Prominent Democrats are considering alternatives to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, according to reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns at the New York Times.
“With Mr. Biden facing plunging poll numbers and turning 82 the month he’d be on the ballot, and Vice President Kamala Harris plagued by flagging poll numbers of her own,” Martin and Burns write, 2024 is “increasingly on the minds of a long roster of ambitious Democrats and their advisers.”
Although “none of the prospects would dare openly indicate interest,” the Times highlighted the aspirations of several prospects:
- Gov. Roy Cooper (N.C.)
- Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (Mich.)
- Gov. J.B. Pritzker (Ill.)
- Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg
- Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.)
- Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.)
- Former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu
“The talk is abundant, said the Times reporters, “at least in private.”
Democrats are especially cautious about openly challenging Harris, according to Martin and Burns: “In a party that celebrates its diversity and relies on [b]lack and female voters to win at every level of government,it would be difficult to challenge the first [b]lack and first female vice president.”
Yet, former Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile, for one, is providing some cover, indicating that unless “everything” about Harris’s political performance changes, “it’s open sesame” in 2024 if Biden chooses not to seek a second term.
Rumors of a rift between Biden and the extremely unpopular Harris have been spreading since CNN published its bombshell report on the “dysfunction” in the VP’s office.
In an interview with Tal Kopan of the San Francisco Chronicle, Harris called such negative headlines “ridiculous” and insisted that she and Biden are “governing partners.”
But, according to Kopan, Harris “twice did not directly answer a question about lessons she had learned and whether she wished she’d done anything differently over the past year.”
