WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris is “the future of the Democratic Party,” the White House declared Wednesday as leading Democrats and their allies position themselves to replace President Biden as the party’s nominee if the 81-year-old president steps aside.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pronounced Harris as Biden’s political heir, at one point referring to her as “president,” when asked about his 2020 campaign remark that he would be a “transitional” candidate.
“One of the reasons why he picked the vice president, President [sic] Kamala Harris, is because she is indeed the future of the party,” Jean-Pierre said at her regular briefing.
Harris, 59, faces stiff potential competition for the Democratic presidential nomination, including from Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, 56, and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, 52, if Biden steps aside following his disastrous debate performance last week against former President Donald Trump.
Some leading Democrats fear that Harris, whom they pan as awkward in public engagements, would boost Trump’s chances even further — though a poll released Tuesday by CNN showed Harris trailing Trump by 2 percentage points nationally, versus Biden’s six-point deficit.
“She would cackle her way all the way to the Oval [Office] if she could,” a Democratic detractor told The Post.
Harris generally has had lower favorability ratings in polls than Biden — currently averaging 38.7% versus Biden’s 39.8%, according to the RealClearPolitics aggregation of recent polling.
It’s unclear if Jean-Pierre’s declaration is shared by the president, who insisted on a Wednesday call with campaign staff that he and Harris would remain the Democratic ticket in the Nov. 5 election.
“There is no one I’d rather be in this battle with than all of you,” Biden said in his pep call — after the New York Times editorial board called on him to drop out Friday and several House Democrats openly predicted Tuesday his loss to Trump if he stays in the race.
What to know about the fallout from President Biden’s debate performance:
“Let’s link arms. Let’s get this done — you, me, the vice president, together,” Biden said.
“We will not back down. We will follow our president’s lead. We will fight, and we will win,” Harris told campaign staff.
Biden has at points in his presidency expressed frustration with Harris.
“A point of tension in their relationship is that I don’t think that the president sees her as somebody who takes anything off of his plate” due to a “fear of messing up,” a former White House official told Reuters last year.
Author Chris Whipple wrote in his book “The Fight of His Life,” released last year, that Biden considered Harris to be a “work in progress.”
Biden vented to a friend in 2021 after he heard that second gentleman Douglas Emhoff was complaining about tasks assigned to Harris, including mitigating illegal migration and pushing for a federal voting-rights law, Whipple wrote.
“Biden was annoyed,” the book says. “He hadn’t asked Harris to do anything he hadn’t done as vice president — and she’d begged him for the voting rights assignment.”
Biden picked Harris, the first female and second non-white vice president, as his running mate despite an acrimonious primary in which she blasted him for opposing federally mandated desegregation through busing students to different school districts.
“That little girl was me!” Harris told Biden on a 2019 debate stage
First lady Jill Biden reportedly was furious and said afterward that Harris should “go f–k” herself.
