July 12, 2024
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Harris a Better Candidate Than Biden? Not so Fast
After President Joe Biden’s string of political liabilities – most visibly captured at the last presidential debate – the Democratic elite are scrambling to determine whether to lock in behind Biden and force the American people to accept it, or shuttle him aside.
As the New York Times recently reported, Biden strategists are quietly testing an alternative in the form of placing Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, to directly oppose Trump. If Biden would be removed from the ticket altogether remains unclear.
There appears to be some renewed appetite for replacing Biden with Harris, but is she the best choice? A recent poll from the firm Bendixen & Amandi, Inc. has been covered by the media this week because of its finding that Harris could beat Trump by a single percentage point. The poll found Harris beating Trump 42 percent to 41 percent, with 12 percent undecided and a mere 3 percent going third-party.
How does that poll stack up to other independent opinion polls? Polling placing Harris directly against Trump is sparce, but the few recent national polls available show Harris and Biden losing at nearly the same level to Trump. A March Fox News poll from this spring shows Trump beating Harris by six points and Biden by five, while a June poll from Data for Progress found Trump beating both Harris and Biden by three points.
What is more, Harris’ favorability ratings have been consistently bleak among key coalitions of swing voters. While favorability is not a direct correlation to electability, it is worth noting how bad Harris’ approval rating remains.
The latest YouGov survey from early July has Harris eighteen points in the negative nationwide, with 55 percent of Americans giving her a negative approval rating to 37 percent who give her a positive one. Among those who view Harris unfavorably, the wide majority (44 percent) view her very unfavorably, indicating there is minimal room for persuasion among those who view her negatively.
Among whites, Harris is 28 points in the negative, 61percent to 33 percent, and among Hispanics she is 14 points in the negative, 50 percent to 36 percent. Among Gen X voters, Harris is 20 points in the negative, 58 percent to 38 percent, and among voters over 65 she is 25 points in the negative, 61 percent to 36 percent. Harris also does poorly with Millennials and is underwater by 16 points.
Middle income voters dislike Harris more than lower- and upper-income voters do, giving her an approval rating that is 24 points in the negative, 60 percent to 36 percent. Harris polls particularly badly among independents and is a full 35 points in the negative with this group, 60 percent to 25 percent.
A February Morning Consult poll also found that by a fourteen point margin, Americans said if Biden were unable to fulfill the duties of the presidency, they would not trust Harris to do so. While it is a slim margin, what stands out is the vast share of the country who places almost no trust in Harris, compared to those who place a great deal of trust in her. A full 42% of the country says they don’t trust Harris “much at all” to handle the duties of the presidency, compared to just 26% who trust Harris “a lot”.
The poll also found that large coalitions of would-be Democrat voters are very weary of Harris. For instance, college-educated voters who generally skew Democrat distrust Harris’ ability to handle the White House strongly. A full 40% of college-educated Americans say they do not trust Harris “much at all” while just 24% trust her “a lot”. Upper income voters, again a group which skews Democrat, trust Harris “not much at all” by seven points, 39% to 32%.
Some may argue these views are in flux, considering Biden’s alarming performance at the first and only presidential debate of the election season which revealed the reality conservatives have known for years. A portion of Democrat-leaning voters who saw just how inept Biden appeared may be outright scared into reconsidering Harris, simply because supporting Biden is unthinkable.
However, the argument that Harris is at the core “more electable” is not a strong one. Perhaps with the right Vice President she could raise her odds. But this still leaves the issue of encouraging – or forcing – Biden to stop aside, something he appears unwilling to do. Harris is far from a great solution in terms of electability, at least as views stand now.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/07/harris-a-better-candidate-than-biden-not-so-fast/
Video: The Fallen 13: Biden’s Lies Uncovered
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdIezkiyBG8
Philip Wegmann: Stumbling but Defiant Biden Survives Press Conference
By Philip Wegmann
Joe Biden called Donald Trump his vice president, said he was “following the advice of my commander in chief,” and vowed going forward as both a candidate and the leader of the free world to “pace myself a little more.”
Speaking at a press conference wrapping up a NATO summit in Washington, the 81-year-old president also denounced his critics, ably defended his foreign and domestic policy record, and insisted “the gravity of the situation” requires that he remain the 2024 Democratic standard-bearer.
President Biden’s first solo press conference this year was a mix of forceful defiance and head-scratching non-sequiturs, a metaphor perhaps for his presidency. After a disastrous June 27 debate performance against Trump, it was billed as a make-or-break moment. And yet, in a little less than an hour, he may have done just enough to survive.
