Democratic malcontents eye Biden-Harris alternatives, but few names emerge

Katherine Doyle

March 26, 07:00 AM March 26, 07:00 AM

As President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris prepare for a 2024 White House run, some Democrats are eyeing the field of alternatives, wary of a reelection fight that offers new obstacles.

And while some Democratic donors privately say alternatives to a Biden-Harris ticket in 2024 exist and they have options, they are reluctant to out their purported targets.

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The dynamic hints at the scramble among some party malcontents to shore up potential alternatives in the event Biden chooses to step aside. The president is expected to run for reelection with Harris by his side, but pending a formal announcement, there remains speculation over who could step into the breach if the need arises.

“They say we need somebody new who can walk upstairs and can complete a sentence,” one campaign strategist said, referencing Biden’s occasional foibles and that the prospect of a Biden reelection bid draws sighs.

Asked how these Democratic donors feel about Harris, this person responded, “They just stare at me.”

Nor is Biden’s transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, a deft communicator whose performance in the 2020 Democratic primaries vaulted him to national attention, immune from donor skepticism.

“It won’t be him,” the strategist said. “Just wait and see.”

Still, a senior Democratic aide downplayed the chatter as “delusional.”

“It’s bracket season,” this person added, dismissing the notion that Biden would step aside.

Some Democrats nevertheless worry about 2024. The race would likely pit an octogenarian president and his low-polling vice president against a Republican field likely to include a GOP governor who notched record electoral margins in a battleground state last year, including in Democratic Miami-Dade County.

As the front-runner for his party, former President Donald Trump also maintains a unique edge: a clear lead among Republican primary voters of color, according to recent polls.

It makes certain Democrats pine for other choices.

Already the oldest sitting U.S. president, Biden would be 86 at the end of a second term. The president’s traction with swing voters has collapsed. Yet reports suggest Biden is not persuaded that Harris or any other Democrat could beat Trump in a head-to-head race.

And while the two running mates are understood to have a good working relationship, sticking points remain, with one former White House official describing the struggle “as a question of consistently rising to the occasion,” according to Reuters.

“I think his running for reelection is less about her and more about him, but I do think that she and the Democratic bench [are] a factor,” this person said.

“A point of tension in their relationship is that I don’t think that the president sees her as somebody who takes anything off of his plate [due to] a fear of messing up,” another former White House official told the outlet.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has also seized on these concerns, charging on the campaign trail last year that Harris was Biden’s “insurance” policy against being removed from office.

Democrats have also questioned Harris’s political acumen, appearing to doubt the mettle of the woman poised to succeed Biden.

Harris defenders argue that while people may not like her, she is no longer a rookie. Regardless, a vice president won’t be a determinate factor for voters come Election Day, they add.

In a March op-ed, Donna Brazile, a longtime Democratic strategist and Harris defender, said critics are holding the vice president to unreasonable standards. Brazile also spoke to the prospect of Harris as Biden’s successor, saying, “Questions have been raised about the fitness of just about every vice president to move into the Oval Office should the president die or is unable to continue serving for another reason."

Moreover, the window for alternatives is closing. During the 2020 presidential nominating contest, Democrats held their first primary debate in June 2019. And few see a scenario in which Harris would be handed a place at the top of the ticket without challengers.

It’s not just donors and party faithful who harbor reservations over a Biden-Harris reelection bid.

A focus group of Michigan swing voters who backed Biden unanimously in 2020 said they would like to see the president challenged for the Democratic nomination in 2024.

But while the focus group referenced Biden’s age and questioned his fitness for office, participants struggled to name alternatives.

Several participants voiced concerns about Harris stepping into Biden’s role if the need ever arose, even as one stressed that he “would love the idea of having a person of color be our president, especially a woman,” just not Harris. That voter groaned, then voiced agreement when asked whether Biden should choose another running mate.

Several voters said they would be more comfortable with Biden seeking reelection with another vice president in Harris’s place.

Biden’s aides have dismissed concerns over Biden’s health, with the president’s physician declaring him “healthy, vigorous,” and “fit for duty.”

Speaking to Politico, one House Democrat “demanded to know who else was out there and said Harris wasn’t an option” after instructing the reporter to turn off their phone.

In a move that appears intended to neuter any potential competitors, the White House is preparing to assemble an “advisory” cabinet of influential surrogates, many presumed to harbor their own presidential aspirations.

If Biden’s health falters, prominent Democrats may sense an opening, a Democratic operative from a rival 2020 campaign said.

“I can see no lack of enthusiasm for a Biden challenge if there are any health issues,” said a Democratic operative from a rival 2020 campaign. “No one expects a Harris coronation if Biden decides not to run again.”

Biden launches opening salvo in debt ceiling fight against GOP with budget release

Naomi Lim

March 09, 05:45 AM March 09, 05:45 AM

President Joe Biden's budget may be an aspirational document with no chance of clearing a GOP-controlled House, but it is also a political document as he braces for what is likely to be a bitter fight with Republicans over the debt ceiling before next year's elections.

