Be careful what you wish for.
That might be the lesson to be gleaned as former President Donald Trump remains ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris in national polls, 48.5 percent to 46.6 percent, after President Joe Biden left the 2024 presidential race on July 21 amid growing concerns over his cognition and as he was recovering from a bout of Covid, according to the latest average of national polls compiled by RealClearPolling.com.
That includes a July 21 to July 22 Morning Consult poll conducted after Biden left the race, showing Trump leading Harris 47 percent to 45 percent. While slightly better than Biden’s showing in the July 15 to July 17 Morning Consult poll against Biden, where Trump led 46 percent to 42 percent, it shows that the incumbent Democrats still have an uphill battle on their hands to keep the White House.
In fact, Trump has been leading the national average of polls since Sept. 2023 and had led more than half of the polls against Biden taken the entire election cycle.
Now, when pitted against Harris, which was not polled as much prior to Biden’s disastrous June 27 debate performance against Trump, of the 47 polls taken, Trump has led 40 of them, or 85 percent of them. Many of these were hypothetical polls anticipating that Biden might drop out of the race given his age at 81, which he ultimately did.
The rollout of Harris on the campaign trail comes as she was already upside down in approval, with the July 19 to July 21 Forbes-HarrisX poll showing that 54 percent of registered voters disapproved of her job as Vice President, with only 38 percent approving.
That includes 59 percent of independents and 18 percent of Democrats disapproving of Harris, and an unsurprising 87 percent of Republicans disapproving, and 28 percent of Blacks, 46 percent of Hispanics and 60 percent of Whites disapproving.
On age, Harris was even upside down among 18-34-year-olds, with 44 percent disapproving and 42 percent approving. Among 35-years-old-and-olders, 57 percent disapprove versus 37 percent who approve.
These are the factory default settings that Harris will either improve upon, or not, as the campaign unfolds.
This offers Harris very little time with which to turn around public perceptions of not just herself, but the Biden administration as a whole, which President Biden reportedly will continue serving as the head of. Everything that happens with Biden has immediate impact upon her.
Even if Biden were to resign, situating Harris as the President, she would still be married to the circumstances of Biden’s presidency, whether the sticky inflation, lagging incomes, international anarchy with escalating wars and the flood of millions of illegal aliens plaguing the southern border she was tasked to get a handle on.
What’s worse, Harris has been a first-hand witness to Biden’s mental decline as Vice President. She has a duty to inform the American people if she still believes Biden is fit to serve the remainder of his term as president. As she has already acquiesced to him remaining in office while she devotes her entire time to running for president, she would be compelled to say that Biden is fit to serve.
That even though in the aftermath of the June 27 debate, 72 percent of registered voters in a June 28 to June 29 CBS News-YouGov poll said Biden no longer had the mental and cognitive health to serve as president, including 41 percent of Democrats. Even headed into the debate, 65 percent said he did not have the mental and cognitive capacity to serve, including 29 percent of Democrats.
But the White House is not a nursing home.
So why is Biden still president? Apparently, so that Harris can campaign without having to worry about running the country, which is apparently up to Biden’s handlers anyway.
Still, it will be a question that dogs Harris on the campaign trail as she is called to task for what did she know about Biden’s condition and when did she know it. How Harris answers, and whether she views Biden as fit when most except for the most loyal Democrat say unfit, might very well determine how she fares in the November election.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
