Kamala Harris’s campaign to be Joe Biden’s running mate has stalled.
Inside Washington, some see Harris, 55, as a strong choice. Biden has stoked such chatter by having her at big fundraisers and other campaign efforts. Pundits say she’s job-ready because she has federal experience and agrees with the presumptive nominee on most issues. Biden values both qualities highly.
But she is being overshadowed even though police brutality dominates the news, and Harris has personal experience with both criminal justice reform and racial injustice.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has emerged as an increasingly likely No. 2 pick since she told protesters and looters ransacking her city that they couldn’t “out concern” her, a black mother of four children.
Florida Rep. Val Demings is another rising prospect for Biden’s veep pick, although she, like Harris, is hampered by her long police career. She was Orlando’s police chief for three-and-a-half years.
News media, having reported the flop of her presidential campaign, are giving Harris short shrift, although she is a regular on TV, drafted the Justice in Policing Act and anti-lynching bill, and made a surprise appearance at Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C.
Harris’s problem is that she became too well known after 10 months running for president. She lacks novelty value despite her multiracial background, like President Barack Obama’s, of immigrant parents. She’s just one of 100 senators, whereas Bottoms is chief executive of a big city where she was born and raised.
Harris’s tenure as California’s attorney general, San Francisco’s district attorney, and county prosecutor weighs down her chances. She was plagued on the campaign trail by the blunt accusation, “she’s a cop.” And she’s being asked all over again about her claim to have been about a “progressive prosecutor” now that she’s a possible running mate for Biden. Biden needs help on law-and-order issues because of his record pushing the now-hated 1994 crime bill.
“We need to judge people based on their records, and we need to judge them based on what they are prepared to do now and going toward,” Harris told New York City-based radio host Ebro Darden Tuesday morning.
Her supporters take heart from the fact that she was also vetted during the primary.
Victor Dutchuk, former chairman of the West Des Moines Democrats, endorsed Harris early, and he told the Washington Examiner she wasn’t being opportunistic or “jumping” cynically on to the criminal justice bandwagon.
“This is something that she has felt needed to be fixed for a long time,” he said. “Now, with respect to being overshadowed, the way this whole thing is playing out, it’s more of a localized response. We’re not having a whole lot of media attention on what’s happening in Congress at the federal level because the voices of mayors and governors are so more profound now.”
Dutchuk hopes Harris stays the course and added that she ticks the right boxes, being a woman, of mixed race and, being a generation younger than Biden, able to take over “at any moment or in four years.”
Harris has avoided discussing whether Biden should pick a black woman to appease Democrats who want more minority candidates on the ballot. Her quiet approach is the polar opposite of Stacey Abrams, who has been thrusting herself forward since she lost her bid to be Georgia governor in 2018.
“It’s not that simple. I just want him to win. He has to win,” Harris told The View on Monday.
For Christopher Hahn, Aggressive Progressive Podcast host and former Democratic consultant, November’s general election will hinge on turnout and an energized base. He specifically pointed to black Democrats in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin who voted in 2012 but didn’t in 2016.
Hahn, however, issued a reminder that Biden won’t make a decision until August, and there will be many political developments before that.
“Kamala Harris has been in the conversation since before she was even out of contention as a presidential candidate, and she’s also excellent at going on offensive,” he said. “She’s got a broad enough name recognition. She’s got a broad enough resume. And I would really like to see her debate Mike Pence and chop him to shreds.”
He continued, “I think that Sen. Harris is still a very likely nominee.”
