Biden Is Underutilizing Kamala

I hate polls. I think many of them are wrong. But since this is the “do you want to even have elections?” election, I think Bidenworld should take any and all potential weaknesses deadly seriously. One among them: that Joe Biden is not doing as well as he once did with Black voters and voters of color.

Like most media narratives, this perception is based on two things: surveys and vibes. Commentators and organizers have suggested that Black Americans are turning away from the Democratic Party. A Pew survey recently showed that one in five Black men were considering voting for Donald Trump. Now if this actually happened, it would be a sea change for a demographic that has, since the Civil Rights Act, overwhelmingly supported Democrats. Which is why the party desperately needs to make its case to Black voters—and there is no one better to do that than, well, a Black voter. Luckily for Biden, he has a very impressive one in the White House: She happens to be the second Black female senator in US history, the highest-ranking elected Black South Asian woman in the country, and the first female on a presidential ticket to ever win. She is, in other words, someone who has achieved things that the political establishment once thought unachievable, and she boasts broad support among Black voters. So why not let Kamala Harris lead?

As the San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, she secured historic wins on local and state levels, from taking down predatory for-profit colleges to providing financial relief to victims of improper foreclosures. Not to mention, she helped lay the legal foundation for the Supreme Court’s landmark marriage-equality ruling in 2015. So again, why not let her make the case for economic and reproductive justice nationally? “It would behoove the administration and the Democratic Party to utilize the VP during these next few months of the campaign,” Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University, emailed me. “She is able to articulate the administration’s policies on everything from reproductive rights to loan forgiveness to the existential threat the GOP policies pose on the future of the nation…. She has shown that she connects with a diverse group of voters across varying demographics and in cities in swing states.”

On top of breaking racial barriers, Vice President Harris has lived the very American dream that the Biden administration is trying to sell to the electorate. Harris wasn’t born into enormous wealth and privilege like a lot of so-called “self-made” people; she is the child of immigrants, attended Howard—a historically Black university—and later cut her teeth at a public law school, unlike many of her Ivy League–educated predecessors. “To be in her presence is to feel possibility,” Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, texted me. “That is the motivation we need in a turnout election. The vice president is a powerful and authentic communicator who can connect with women, particularly women of color, because she knows, firsthand, what we experience.”

It goes without saying that Black Americans played a major role in Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. Nine out of 10 Black voters supported the then presidential candidate in the last general election, driving historic turnouts for Biden in consequential pockets of battleground states, like Michigan and Wisconsin. Most notable, however, was Biden’s unexpected flip of Georgia, a longtime Republican stronghold where he had the support of key Black allies and organizers such as Stacey Abrams. Fast-forward four years, and there is now a different Black woman—this one in the White House—who can help Biden replicate this remarkable turnout. And while the administration appears to be utilizing her more and more, it could still afford to let her take the wheel more often. “The Democrats need to lean into (and not away from) what makes them the party of inclusion, and that includes people and ideas,” says Greer. “Harris is not a center-right-leaning Democrat as she was portrayed during her presidential run. She has championed inclusive and pragmatically progressive policies since becoming VP.”