First, Harris is critical to turning out not only African American voters but young voters as well. One need only consider the rousing reception she received at Hampton University, a historically Black institution in Virginia, last week, on her first stop on her “Fight for Our Freedoms College Tour.” A raucous crowd welcomed her at North Carolina A&T State University the next day. She will travel to Reading Area Community College in Pennsylvania and Morehouse College in Atlanta and make stops in swing states such as Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona. To hammer home the issues that touch these voters personally — guns, abortion, LGBTQ+ rights and climate change — the Biden campaign is smartly deploying her now, not as an afterthought in the final weeks of the campaign.
Young voters, who, as a group, are more diverse than older voters, are essential to a Democratic victory in 2024. And it’s not true that they cannot be engaged, particularly with the help of an energetic vice president — in this case, the first woman, the first African American and the first Asian American to hold the post. As the American Independent reported, the progressive data firm Catalist found that in 2022, “especially in heavily contested races, millennial and Generation Z voters, defined collectively in the report as voters born after 1981, broke decisively for Democrats in even greater numbers than they did in 2018.”
Even mainstream outlets, albeit grudgingly, have noted Harris’s increased effectiveness.
Moreover, a critical issue on which women and young voters are engaged — abortion rights — has been directly in Harris’s wheelhouse. She has revved up the base in multiple speeches, powerfully tying abortion to freedom. She engages frequently with pro-choice groups. Booting from the ticket someone identified with perhaps the Democrats’ most electrifying issue (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and the threat of a national abortion ban) would undercut a signature plank, one that many Democratic candidates will feature front and center in their campaigns.
Second, the critics calling for her ouster seem clueless about the firestorm that would ensue among the most loyal Democratic voting group, Black voters (especially Black women), should she be bounced off the ticket. Take a groundbreaking, historic figure off the ticket because Republicans have demonized her? That’s asking for a revolt that would swallow the campaign message and permanently damage the party.
The concern that she wasn’t as popular as Biden in the 2020 primaries with African American voters is misplaced. Yes, Biden’s decades-long relationship with the African American community was unmatched at a time voters outside of California hardly knew Harris, but to claim she is not embraced and admired now among Black voters is to ignore reality. (Women of color on shows such as “The View” seem to have a better sense of key Democratic constituencies.)
And if the critics offer to find another African American woman to replace her — an insulting suggestion that any Black woman will do — they surely cannot expect to mollify Democrats or satisfy skeptics about a new, untested vice president. Perhaps the insufficiently diverse political media is out of touch with an increasingly non-White electorate.
And finally, there is a reason no president since Franklin D. Roosevelt has swapped out a running mate. Such an action signals discord and regret about a president’s first major decision and has virtually no upside. Few, if any, voters decide to vote against a presidential candidate because of the running mate. (Sarah Palin in 2008 was a rare exception.) It’s hard to imagine a voter who, after assessing Biden’s record and, yes, his age, would decide simply because of Harris to vote … wait?! … for four-times-indicted former president Donald Trump and whatever MAGA running mate he picks? It strains credulity. (And to the extent that Harris-skeptical voters would opt for some sure-to-lose third-party contender, they would have to be comfortable with the risk that Trump would win.)
The second-guessing-Harris chatter is part of a larger troubling phenomenon. As Margaret Sullivan wrote last week, “The big problem is that the mainstream media wants to be seen as nonpartisan — a reasonable goal — and bends over backwards to accomplish this. If this means equalizing an anti-democratic candidate with a pro-democracy candidate, then so be it.” In the futile attempt to curry favor with Trump voters (who are unlikely to leave the cocoon of right-wing media anyway) and drive clicks, mainstream outlets no doubt will generate more “Biden has problems, too” fodder of which the Harris sniping is only one example. (Others include fixation on Hunter Biden, treating the Biden impeachment as a real problem for the president and obsessing over early Biden poll numbers while giving short shrift to his achievements.)
Savvy news consumers should demand more from the media, especially when the fate of democracy rests in the balance. It’s the media’s job to make sure the consequences of electing a habitual liar and the instigator of an attempted coup are clear. As Sullivan wrote, “The stakes really are enormously high. It’s our job to make sure that those potential consequences — not the horse race, not Biden’s age, not a scam impeachment — are front and center for US citizens before they go to the polls.” That means covering the actual ticket, not the ticket dreamed up to stir the pot.
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