And suddenly, history is speeding up… A month ago, an eternity ago, America was caught up in a soporific campaign for the November presidential election. Then Thursday, June 27, arrived, with its televised debate that revealed to the country what the White House had been trying to hide for months: At 81, the 46th President of the United States, Joseph Robinette Biden, had become senile and was easy prey for his Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, 78.
About two weeks later, on July 13, another dramatic turn of events: the Republican candidate miraculously escaped an attack that grazed the top of his right ear during an election rally in Pennsylvania. And a new twist on Sunday 21: the presidential candidate declared that he was giving up running for a second term. And this, just one month before the opening of the Democratic Party convention – from August 19 to 22 in Chicago – which was supposed to propel him for good towards the November 5 election. This is no longer an election campaign, it’s a Netflix series!
Of course, Joe Biden’s last-minute withdrawal has a precedent. Fifty-six years ago, in 1968, Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson also decided to throw in the towel in the final stretch. But that was in March, not July as it is today, which leaves the Democratic camp little time to reorganize itself in the face of the “Trump machine”. Above all, his withdrawal at the time in favor of Vice President Hubert Humphrey was not due to his senility or Truman’s age, but to heart problems and growing unpopularity due to the Vietnam War. Things are different today. To the point that Biden’s ability to govern is itself being called into question. Which could lead – with Netflix, anything is possible – to another twist: the early end of the Democratic president’s term, which theoretically ends on January 20, 2025.
We are not there yet. But an unprecedented phase of uncertainty is beginning. And a series of questions are being asked of American democracy. Starting with this one: who will replace Joe Biden at the drop of a hat? In the wake of his withdrawal, the president made it known that he publicly supported his vice-president, Kamala Harris. And she said she would do everything possible to unite the Democratic camp and beat Donald Trump. Easier said than done, even if she has already garnered a lot of support. “If we are to believe the polls, she is the best placed, and the best known too,” notes Alexis Buisson, author of Kamala Harris, the heiress (The Archipelago). She has the legitimacy of the vice presidency and she has easy access to the funds raised by Joe Biden, because her name appeared on the campaign documents as Biden’s running mate.”
Under fire from critics
These aren’t her only strengths. “She also scores higher than Biden with women, people of color, and young people, who are all crucial targets for the upcoming election,” Buisson continues. He adds: “Certainly, she is already well on her way to winning the Democratic nomination next month. But there is another challenge: Will she be able to impose herself on the broader public?” That is the question because, in her previous roles, she has made little impression. A senator from California from 2016 to 2020, she was not associated with any significant legislative action and was not able to build a network of friendships that would have served her well when she came under fire. “As a candidate in the Democratic primaries in 2020 against Joe Biden, Kamala Harris couldn’t even mobilize in her own state,” recalls historian Tristan Cabello of Johns Hopkins University in Washington. Vice president since 2021, she then lost interest in the only issue assigned by Joe Biden: illegal immigration. Nonchalant, it took her five months to get to the Mexican border!
Having become vice president, the Californian of Indian-Jamaican origin was supposed to consolidate the support of the black community (12% of the electorate) – which was also the reason for her designation as Biden’s running mate in 2020. But here again, her record is meager. Not only did she not “boost” the African-American electorate in the 2020 presidential election, but in recent years, it is Donald Trump who has nibbled away at “market share” in the black electorate, particularly male. According to leaks in the press, President Biden’s entourage holds Harris in low esteem. Barack Obama is not a fan either. And many elected officials from his own camp do not believe she is capable of assuming the presidential office.
“Kamala Harris will certainly not be carried by a climate of euphoria,” euphemizes Yves-Marie Péréon, author of Giving Back Power: American Presidents After the White House (Tallandier). “She is far from being an ideal choice, but given the circumstances, it is the best possible,” adds Americanist Anne Deysine, for whom “President Biden nevertheless did well to support her, to encourage the Democratic Party to unite and to warn the Federal Election Commission, so that she could benefit from the hundreds of millions of dollars collected for the presidential campaign.”
“Attitude problem”
One thing is certain: Kamala Harris has her work cut out for her to convince Americans in general and the Democratic Party in particular that she is the woman for the job. In the hours, days and weeks to come, she absolutely must “crack the armor” and reinvent herself. Because the vice president – whose famous laugh, recurrent and mechanical, masks some unknown embarrassment – has an “attitude problem”. Which, in politics, can prove fatal. “Her vulnerability is that she is not as comfortable on the campaign trail as Joe Biden”, acknowledges, in Washington, Charles Kupchan who teaches at Georgetown University. “Biden was very good at this,” continues this former adviser to Barack Obama. “He’s an ordinary man, you wanted to sit next to him at McDonald’s and chat with him. Kamala Harris, on the other hand, is less warm. She needs to make herself more accessible, more authentic in the eyes of the American voter. If I were advising the campaign, I would say that this is where her room for improvement lies.”
