Once derided, Harris suddenly stands at brink of leading Democratic ticket

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris, who has struggled for nearly four years in President Joe Biden’s shadow, was thrust Sunday into the center of a remarkable political drama that could culminate with her becoming the first woman of color at the top of a major-party presidential ticket.

Biden’s decision to abandon his reelection bid and endorse Harris to succeed him puts her in a powerful, but not certain, position to become the new face of the Democratic Party, charged with preventing former President Donald Trump from returning to the Oval Office for another four years.

“Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump,” Biden wrote in a social media post after he announced his decision to step aside. “Let’s do this.”

Harris and her team are likely to move swiftly to try to seize that mantle even as uncertainty swirled about whether other Democrats would seek to challenge her for the nomination at the party’s convention in Chicago next month.

In a statement, Harris thanked Biden for the endorsement, saying his “legacy of accomplishment is unmatched in modern American history.” She vowed to “earn and win this nomination” and to keep Trump from serving another four years in the White House.

“We have 107 days until Election Day,” Harris wrote. “Together, we will fight. And together, we will win.”

Should she become the nominee, she would have only a few months to boost her own weak approval ratings, make a case for a Harris presidency and rally voters against Trump, whom Democrats have branded as an existential threat to democracy and a supporter of dangerous positions on guns, abortion, immigration, taxes, education and trade.

If Harris becomes the nominee, she would immediately flip the generational argument on Trump, who has spent years deriding Biden as a doddering old man. Harris, at 59, is 19 years younger than Trump, who is 78.

Harris would have little choice but to run on the Biden-Harris administration’s record over the past four years, which Trump has attacked relentlessly. As the party’s nominee, she would be able to take some credit for the president’s legislative successes, such as new laws boosting infrastructure spending, but would also be vulnerable to attack for his failures, including the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, a surge in inflation and the difficulty of controlling the stream of migrants across the Southern border.

After a first two years in office in which Harris was often derided as out of her depth, many Democrats have given her higher marks more recently. The Supreme Court decision overturning the right to abortion enshrined in Roe v. Wade led her to step out as a prominent advocate for abortion rights and women’s rights more generally. She was seen as more effective at defending Biden after his disastrous debate performance than Biden was himself.

As the Democratic nominee, she might be able to appeal more successfully than Biden would to key constituencies in the Democratic Party: people of color, young voters and progressives, all of whom have expressed dissatisfaction with Biden for more than a year.

In a post on social media, Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff, wrote: “Now that the donors and electeds have pushed out the only candidate who has ever beaten Trump, it’s time to end the political fantasy games and unite behind the only veteran of a national campaign — our outstanding @vp, @KamalaHarris!! Let’s get real and win in November!”

The arc of Harris’ political career took her from local prosecutor to the top law enforcement official in California to United States senator, breaking racial and gender barriers along the way with a melting pot story that encompassed her Jamaican-born father, a mother born in India and her marriage to a white, Jewish man.

She would be the first Black woman and the first South Asian woman to be nominated for the presidency by either the Democrats or the Republicans.

In California and Congress, she was a rising star whose ambition led her to seek the presidency in the 2020 race, joining a crowded field of contenders seeking the chance to oust Trump from office.

She did not do well. After struggling to translate her personal story and governing agenda into support on the campaign trail, she dropped out of the race in December of 2019, weeks before the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.

In August of the next year, Biden rescued her political career, tapping Harris to be his vice presidential nominee. He called her a “fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants.” Overnight, she became a potential heir in a Democratic Party already looking to the future.

In a speech after she and Biden claimed their victory, Harris said that “while I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last. Because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.”

But as vice president, those lofty possibilities seemed to fade quickly. She struggled with the limits imposed on any occupant of the vice presidency. And she bristled at the lack of clear direction or support from Biden and his team at the White House.

Early mistakes cost her dearly. After being asked by Biden to address the root causes of immigration — a directive that was widely interpreted as making Harris the country’s de facto border czar — she stumbled in the face of large surges of families at the border. Under pressure from Republicans to visit the area, she told NBC’s Lester Holt that she didn’t understand why that would be important.

“I haven’t been to Europe,” Harris said. “And I mean, I don’t understand the point you’re making.”

The vice president’s approval numbers sank and have never really recovered.

A recent polling average on the website FiveThirtyEight.com shows her approval rating at just over 38%. More than half of the people surveyed disapprove of the job she has done.

Allies of Harris say that could now change quickly as she seeks to assume the top spot on the ticket and voters give her a second look, with much more at stake.

But the memory of her rapidly faltering 2020 campaign remains on the minds of many activists and others in the party, who are already worried about whether Harris has the popularity and charisma to carry Democrats across the finish line in the race against Trump and the effort to win control of Congress.

To do that, her team will likely seek to take over the campaign apparatus built over the last year to elect Biden again. But she will also need to quickly prove that she can stand on her own against Trump, whose campaign has already begun ramping up its attacks on her.

And before she can be the nominee, she will have to navigate the tricky politics of the Democratic Party and arcane — but suddenly important — rules that dictate how the party ratifies its nominee.

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