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Are Republicans worried about running against Vice President Kamala Harris?
The short answer: No. They don’t even see it as a possibility.
Wednesday dawned over Milwaukee as delegates returned for day three of the Republican National Convention (RNC) — the party’s four-day nominating event — and were met with a badly-needed respite from the muggy heat which had hung over the city for the first half of the week. And as the party prepared to hear the first address from their vice presidential nominee, JD Vance, it was clear that GOP delegates had no expectations of Vance’s upcoming debate opponent being elevated to the top of the ticket. Or anyone else, either.
Major figures in and around Trumpworld who spoke to The Independent laughed off the prospect of Biden stepping aside, which they said he’d never do. And none saw any possibility in the idea that the criticism coming from the president’s party would grow loud enough to force him out.
Larry Elder, a conservative radio host in California who challenged Governor Gavin Newsom in a recall election and lost, was adamant that the Democrats in Washington privately raising concerns about the president’s diminished faculties “are not going to” force Biden out.
“They’re stuck with Biden. If Biden doesn’t want to go, you can’t drag him out. He’s got the delegates to win,” said Elder.
Elder, who himself is Black, added that he believes Black women who make up a key part of the Democrats’ base would stay home if Biden stepped aside but failed to engineer Kamala Harris winning the party’s nomination.
“If the successor is anybody other than Kamala Harris, Black female voters, who are the most loyal part of the Democratic base, will be livid,” he said.
Another one of those Republicans who dismissed the possibility of Kamala Harris or another Democrat accepting the nomination in lieu of Joe Biden was former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The former California congressman appeared at the RNC on day two, where he would end up clashing with long-time rival Representative Matt Gaetz in full view of the media and convention delegates.
McCarthy told The Independent that “President Trump just wins” if Biden steps aside; but said that wouldn’t happen.
“I think President Trump wins either way,” he added.
Polling is less clear on the issue. It has registered a clear competitive head-to-head matchup between both Biden and Harris in national polling, while swing state polling (which actually matters) is, as always, even murkier. One thing is definitely true, though: polls are a snapshot in time, and recent surveys of Biden’s support both at the national and state levels shows a serious downward trend. The incumbent is now down by various margins in polls of states he will need to win the election: Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
Other states, like Florida where the statewide Democratic Party chapter is undergoing a rebuilding process, seem distantly out of reach.
But Joe Biden is not showing any signs — yet — of heeding the calls for him to step aside. Still, the tide continues to turn against him; while many had predicted the calls would die down, in actuality the incumbent president seems to be facing a full-scale rebellion from frontline Democrats being shepherded and implicitly blessed by none other than Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats’ most prominent congressional leader of the past few decades.
The leaks are not getting any less damaging, either. On Tuesday evening, as delegates listened to the final speeches of the night from Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and Dr Ben Carson, Puck News broke a story revealing an episode from Saturday when the president, during a call with a purple-district Democrat who had served in the Army Rangers, grew angry and began shouting at the congressman. Biden did so, reportedly, because he blamed him for his campaign message’s failure to land with voters — and even went as far as taking an apparent shot at the Bronze Star the congressman, Representative Jason Crow, earned during his military service.
“Name me a foreign leader who thinks I’m not the most effective leader in the world on foreign policy. Tell me!” Biden shouted at Crow in the audio recording obtained by Puck, before adding: “Tell me who did something that you’ve never done with your Bronze Star like my son!”
Facing unprecedented dismay and a morbid outlook on November, Biden is now heading into the general election in one of the weakest positions of any Democratic candidate in decades.
Strategist and pollster Kellyanne Conway echoed that fact in an interview with The Independent on Tuesday before giving her thoughts on Harris ascending to the top of the ticket. Biden, she claimed, was a guaranteed loss — one that Democrats on the hill fully see coming, but have yet been unable to stop.
“I think that Chuck Schumer sees the writing on the wall,” she said. “He’s gonna want to protect these down-ballot races and start telling everybody to [vote for a] check and balance on Donald Trump…That means these Republican candidates in the swing seats, I hope they’ll really start laying out their plan and their vision and take the case right to these Democrats.”
“[Harris]’s got even more controversial statements from the Democratic primary debate stage in 2020. And everybody would go back and comb through those comments, which apparently didn’t earn her a single electoral vote, a single delegate from the Democratic primary and caucus race,” Conway added. “She left that race with as many electoral votes as you and I had: zero.”