Democrats were openly despairing that the octogenarian would endanger not only the White House but their chances in races down-ballot across the country. The Biden answer: Judge me by my accomplishments, not my verbal performance. “If I slow down and can’t get the job done, that’s a sign I shouldn’t be doing it,” he said at the end of a three-day NATO meeting marking the 75th anniversary of the alliance, “but there’s no indication of that yet, none.”
Teleprompters flanked the lectern when Biden walked onstage, and he read prepared remarks to defend his foreign policy vision and tout an American economy on the rise. Then those teleprompters were electronically lowered, descending out of view of the president, and he met the press on his own. The task before him was to calm fears as much as it was to throttle dissent.
Biden is not stepping aside because he believes he is “the most qualified person to run for president.” He beat former President Trump once, he vowed, “and I will beat him again.”
He is not overly concerned with the Chicken Little routine on Capitol Hill because “the idea that senators and congressmen running for office worry about the ticket is not unusual.” Nor are his sights solely set on winning. He has a second-term agenda in mind. “I'm not in this for my legacy,” he said. “I'm in this to complete the job I started.”
And in this way the beleaguered president survived a press conference. Alternately whispering and at one point yelling, he didn’t hit anything close to a home run. He didn’t entirely strike out, either. Instead, Biden attempted to meet the scrutiny of the current moment when Democrats, who once whispered their fears about his mental acuity, now openly speculate about whether he can win the election, let alone do the work required of a president.
Not everyone was convinced. Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, released a statement moments after the presser wrapped up praising the president’s record in office but calling on him to step aside nonetheless.
One news conference is not likely to preserve his presidency. Biden will face regular tests from now until November. Indignities, too: The oldest president in U.S. history was asked about his bedtime routine, specifically reporting that he has admitted in private that he needs to get more sleep. In prime-time remarks carried live by every broadcast and cable network, Biden litigated his schedule.
Reporting that said he needed to be in bed by 8 p.m. “was not true,” he said. Instead, rather than working until midnight, he explained, it might make more sense for him to start and end his day earlier. Regardless, the president insisted, he has been going “full bore.”
“I love my staff, but they add things. They add things all the time at the very end,” Biden said of his schedule. “I'm catching hell from my wife for that.”
A lingering cold plus jet lag has been the enduring White House explanation for his poor showing at the debate. Biden had to offer another explanation on his feet earlier in the day when he called Ukrainian President Zelensky “President Putin.” There were audible gasps from the audience of assembled world leaders and the assembled media. “President Putin? We’re going to beat President Putin,” Biden said, attempting a recovery. “President Zelensky. I’m so focused on beating Putin.”
Ukraine’s president grimaced, shook his head, and said jokingly, “I’m better.” His American counterpart replied, “You are a hell of a lot better.”
It was another example of the fear Democrats experience daily. “We collectively hold our breath or turn down the volume whenever we see the president, whom we respect, walk off Air Force One or walk back to a mic to answer an unscripted question,” George Clooney, the movie star and Democratic donor, wrote in a New York Times op-ed only one day earlier.
Republicans have another fear. They worry that Biden will self-destruct so quickly that they won’t have the chance to steamroll him. They would rather run against a weak president than an unknown alternative, a source close to the presumptive nominee confirmed to RealClearPolitics after the press conference wrapped. Their assessment late Thursday evening was that Biden had done just enough in prime time to limp along until the November election.
Biden made clear that he will not step aside for Vice President Harris, though he praised her as “a hell of a prosecutor” before entering national politics and heralded “the way she's handled the issue of freedom of women's bodies.”
Would he step aside if his campaign could demonstrate that Harris had a better chance of defeating Trump, a man Biden describes as an existential threat to democracy itself? “No,” he replied, “unless they came back and said there's no way you can win, me. No one's saying that. No poll says that.”
This bit of defiance, though clarifying, came just after he called Harris “Vice President Trump.”
He cracked the door open to a challenge at the convention, saying that delegates were “free to do whatever they want.” He seemed to tie his fate to the democratic process, even as his campaign has done nearly everything possible to smother challengers either during the primary or afterward.
More than anything, Biden cast himself as an inevitability. “If all of a sudden, I show up at the convention, everybody says we want somebody else, that's the democratic process,” he said, before quickly adding that such a possibility “is not going to happen.” He misspeaks. He’d like to go to bed earlier. He can also sometimes rise to the occasion and defend his record. Democrats, Biden was saying, are stuck with him, gaffes and all.
To view online: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/07/12/stumbling_but_defiant_biden_survives_press_conference__151251.html