcome that could, however fleetingly, set aside the panic spreading throughout the Democratic Party over President Biden’s mental acuity after his calamitous debate performance against Donald Trump.
Harris, the vice-president, finds herself in a delicate position as the clamour grows for Biden to step aside — and he stubbornly clings on. In public, she has remained steadfast in her support for the president. Yet the vigour of her defence and her blistering attacks on Trump have only fuelled calls for her to step into the breach.
Addressing a packed high school gym in Greensboro on Thursday, Harris alluded to the debate only in passing, praising Biden as “a fighter”. She said: “We all knew this election would be tough, and the past few days have been a reminder that running for president of the United States is never easy, nor should it be. He is the first to say, ‘When you get knocked down, you get back up.’”
But among some supporters at the James B Dudley High School, the damage has already been done. “It feels like this election campaign has calcified and the only thing that is going to change the dynamic now is if Trump is running against President Harris,” said Alan Rowe, a Jewish publisher, who had come with his wife, Debi, to watch her speak. “The dynamic has to change or the odds are that the Democrats will lose. I think she can step up.”
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Wendy Wooden, a 50-year-old teacher, said that Harris would do “a phenomenal job” and that Biden could cement an extraordinary legacy if he anointed a black woman as the party’s nominee. “If he feels like … he is not capable of doing the job, it shows a lot of integrity to step aside for the good of the country to give the right person the opportunity,” Wooden said.
Harris has set about trying to repair the damage done by the debate with a swing through several states this week, including the battlegrounds of Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
Embarking on the type of relentless schedule once expected of presidential candidates before the gerontocracy of Biden, 81, and Trump, 78, Harris (59) has crisscrossed the country, addressing Asian-Americans in Las Vegas, a black sorority in Texas and a town hall in Philadelphia. In a classic campaign photo-op last week, she met the US men’s Olympic basketball team, urging them to “bring back the gold” from the Paris Games.
Her team insists she is doing nothing to prepare for a campaign launch of her own if Biden does bow out. Her office has ordered staff and donors to tamp down on the speculation, fearing that any hint that Harris was gearing up to run would only damage her and the president.
But party strategists believe it is inconceivable that those around her are not making plans on her behalf as the pressure on Biden mounts. Biden’s own campaign is understood to be quietly conducting its own polling to test how Harris would fare against Trump at the top of the ticket.
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“It is unlikely that she is not quietly preparing somehow,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a former adviser to Bill Clinton. “If she’s making these trips to marginal states, it’s quite clear that there’s an agenda …These are kind of like trial runs for her.”
In Greensboro, Harris pivoted swiftly from Biden’s struggles to an attack on Trump, denouncing the former president as a man who “bows down to dictators” and brags of stripping abortion rights from millions of American women. Sharpening the contrast, Harris spoke of her background as the daughter of immigrants who met during the Civil Rights movement and “took me to those marches when I was in a stroller”.
“What kind of country do we want to live in? That’s the question being posed to each one of us,” she said, to cheers. “Do we want to live in a country of freedom, compassion, and rule of law or a country of chaos, fear, and hate?”
Maligned, even ridiculed, in the early months of the Biden administration, Harris’s energy on the campaign trail offers a glimmer of hope to forlorn Democrats. The irony, for many of her supporters, is that it has taken Biden’s implosion on the debate stage for much of the country to notice her. Even within the White House, allies complain, she has been undervalued as a political asset for too long.
Flanked by Harris and other rising Democratic stars on the campaign trail in 2020, Biden famously pledged to be a “bridge” to a future generation of party leaders. Once in office, however, he appeared to do little to promote Harris or encourage public confidence in his vice-president.
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The vice-presidency is often a thankless backseat role and Harris struggled to overcome a rocky start in the White House. Saddled with the intractable tasks of solving the immigration crisis on America’s southern border and passing voting rights reform in the face of implacable Republican opposition, she struggled to shine and her approval rating plunged.
She compounded those difficulties with missteps of her own. In a testy 2021 interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, the vice-president claimed that she had visited the southern border when she had not.
“You haven’t been to the border,” Holt corrected her. “And I haven’t been to Europe either,” Harris snapped back. “I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make.” She avoided high-profile interviews for almost a year.
Reports of friction between her team and Biden’s grew. Her office haemorrhaged senior staff amid reports of an abrasive management style. A string of gaffes were mercilessly highlighted by the conservative media.
Some Democrats have whispered that Biden might have stepped aside before now if he was convinced that Harris could beat Trump. Those rumours have added to suspicion among her allies that Biden loyalists are trying to save the president by warning undecided Democrats that ditching him would leave them saddled with a candidate who cannot win in November.
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One poll last month found that only a third of voters believe Harris would win a presidential election, underscoring fears that America is simply not ready to elect a black woman to the highest office. But her poll numbers have surged since the debate, as the prospect of her running becomes a realistic possibility. One poll this week showed her leading Trump by 42 per cent to 41 per cent.
That rise reflects the polarised political landscape. Everyone at the rally in Greensboro, whether they wanted Biden to drop out or not, said they would ultimately vote for whoever the Democrats nominate against Trump. Less certain is whether Harris could win over the moderate Republican and independent swing voters who deserted Trump in 2020 and hold the keys to the White House in November.
Trump and his allies have already launched pre-emptive attacks on Harris. In a clip posted on his Truth Social platform a week ago, Trump heaped scorn on her, noting that she failed in her run for the 2020 Democratic nomination before the first ballot was even cast. “She’s so bad. She’s so pathetic. She’s just so f***ing bad,” the former president said.
In a sure sign that he is now taking Harris seriously, Trump has begun testing mocking nicknames for the vice-president, spawning a string of online memes after he dubbed her “Laffin’ Kamala”. His allies have also revived sexist slurs that marred the 2020 campaign, when the conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh claimed she had “slept her way” into politics.
That smear has already been mobilised on social media. Merchandise with crude insults about Harris were commonplace at Trump rallies even before the debate.
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Back in Greensboro, however, there was confidence that Trump’s attacks would backfire, repulsing female voters and galvanising Harris. “Trump will try to degrade her. We know what he thinks about women,” Wooden said. “But I believe she can take it. She is strong, she is resilient, she can stand her ground and do what needs to be done.”
