WASHINGTON — With President Joe Biden’s announcement Sunday that he’s abandoning his reelection campaign, the Democrats’ freakout over the top of the ticket is over — at least for now.
Vulnerable down-ballot Democrats have rallied around Vice President Kamala Harris as their party’s nominee, saying she will provide a jolt of enthusiasm that will boost Democrats across the board.
“Vice President Harris is more than ready to unify our party and make a sharp, determined case for what’s on the ballot in November,’’ Rep. Matt Cartwright, a Democrat representing a battleground district in northeastern Pennsylvania, said in a statement. “She is a fierce advocate for working families, women’s rights, and our democratic values. I’m proud to support her candidacy for President of the United States.”
Rep. Gabe Vasquez, a freshman from New Mexico facing a rematch against the Republican he ousted, Yvette Herrell, in a race rated Toss-up by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales, said Harris is “the leader who can bridge the divide in our country & move our nation forward.”
Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola told reporters she doesn’t typically make endorsements, so she hadn’t formally backed Harris, but said she supports her “as a human being.”
Democratic challengers competing against GOP incumbents or in open seats are also coalescing around Harris. “I know Kamala Harris can win this election and be a strong leader for our country,’’ said Democrat Dave Min, who is running for an open battleground seat in Southern California.
Ever since Biden’s stumbling performance in a June 27 debate with former President Donald Trump uncorked long-simmering fears about the Democratic president’s mental acuity, swing-district Democrats worried that he would hamper the party’s chances of holding on to the Senate and retaking the House.
California Rep. Ted Lieu, the vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus, told reporters that the Democratic base “is very energized.”
“Just the fundraising numbers are astounding,” he said. “You’re seeing energy through the entire Democratic Party grassroots and rank-and-file members and it’s very exciting to see.”
Republicans say Harris has many of the same vulnerabilities that Biden had, apart from questions about age. Immigration was already a key part of the GOP battle plan, and the potential for Harris at the top of the ticket led to many news releases like one from Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, which said likely Democratic rival Debbie Mucarsel-Powell “endorsed Border Czar Kamala Harris’ open borders agenda that has led to the worst border crisis in American history.”
On Monday, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who leads the House Republican Conference, said she will introduce a resolution to condemn Harris’ role as Biden’s “border czar” adding that she “and every elected Democrat owns this border crisis.”
A review by FactCheck.org found that Harris never held the title of “border czar.” She was appointed by Biden in 2021 to lead an effort to “improve security, governance, human rights, and economic conditions” in Central America named the “Root Causes Strategy.” The strategy consisted of several actions intended to “address the root causes of migration” specifically from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, FactCheck reported.
Rep. Richard Hudson, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the change at the top of the ticket doesn’t make a difference in Republican messaging. Harris would also be a drag on down-ballot races, he said.
“Republicans are on the ascendency because the voters have decided that Biden-Harris policies have made them less safe and less prosperous, and so nothing’s changed,” he said.
‘San Francisco radical’
The National Republican Senatorial Committee released a memo Monday laying out arguments GOP candidates can use to attack “San Francisco radical Kamala Harris.” Those critiques include portraying the former prosecutor as a soft-on-crime liberal, by dredging up old interviews of her calling for an end to the filibuster to pass the Green New Deal and her 2019 call for single-payer health care coverage to replace private insurance.
The memo also pokes fun of Harris’ “habit of laughing at inappropriate moments” and desire to ban plastic straws.
“Kamala Harris creates a strong down-ballot opportunity for Republicans. The case against Joe Biden relied in part on the fact that he was mentally unfit to hold office, which was difficult to translate down-ballot. Kamala Harris owns the Biden Administration’s baggage and is an avowed radical. An endorsement of Kamala Harris is an endorsement of her extreme agenda, and Harris is arguably a bigger threat to Democrats’ Senate majority than Joe Biden,’’ read the memo drafted by Jason Thielman, the NRSC’s executive director.
GOP campaign strategists say they will also be combing through Harris’ record when she ran for president in 2020. “The DCCC just signaled to their candidates to embrace every extreme San Francisco liberal policy that Kamala Harris endorsed,’’ said Will Reinert, spokesman for the NRCC, referring to his counterpart Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Whether that’s banning fracking in Pennsylvania, supporting the Kenosha rioters in Wisconsin or decriminalizing border crossings in California. It’s political suicide, and we are happy to allow Democrats to dig their own political grave.”
Harris has emerged as the Biden administration’s lead advocate for abortion access and she has traveled around the nation campaigning on reproductive rights. The GOP has been struggling to find its footing on abortion, so Harris becoming the presidential nominee could complicate that effort.
Donations increase
In the Senate, Democratic operatives have long maintained that their candidates were somewhat buffeted from the Biden headwinds. They pointed to polls showing Democratic candidates consistently outpacing their Republican opponents in key swing states, while Trump was tied with or led Biden in those same polls.
A Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee aide notes that the group tripled its cycle record for individual grassroots donations in a single day on Sunday.
In Virginia, a state where Biden beat Trump by 10 percentage points in 2020, Sen. Tim Kaine said Monday on a press call that he’d shared polling results with Biden campaign officials about the state of the presidential race, which he said some public polls had found was a “dead heat” in the state, and his bid for a third term. The Biden-Harris campaign recently made “a huge commitment” to increase staffing in Virginia, he said.
“Virginia is going to be [a] battleground and an area of focus in this race and nothing would make me happier than that,” he said. “States that are battlegrounds get attention and Virginia deserves attention.”
But Kaine, who was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2016, said Harris’ campaign will have to vet candidates for vice president faster than usual. Kaine said that the vetting process took about two months when he went through it in 2008 and 2016.
Democrats now have about four weeks.
“I have a feeling that the examination is going to be very, very searching but because of the compressed time frame, the initial list of candidates may be smaller,” Kaine said.
