Is it really Biden or bust?
President Joe Biden’s lackluster performance during Thursday’s first presidential debate is spurring calls for him to quit the 2024 race.
Shortly after his face-off with former President Trump, ex-Obama advisor David Axelrod told CNN there would be talks within the party on whether Biden should continue. However, he later called discussions about replacing the president “irrelevant” now that the President has already clinched the Democratic nomination. That hasn’t stopped several major media outlets urging President Biden to step aside. While The New York Times called Biden’s campaign a “reckless gamble,” the Chicago Tribune said the idea of Biden serving four more years as President was “ridiculous.” Columnists in the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post echoed a similar loss of faith. Even Thomas L. Friedman, a friend of the president’s, wrote in the NYT that he “has no business running for re-election.”
On the other hand, top Democratic lawmakers have already ruled out the possibility of replacing the president. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries acknowledged that Biden had suffered a setback, but this was “nothing more than a setup for a comeback.” And that will be no easy feat: Coupled with his low approval ratings and the perception that the president is already too old to serve another term, some pundits worry about his prospects for reelection. “If this election is about President Biden’s age and mental acuity, then Democrats lose,” Democratic strategist Fred Hicks tells Katie Couric Media. “If it’s about public policy, then Democrats win.”
While we don’t have a crystal ball, we did a little research into the top names being floated to take over for Biden should he be unable or decide not to run for a second term, according to Hicks and others.
Who could replace Joe Biden?
Vice President Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris is seen as the most obvious alternative to Biden because of her position as vice president. It helps that she’s more than two decades his junior, too. She also has her own presidential ambitions, as demonstrated by her (unsuccessful) White House bid in 2020.
If the president exits the race, Democrats believe Harris could replace him, but she’s not seen as a very promising option. According to Hicks, Harris’ biggest weaknesses are her inability to connect with fellow Black voters and voters overall, as well as her background as a prosecutor. The polls reflect this sentiment: According to an average of polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight.com, her approval rating currently stands at 39.4 percent, which isn’t much higher than Biden’s, which hovers around 38.8 percent.
On top of that, she’s had a few gaffes — for instance, in 2022, she mistakenly touted the U.S. “alliance with the Republic of North Korea” during a speech at Korea’s Demilitarized Zone. She also received heavy criticism that same year for telling would-be migrants to “not come” north because they would be “turned back” at the U.S. border. But some say not all of the attacks on Harris are fair — after all, Harris is the first woman, the first Black American, and the first Asian American to occupy the office, which has got to be a lot of pressure.
“The whole question of Kamala Harris’s weaknesses is a very tangled one because how much of the criticism of her is gendered or race-related?” The Hill reporter Niall Stanage tells us. “So untangling what are unfair criticisms of Harris from what are fair criticisms of Harris is quite difficult, but the bottom line is she wouldn’t necessarily do any better than Biden would do in a presidential election.”
Despite her missteps and lack of popularity among voters, Harris continues to insist she’s “ready to serve” as commander-in-chief if necessary and defends the president amid attacks on his age. In her interview with Katie Couric, she said Republicans often attack the president over the issue because they have “nothing to run on.”
She also rushed to the president’s defense following his disappointing debate performance. “I’m not going to spend all night with you talking about the last 90 minutes when I’ve been watching the last three and a half years of performance,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper when he asked if she had any concerns after watching Biden.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom
California Gov. Gavin Newsom stirred some speculation that he’d make a 2024 bid early on in the Democratic primary. But once Biden made it clear that he was seeking a second term in April 2023, Newsom put those rumors to rest and began campaigning for the president.
Newsom has continued to support Biden, even dismissing calls for the president to be removed from the Democratic ticket following the presidential debate. “I will never turn my back on President Biden,” he told CBS.
Still, the 56-year-old Democrat has long been talked about as a future presidential candidate for his party. Even Republicans haven’t been able to ignore his potential — former two-term California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told The Hollywood Reporter in 2023 that Newsom’s run would be inevitable: “I think it’s a no-brainer,” he said. “Every governor from a big state wants to take that shot.”
Newsom also has gained nationwide attention for standing his ground on progressive positions on issues like immigration and education while feuding with Republican counterpart Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The two even went toe-to-toe in a debate moderated by Fox’s conservative host Sean Hannity, where Newsom largely used the time to defend Biden’s record.
But as he amped up his national profile, his popularity took a tumble among his own constituency. According to a June 2024 poll from the Public Policy Institute of California, just 44% of all adults in California approve of how Newsom’s been handling his job.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also been touted as a strong contender. Just minutes after Biden walked off the debate stage, pundits mentioned her as a potential replacement.
Despite ongoing criticism, she has voiced support for the president, saying that the difference between Trump and Biden “could not be clearer” following their showdown. “The difference between Joe Biden’s vision for making sure everyone in America has a fair shot and Donald Trump’s dangerous, self-serving plans will only get sharper as we head toward November,” she said in a statement.
Whitmer’s currently serving a second term for the top political job in the battleground state that was previously won by former President Trump in 2016. Part of her appeal is her broad appeal among voters for solving practical problems like infrastructure. For instance, one of her signature slogans during her first campaign in 2018 was “fix the damn roads,” which gained support from those on both sides of the aisle.
She’s also taken up other key Democratic issues, such as abortion rights. Last April, she repealed a 1931 state law banning abortion, and that same year, she also struck down insurance restrictions, among other reforms.
While some may disagree with her viewpoints, she’s seen as a sympathetic figure having been the target of a foiled kidnapping plot in 2020.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg
Before becoming transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg became the first openly gay candidate to run for a Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. Buttigieg performed better than expected, even winning the Iowa caucuses.
Buttigieg’s widely expected to run for president again and possibly succeed Biden — whether that’s in 2024 or 2028. After all, he remains a popular figure within the party as the most requested surrogate by Democratic candidates during the 2022 midterm elections.
He also hasn’t ruled out the possibility himself. “I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future,” he told CNN in 2022. “I do know that I’ve been entrusted with this amazing opportunity and responsibility to help shape the infrastructure we’re going to be living with and working with and counting on for the rest of our lives.”
As with any candidate, Buttigieg has some weaknesses — and they’re pretty major ones. For instance, he faced a lot of heat for waiting almost three weeks to respond to a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which he eventually acknowledged was a mistake. The transportation secretary has also struggled to connect with a key voting bloc for Democrats: He received zero percent support among Black voters in South Carolina at one point during his presidential campaign.
So far, it doesn’t seem like President Biden is going anywhere as far as the 2024 election is concerned — he’s said as much at recent fundraising events and on social media. “I would not be running again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul that I could do this job. The stakes are too high,” Biden said the day after the debate on Friday. His camp also denied an NBC News report that the Biden family will discuss whether to end his campaign early at a meeting at Camp David on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Democratic strategists like Hicks recommend keeping an eye on the Democratic National Convention, which will be held in Chicago from Aug. 19 to 22. He points out that it was the 2008 convention that put former President Obama on the map. “The convention this year is a real opportunity for Democrats to highlight diversity and strength and to prepare the nation and voters for 2028.”
