Democrats on Capitol Hill and across the nation swiftly threw their support behind Vice President Harris’s presidential run this week, racing against the clock to coalesce around a new candidate following President Biden’s sudden withdrawal from the race.
The rapid enthusiasm surrounding the vice president — in the form of both endorsements and massive fundraising hauls — underscores the sentiment among many Democrats that Harris is Biden’s strongest replacement at this point in the race.
Here’s why Democrats rallied so quickly around the vice president.
As Biden’s vice president, Harris already has some baked-in advantages, including the fact most Americans already know who she is. Although Harris will be on the campaign trail for only a few months, her experience in the White House gives her a credibility that makes her a “natural choice,” political strategists said.
“Vice President Harris really has performed on a national and international stage for the last three-and-a-half years in a way that’s really unique,” Joel Goldstein, a leading scholar on the vice presidency, told The Hill.
Harris can tout the administration’s accomplishments and lay out her record with convincing evidence, while also bringing a fresh face to the top of the ticket.
“One of the roles that she’s sort of embraced has been a spokesperson for issues and programs that matter to Democratic voters or supporters of the administration,” Goldstein said.
“She was part of a ticket that 14 million voters already cast a ballot for, so she’s known to the voter,” political strategist Basil Smikle added.
Harris has faced growing attention from the country in recent weeks after Biden’s disastrous debate performance fueled conversations about replacements for the ticket, Goldstein noted.
Harris was also no stranger to politics before the White House, serving as a California senator from 2017 to 2021 and launching a presidential campaign in 2020.
With less than four months before the election, the likely access to the millions of dollars remaining from Biden’s campaign could prove vital to Harris’s fast-track bid. Other Democratic presidential contenders would essentially need to start from scratch with a fraction of the time.
Several Democratic donors have already told The Hill that Harris is the most seamless choice just more than 100 days before the election.
“She’s already on the ticket. She’s been tested. And we really don’t have the luxury of time here," one donor told The Hill. “We’re heading into August and ideally this process would have happened months ago so we’re not building the plane as we fly it.”
Many campaign finance lawyers say Biden’s war chest is rightfully due to Harris because she was listed as a candidate alongside the president on its FEC paperwork.
Black voters are a crucial voting coalition and one of the Democratic Party’s most loyal bases.
Harris presents an opportunity for Democrats to reenergize and engage with this base, which has expressed increasing frustrations with the direction of the country. In particular, Biden saw an erosion of support among Black men.
Smikle argued there is a “renewed interest” in the party for Harris.
“As someone who is of Jamaican and South Asian ancestry, who has really rooted herself in the Black community here, I think has, I think will … already energized a lot of voters,” he said.
In a display of support, more than 40,000 Black women joined a virtual meeting Sunday organized by the group #WinWithBlackWomen and raised more than $1.5 million for the Harris campaign just hours after Biden withdrew. Meanwhile, Alpha PAC, a Black male-led organization, endorsed Harris on Monday.
At 59, Harris is 22 years younger than Biden, who at 81 is the oldest sitting U.S. president and faced mounting concerns over his mental fitness.
Harris’s age could boost the youth vote, political strategists told The Hill, relieving alarm about Gen Z in particular feeling apathetic about the 2024 race.
Voters of Tomorrow (VOT), a left-leaning organization focused on American youth voters, endorsed Harris less than an hour after Biden dropped out, calling her “one of Gen Z’s fiercest champions.”
Jessica Siles, VOT’s deputy press secretary, told The Hill a lot of young voters can relate to the vice president.
“I think a lot of young people and people across the United States can see themselves in Vice President Kamala Harris. I think she is a woman of many firsts and has lived a trailblazing career and I think it’s a representation that we haven’t always had,” Siles said, adding Harris’s priorities “align” with young voters.
Harris’s resonance with the youth is already being seen on social media, through viral internet memes, several of which relate to an anecdote she told about her mother and a coconut tree last year.
Harris and Democrats can now point to former President Trump, 78, as the oldest candidate and will ease young voter concerns about having too old of a leader, Smikle told The Hill.
Democrats and Harris are seizing on her experience as a former prosecutor, contrasting her role in law with Trump, who was convicted of 34 criminal counts in a hush money case earlier this year and faces various other criminal and civil legal battles.
Meeting with campaign staff on Monday, Harris, California’s former attorney general, noted she “took on perpetrators of all kinds,” and she “knows Donald Trump’s type.”
Several Democratic lawmakers who endorsed Harris used the “prosecutor vs. felon” argument when backing the vice president.
