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The left’s underlying motivation is the same in 2024: It’s essential that Trump lose. The difference is that, unlike four years ago, Biden and his party don’t agree on how to make that happen. For months, Biden and his team have cultivated the impression that they know how to beat the former president, and that they would. But Democrats have never been so confident. Support for Biden is driven mostly by hostility toward Trump, not enthusiasm for him.
And then Thursday’s debate happened. Rather than easing concerns about his candidacy, Biden strengthened them. The divisions between the president and his party over November have become open wounds that may heal, but may already be turning gangrenous.
The question on many Democrats’ minds is who will replace Biden as the party’s nominee. Many are simply groping around in the dark, hoping for a scenario in which Biden magically disappears from the ballot and a “popular Democrat” that all Democrats agree on and that a majority of voters want as president magically stands in his place.
Realistically, the only other Democratic candidate for president in 2024 would be Kamala D. Harris. For that to happen, Biden would have to step aside, which seems more likely than it did earlier this week, but is still unlikely. The idea that this would lead to a sophisticated, calm discussion about his successor and bring the party together is naive. Harris is the vice president and has already been chosen by her party to be the next president. She will be the nominee unless she also chooses to run for president.
Although Harris has received negative media coverage during her time as vice president, polls show her approval rating is about the same as Biden’s and she has some advantages Biden doesn’t have.
Pollsters have only sporadically asked voters who they supported in a Harris-Trump matchup, for obvious reasons: it would mean wasting polling questions (and therefore money) on an unlikely hypothesis. But some data from a February New York Times-Siena College poll and a November Fox News poll offer some insight.
The question isn’t how Harris fare against Trump, but that’s easy to answer: Trump leads Harris by six points in the Times poll and by five points in the Fox News poll. What’s more important is how that compares to Biden’s numbers, who are also four points behind Trump in those polls, meaning Harris is only one or two points behind Biden in polls with a much larger margin of sampling error.
Looking at results among subgroups is dangerous because the numbers are necessarily small and the margin of error is large: Harris is doing worse than Biden in both polls among men who oppose Trump, but she is doing better among black voters.
There is more recent data on how favorably Messrs. Biden and Harris are viewed, including a YouGov poll conducted this week for The Economist. Both the YouGov and Times polls showed Ms. Harris receiving higher net favorability ratings than Mr. Biden among younger people and non-whites — both groups where Mr. Biden is struggling.
Of course, these polls are only approximations of what might happen. Harris’s relative name recognition is one reason why she’s not so far removed from how people view a Biden-Trump matchup. With Biden gone and Harris on the rise, that could change in unpredictable ways. For example, Harris will be criticized for being the administration’s point person on the border, but she could be a more effective voice on abortion rights.
To be fair, Harris is viewed as favorably as Biden, not necessarily significantly less favorably, in the polls. If she were the Democratic presidential nominee, she would have a clear advantage over Biden. She’s only 59 years old.
She also shares the largest advantage with Biden heading into November.
She is not Donald Trump.
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