Kamala Harris Is Mentioned to Be Weighing an Endorsement of Joe Biden

HomeUS Politics

Kamala Harris Is Mentioned to Be Weighing an Endorsement of Joe Biden

Ms. Harris was making an attempt to loosen Mr. Biden’s grip on African-American main voters, and her searing reference to her personal childhood ex


Ms. Harris was making an attempt to loosen Mr. Biden’s grip on African-American main voters, and her searing reference to her personal childhood expertise with integration might need been the excessive level of her marketing campaign. However it got here on the expense of an older, white candidate who was already heading off questions on his report on issues of race. And Mr. Biden was personally stung by her assault, his advisers mentioned, as a result of he thought of her a buddy.

But Ms. Harris’s surge within the polls didn’t final, and the 2 candidates by no means sparred once more in the identical manner. By October, aides to each Democrats recall, they have been getting alongside properly once they bumped into one another on the Des Moines airport earlier than heading to Ohio for the controversy there.

Extra vital than their private rapport, a Harris endorsement of Mr. Biden could be politically helpful for each of them.

A 55-year-old lady of African and Indian descent with regulation enforcement credentials, Ms. Harris was already prone to be on Mr. Biden’s quick listing, ought to he emerge because the nominee. But she may bolster her probabilities to be his operating mate if she backed his marketing campaign at a essential time, significantly if he didn’t win in both Iowa or New Hampshire subsequent month and wanted a lift in Nevada and South Carolina. And even when she is just not chosen for vice chairman, she could be a number one contender for a cupboard put up, resembling legal professional basic.

For Mr. Biden, who’s working to consolidate assist from Democratic leaders as Senator Bernie Sanders’s progressive candidacy positive aspects energy, an endorsement from Ms. Harris would sign that get together leaders have been rallying behind his candidacy and provide him a well known surrogate to stump on his behalf because the race goes on.

The chance for Ms. Harris could be if she have been to get behind Mr. Biden solely to see him lose in California, which votes on March three as a part of Tremendous Tuesday. A survey of the state’s Democratic voters, performed this month by the Public Policy Institute of California survey, discovered that Mr. Biden was in second place to Mr. Sanders, of Vermont. However the ballot highlighted the energy of the progressive bloc within the state: Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren mixed have been capturing 50 p.c of the vote.

Rose Kapolczynski, a longtime Democratic strategist in California, mentioned Ms. Harris wouldn’t harm her prospects for re-election in 2022 by backing Mr. Biden. But when Democrats have been to lose the presidency this fall, supporting him may form how she was perceived by the left, have been she to run once more for president 4 years from now.



www.nytimes.com