Why Kamala Harris’ Biggest Fans Aren’t Joining Calls For Her To Replace Biden

To some, it might seem like the moment Vice President Kamala Harris’ most fervent supporters have long hoped for.

Since President Joe Biden’s poor performance at the presidential debate earlier this month, a range of voices have come out of the woodwork to insist that Harris should step in for Biden as the party’s nominee. As a 2024 DNC delegate, Clinton campaign alumnus and center-left Democrat who would like to see Harris as our first female president ― I hope she isn’t put in that position.

Biden has had a historic first term in office, and there are major strategic and structural drawbacks to replacing our democratically selected nominee. More centrally, however, the base of the Democratic Party doesn’t trust the broader Biden coalition to support Harris should she become the nominee.

We’ve watched how the Never Trumpers, purity-politics progressives and media members most vocally calling for this swap have dismissed and disrespected Harris since the 2020 primaries. Before reality set in that the only realistic replacement for Biden would in fact be his vice president, those envisioning a substitute for Biden made clear their intentions to skip over her.

Suddenly, those who have ignored and downplayed both Harris’ historical significance and her real-world impact for four years find it convenient to sing her praises as a mechanism to undermine Biden. They even accuse Harris supporters who are still fully behind Biden remaining as the nominee of being “delusional” or “gaslighters.”

While I’d gladly support either candidate as nominee, we so-called “establishment” Democrats — the core of the party ― have lived through the racist backlash to President Barack Obama that paved the way for the MAGA movement. We saw