Vice President Kamala Harris said she is “ready to serve” as the leader of the United States amid renewed concerns about President Joe Biden‘s mental capabilities.
“I am ready to serve. There’s no question about that,” Harris said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal two days before a bombshell report from special counsel Robert Hur reawakened concern over Biden’s age and mental agility as an 81-year-old leader.
Harris added that observers of the vice president “walk away fully aware of my capacity to lead.”
Hur’s report, in which he described Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory,” led to widespread consternation among Republicans and Democrats amid the high-stakes reelection campaign for Biden and his likely GOP challenger, former President Donald Trump, who is 77.
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Harris slammed Hur’s report in defense of Biden, as did several Democrats last week. “As a former prosecutor, the comments that were made by that prosecutor were gratuitous, inaccurate, and inappropriate,” she said.
Yet as Biden’s running mate, Harris’s vulnerabilities, including her high disapproval numbers and mixed political skills as vice president, have threatened her ability as Biden’s heir-in-waiting despite being a “young” 59-year-old and the nation’s first woman and black vice president.
“There was always going to be a lot of scrutiny and pressure on her in the 2024 campaign, and that moment’s here now. I think that the special counsel’s report has sort of accelerated that moment,” Jennifer Palmieri, a former Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton staffer, said.
The vice president’s national profile has risen as she becomes the face of the Biden campaign’s pivot to highlighting abortion battles across the nation — a winning strategy that mitigated losses during the 2022 midterm elections and helped the party during the 2023 off-year elections.
But other Democrats, including Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), and Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL), could be possible contenders if Biden is unable to fulfill his duties as president or serve another four years in the White House.
As of right now, it is highly unlikely that the Democrats will defenestrate Biden as their presidential nominee during the summer convention.
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Republicans, such as presidential candidate Nikki Haley, have already begun claiming that another Biden presidency would lead to a Harris presidency. In the wake of the Hur report, those attacks are sure to ramp up.
“She might be the top issue in the election,” Scott Jennings, a GOP strategist, said.