Biden hopes to use this as an opening argument against the Republicans before the debt ceiling battle begins in earnest.

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Biden, who has repeated how budgets underscore values, will announce his fiscal 2024 framework in the battleground state of Pennsylvania on Thursday, an event overshadowed by the looming debt ceiling.

Biden has pledged not to negotiate with Republicans over raising the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, contending the country's credit rating is too important to risk a default. And despite the prospect of a deadline, far-reaching economic consequences, and the president's desire to be a bipartisan deal-maker, Biden should "hold firm" in that strategy, according to Democrats such as former consultant Christopher Hahn.

"The House Republicans have members who are extremely vulnerable, and if the hard-liners in the party continue to play chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States, the 18 GOP members who hold seats in districts Biden won in 2020 will surely blink," the former Chuck Schumer aide and Aggressive Progressive podcast host told the Washington Examiner. "Or at least enough to increase the debt ceiling."

Biden has Republicans "in a bind" because he "rope-a-doped the GOP into taking Social Security and Medicare off the table during the State of the Union," former Democratic operative Sandy Maisel added. Republicans shouted the president down during his address when he suggested lawmakers, including Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), hoped to reform the entitlement programs.

"[On Thursday,] he will put forth his budget proposal, which progressives will think is too accommodating," Maisel said. "Biden will challenge the GOP to come up with an alternative."

"That, I assume, will either be so vague as to be meaningless — cut the waste, which, of course, cannot be isolated — or painful to lots of voters," the Colby College visiting politics instructor and onetime candidate went on. "That will put Biden in a much better position to negotiate than he would be if he said he was ready to talk before the GOP had to put anything forward."

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has vocally disapproved of Biden's strategy, calling on his colleagues to "stop the madness and start acting reasonably and responsibly to get our government's financial house in order." Manchin sat down with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in January to discuss the debt ceiling. The president met with McCarthy a few weeks later in February at the White House.

“There's always times to have arguments and disagreements," Manchin said last week on the Senate floor. "But the looming debt crisis cannot. It cannot basically have the disruption that we have and the discourse and political toxic atmosphere that we have here. We've got to come together for the sake of our great country."

But while Biden is posturing, so too are Republicans. The House Republican Study Committee, for one, has distilled GOP priorities and identified possible presidential concessions, such as lowering fiscal 2024 discretionary spending to the fiscal 2022 level of $1.5 trillion, in addition to introducing a discretionary spending cap for up to 10 years, as well as reallocating unused American Rescue Plan Act, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and Inflation Reduction Act spending, before the House Budget Committee is due to respond to Biden on April 15.

Previews of Biden's budget promote how it will decrease the federal debt by $3 trillion over a decade. He has also detailed his ideas for Medicare. Specifically, the president is pitching extending Medicare’s Hospital Insurance Trust Fund “by at least 25 years" by increasing the Medicare tax rate for people earning more than $400,000 from 3.8% to 5% and redirecting $200 billion in savings created by the Inflation Reduction Act's prescription drug negotiation provisions to the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund. He is additionally expected to ask for $835 billion in defense spending and a 5.2% pay raise for federal employees.

Bipartisan Policy Center Senior Vice President Bill Hoagland, a budget expert, praised Biden for trying to decrease deficits but asserted that was "not going to reduce the level of debt to [gross domestic product] by a significant amount."

"Just to stabilize the level of debt to GDP at where we are today, I think they need well into the $6 to $8 trillion mark," he said.

Hoagland described Biden's Medicare taxes as "pretty much dead on arrival with a Republican Congress." Instead, the veteran Senate Republican staffer advocated broader simplification of the tax code, combined with efforts to decrease Medicare's growth rate. For Hoagland, nondefense discretionary spending will have to be reduced by "a good 15% to 20%" if the president's total discretionary top line is $1.7 trillion to meet Republicans' $1.5 trillion demand.

"I'm worried about this," he added. "You do have to negotiate; you have to find some sort of a compromise. And that's why I think that setting some sort of a cap on '24 discretionary spending will certainly allow for Republicans to claim that they have saved some money and to move forward."

The White House has been pushed on Biden's emphasis of the budget, traveling to Pennsylvania, a critical presidential and Senate battleground state, to present it. Rather, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has argued that Biden prefers to outline his agenda "in a transparent way."

"The thing that makes us really speak to this even more is because they have talked about ... cutting some programs that are incredibly — two programs and more — that are incredibly important to the American people: Social Security, Medicare, ACA, Medicaid," Jean-Pierre said of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.

"That's what they're saying they want to move forward with," she went on. "And the president is saying, 'You know what? I'm going to continue fighting for the American people. I'm going to continue fighting for taxpayers who have paid into these programs since they started their first job, some of them as teenagers.'"