2024 Debate: Kamala Harris shines as a possible replacement for Biden

By Nia-Malika Henderson

One person won debate night. It wasn’t President Joe Biden, who fumbled his way through 90 minutes, stoking more concerns about his age and causing a full-on panic among many Democrats. It wasn’t former President Donald Trump, who lied his way through 90 minutes, underscoring his character flaws and unfitness to lead. The winner of debate night was Vice President Kamala Harris.
 

Tasked with the very hard job of spinning a disastrous debate performance and selling the Democratic brand, Harris met the moment, emerging as a better spokesperson for Biden and a possible option should Democrats seriously rethink him as the top of the ticket and move to replace him. 

In a roughly 10-minute conversation with Anderson Cooper on CNN, Harris was sure-footed, concise, forceful and charismatic. She was the Harris with star power, the kind that catapulted her to the vice presidency.  

“I’m not going to spend all night with you talking about the last 90 minutes when I’ve been watching the last three-and-a-half years of performance,” Harris said, arguing that it’s the day-to-day meetings with world and party leaders and fighting for average Americans that matter.

In other words, it is the quotidian job of governing and not the performative public aspects of the presidency.

She conceded that Biden got off to a slow start but finished strong, and in many ways, Harris could have been talking about her tenure as vice president. Embattled in the first months on the job after fumbling some interviews, Harris has more recently been the Biden campaign’s best surrogate, courting everyone from CEOs to comedian D.L. Hughley.  

Republicans have made a point of elevating Harris as a sort of boogeyman, arguing that a vote for Biden is really a vote for her. The Biden campaign should lean in on this, elevating Harris at every turn. Harris can do something Biden couldn’t. She can stand toe-to-toe with Trump on a debate stage and skewer him, just as she did as a prosecutor and as a senator in viral committee hearing exchanges. She can channel and articulate the rage of women who now live in a country where it is seen as a victory that pregnant women in Idaho can get emergency medical care. And she can shore up Biden where he is weak — among younger voters and voters of color who have soured on him.  

As a candidate, Biden said he would be a bridge to the next generation. Most voters understood that to mean he would be a one-term president and then pass the baton to Harris. Now is the time for him to make good on his pledge. Perhaps it doesn’t mean that he steps aside — it’s a long shot, but it’s still a possible scenario. But it means that the Democratic bench, which is substantial and includes people like California Governor Gavin Newsom and Senator Raphael Warnock, must play a bigger role. And Harris, who knows Biden’s record best of all, must take the lead on this effort.

Yes, there is baggage there — some of it self-inflicted. And there is still the issue of America’s discomfort with women leaders. There is that ill-defined “likability” litmus test that is reserved only for women and especially difficult for women of color to pass. But Harris has grown tremendously and could clearly do the job's public and private performance aspects, unlike Biden. Harris is everything that Biden isn’t. A nimble, young, sharp, multiracial woman.   

“There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country,” Biden said as a candidate while campaigning with younger Democrats, including Harris. 

He was right then, and he is right now. They are the future. And they must be out front, even if it’s only to get him over the finish line and take it from there.