But Harris has a major asset up her sleeve: her notoriety. In fact, the Democratic Party is full of talented potential candidates who could run for the White House. All are governors of states as large as countries (California, Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc.) and who, as such, have experience at the head of an executive branch, which the vice-president does not have. But they also have in common the fact that they suffer from a lack of notoriety on a national scale. An almost insurmountable handicap less than a month before the Democratic convention. “At this point, the Democrats have only one thing to do: get their act together quickly! Otherwise, Donald Trump will be reelected, do you hear me?”, exclaims political scientist Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “What would be ideal is a primary campaign,” he continues. But these have already taken place and it is impossible to organize new ones.
As for the scenario of an open convention, where everything would be decided in the space of a weekend, that would be a real free-for-all. I laugh heartily every time I hear about that! People have no sense of history. We have to remember that when Democrats have the opportunity, they fight, they agitate, they quarrel; it becomes difficult to unite them. Look at the 1968 campaigns. [défaite de Humphrey]1980 [défaite de Carter] and even 1992, even if Bill Clinton was elected anyway.” For Sabato, there is no doubt: the Democrats’ only chance of victory is through the support of the entire party behind the only candidate who is asserting herself today: Kamala Harris.
The initiative will change sides
There are less than four weeks until the Democratic convention, and four months until the election. And another date is fast approaching: August 7. In Ohio, a law requires that ballots with the candidates’ names be printed by that date. In other words, the party of Kennedy, Obama and Biden must now go all-in. And go all-in on Kamala Harris. “I think she’s going to be a very good candidate because her energy will be an immediate contrast to Joe Biden,” Sabato continues. “It’s true that you can’t do worse than Joe Biden. He couldn’t finish a sentence, he would get lost in the middle of a thought, he seemed to ramble. It was embarrassing. With Harris, people will see the difference immediately.”
The contrast between the 59-year-old candidate and the septuagenarian Donald Trump will also be immediate. Since Sunday, July 21, she has embodied a certain novelty and it is the Republican – and no longer Biden – who finds himself in the position of the oldest presidential candidate in American history. The initiative and the news have changed sides. The spotlight is no longer on Donald Trump. The Republicans, who have identified the danger, immediately went on the offensive by means of a clip that denigrates Harris: she is presented as co-responsible for all of America’s ills caused according to them by the Biden presidency, which they consider “catastrophic”, particularly in terms of immigration. The scenario feared by Donald Trump and his camp is therefore coming to fruition. His campaign was calibrated to take down Biden; he and his strategists must rethink it in fourth gear. “Whatever Kamala Harris’s flaws, she does not have Biden’s insurmountable flaw: old age,” the magazine sums up. The Atlantic. And when Donald Trump boasts that she will be “easier to beat than Joe Biden,” it is not certain that he believes it himself.
During her first public appearance on Monday, July 22, the day after Biden withdrew, the Democratic candidate set the tone for her campaign. From her headquarters in Delaware, she spoke about her career as a prosecutor in San Francisco (from 2004) and as attorney general of California (from 2011). “In that role, I dealt with all sorts of criminals: sexual predators who abused women, crooks who ripped off consumers, cheaters who changed the rules to their advantage. So, believe me, I know the kind of Donald Trump…”, she said, all smiles. A way of saying that her opponent doesn’t impress her. And that her campaign will be offensive.
Erase his arrogant image
“The biggest challenge for Kamala Harris is defining who she is before the Republicans do it for her,” says political scientist Larry Sabato. “If they can present her as a liberal from San Francisco, [NDLR : en somme, une “bobo” gauchisante]she’s done for. But if she gets across the idea that she’s a centrist who’s well-prepared for the White House, then she’ll have a head start.” But there’s a prerequisite: she must at all costs erase her slightly arrogant image as an elite personality, which is her main handicap in the eyes of “lower-class America.”
To do this, she must choose a serious, centrist male vice president who is likely to appeal to moderate Republicans and independents, preferably a state governor, such as Josh Shapiro (Pennsylvania), Roy Cooper (North Carolina), JB Pritzker (Illinois), Andy Beshear (Kentucky) or a personality like Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, a former NASA astronaut known for his commitment to fighting anti-Semitism and gun control. In short, to take on the presidential mantle, Vice President Kamala Harris must be flawless. But going from No. 2 to No. 1 is not easy. And having been vice president is no guarantee of success. In American history, six vice presidents have reached the White House, but 12 others have failed while five have not even obtained the support of their camp. For Kamala Harris, the game is far from over. Especially since she only has a few days to convince. Since history is speeding up, time is now running out for her. Tick-tock, tick-tock.