Vice President Kamala Harris is the least “electable” among potential Democrats to replace President Joe Biden atop the 2024 ticket, top writers of the New York Times found Monday.
Many believe the decision to replace Biden amounted to a “coup.” Biden stepped aside on Sunday after top Democrats threatened him with invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to force him out, sources told the New York Post on Monday.
The Times analysis found Harris was the “most risky” and least viable candidate, while Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), in contrast, would be the most likely to beat former President Donald Trump.
It ranked Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) as the most “exciting” candidate and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) as the most “Meh” options.
Govs. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), Wes Moore (D-MD), and Andy Beshear (D-KY) and Sens. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Raphael Warnock (D-GA) are somewhere in the middle.
The Times‘ analysis scored potential candidates on two dimensions:
For the first, on a scale of 0 to 10, 0 means the person would have no chance of beating Trump; 10 means he or she would crush him. For the second, 0 means the person would inspire no enthusiasm; 10 means people would love him or her.
Barely 12 hours ago, leading writers of the New York Times rated Kamala Harris as the least electable of 10 possible Democratic nominees. Yet the selection process is already over. If Harris loses, as appears likelier than not, the party’s leaders will have much to explain. pic.twitter.com/xFowaJYUmH
— Timur Kuran (@timurkuran) July 23, 2024
Times writer Ross Barkan ranked Harris’s electability a five and her excitement factor a six:
Harris has a feeble electoral track record — she struggled badly in 2020 and barely, before then, won her first attorney general race in California — but she’ll benefit from a likely unified Democratic establishment, and she can forcefully press the case against Trump on abortion rights. It won’t hurt that she’d be the nation’s first female president and only the second nonwhite politician to occupy the Oval Office.
Seven states — Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina — will decide the president, longtime Democrat adviser Doug Sosnik wrote in the New York Times. If Trump wins one or more of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, Harris’s chances of obtaining 270 electoral votes become narrower.
Harris will face challenges among the electorate. Her intersectional candidacy and radical policies are not likely to be embraced in the Blue Wall states, nor does she seem to appeal to the Sunbelt states that hold more minority and young voters. Harris holds a 55 percent unfavorably among ages 18-34, a Monday Quinnipiac poll found.
“The Midwest is not where the opportunity is for her,” a Democrat operative close to Harris told Politico Playbook on Tuesday. “The opportunity with her … is going to be Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania. And however those four states go, the rest of the country will follow.”