Vice presidents rarely make much difference but Harris doesn’t help Biden at all | Opinion

Running mates rarely make a difference in presidential elections. For all the care that past campaigns have taken to “balance” tickets — tempering a New England Catholic with a southern Protestant in 1960, for instance — people vote the top of the ticket. But they will take a broader view if they worry that a high-mileage presidential contender may not finish a term. Some will balk if they doubt the running mate’s ability to step in.

The 2008 election was a case in point. John McCain, a 72-year-old senator, chose an unknown and lightly vetted governor to join his campaign. Sarah Palin needed only a few televised interviews to convince Americans she wasn’t presidential material. One study estimated that she cost McCain two million votes.

As 2024 approaches, Democrats hear echoes. Joe Biden, sporting an odometer reading in the low 80s and approval ratings in the low 40s, could use a popular, confidence-inspiring lieutenant in his reelection campaign. Instead he has Kamala Harris, who polls worse than he does and inspires so little confidence that many Democrats are calling for her replacement.

If the vice president is learning on the job, the only evidence thus far is a Bidenesque tendency to utter baffling, diagram-defying sentences in front of microphones. But no matter – she’s on the ticket to stay. Dropping her would oblige the president to spend the next 18 months explaining why the biggest decision he made in 2020 was wrong.

Shed no tears for Joe. He had every reason to expect extra scrutiny for his running mate when he proposed becoming the country’s first octogenarian president. He also had an obvious reason to avoid Harris: her failure to connect with Democratic primary voters in 2019. A year of campaigning netted her single-digit support and an empty war chest, and she quit the race before the Iowa caucuses.

If her own party’s voters weren’t interested in a possible Harris presidency, why would other voters see it differently in a general election? Why would Biden implicitly ask them to? He wasn’t constrained by his pledge to pick a Black woman. Rep. Val Demings of Florida and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, among others, were available. Like Harris, they boasted strong resumes. Unlike her, they had never bombed on the national stage. Biden passed up candidates who might conceivably wilt in the spotlight for one who actually had.

His error didn’t hurt him in 2020, when Trump fatigue overrode all else. But in 2024 Biden fatigue will come into play, with or without Trump in the picture. So too could economic troubles, a slog in Ukraine or an invasion of Taiwan. Whatever the year brings, the president will ask voters to believe that he’s on top of events and can stay on top of them to age 86. If he can’t, his second-in-command, whom voters do not trust to back him up, will back him up.

No wonder people keep telling pollsters they want options. The Democrats’ original pitch — a “transition” president followed by a new generation of leaders — at least seemed plausible. With effort, one could imagine Biden as an adequate four-year placeholder. If Americans didn’t warm to his heir apparent, others could vie for their affection in the 2024 primary.

Now the primary will be a formality. The Republican script writes itself: of course they’ll say Biden is too old for the job; a majority of the country already thinks so. Of course they’ll talk about his veep becoming a back-door president; she’s been turned down once at the front door.

Kamala Harris lacks the magic necessary to transition from ugly duckling to beautiful swan. But her boss decided to run for reelection, and now she’s an albatross. The best hope for this ramshackle partnership is the right opponent – a grifter, a demagogue, or a coup plotter. Maybe Republicans will come to the rescue.

Michael Smith is a freelance opinion writer in Georgetown, Kentucky.