President Biden’s sudden withdrawal from the 2024 election may have come as a surprise, but his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party’s coalescing around the VP to be at the top of their ticket is not. The party of identity politics is now taking a huge gamble with an untested and unpopular likely nominee for president. Not only has Harris been less popular than Biden throughout his presidency, but she’s entering the general election with a dismal electoral track record and will be forced to defend the current administration’s unpopular policies. How will candidate Harris perform against Trump on the national stage? And how might a President Harris continue or change Biden’s policy agenda?
Ruy Teixeira is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the transformation of party coalitions and the future of American electoral politics. Before joining AEI, he was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Teixeira is co-author of the books The Emerging Democratic Majority (Scribner, 2002) and Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes (Henry Holt & Company, 2023).