Kamala Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, is the highest-ranking female elected official in US history and the first Black and first Asian American to serve as vice president.
American media heavyweights tell president: it’s time to quit
Pressure mounts as the New York Times and some of Biden’s strongest backers join the call
Amid a howling chorus of derision over Joe Biden’s substandard debate performance against Donald Trump, one voice seemed to resonate more powerfully than others.
At 6.15pm on Friday – roughly 19 hours after the two presidential candidates left the stage in Atlanta the previous evening – the verdict of the New York Times’s editorial board dropped online to the newspaper’s subscribers.
The judgment was devastating.
The US president, the board forcefully argued, had presented such an alarming spectacle of aged frailty that the best thing he could now do for the country he had served for more than half a century was to withdraw from the race and allow his Democratic party to choose another candidate.
The newspaper long venerated as “the old Grey Lady” of American journalism pointed out that Biden had presented himself as the figure best positioned to defeat the threat to democracy represented by Trump – and acknowledged that he had successfully done so in 2020. -- 'The Guardian', London
“But the greatest public service Mr Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election,” it intoned.
“As it stands, the president is engaged in a reckless gamble. There are Democratic leaders better equipped to present clear, compelling and energetic alternatives to a second Trump presidency … It’s too big a bet to simply hope Americans will overlook or discount Mr Biden’s age and infirmity that they see with their own eyes.”
The judgment evoked memories of February 1968, when Walter Cronkite, the magisterial CBS anchor, used his television platform to openly question the US military commitment in Vietnam after the Vietcong launched an offensive that led to guerrillas storming the US embassy compound in Saigon.
Watching, President Lyndon Johnson – another Democratic president, to whom Biden is sometimes compared – reportedly said: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”
Just over a month later, Johnson withdrew from that year’s presidential election, announcing he would not seek a second term.
Times have changed since 1968; media has become more fragmented, with newspapers and, arguably, television less influential. Biden’s response to the editorial – if he has even seen it – is unknown.
And a vital question ... at this juncture ??
"Could Kamala Harris be a winner for the Democrats if Biden steps aside?"
"Biden has given no indication that he intends to exit the race, and his campaign has flatly dismissed the suggestion. But that has done little to silence critics who are openly questioning whether Biden is the right person to take on Donald Trump, a figure the president – and his party – view as a grave threat to American democracy.
"In the unlikely scenario Biden decides not to run, the most obvious choice to replace him would be his 59-year-old vice president and running mate, Kamala Harris. But it would not be automatic – and other candidates would likely challenge Harris, who has suffered her own low approval ratings, for the nomination." --- says another piece in 'The Guardian'
Already some Democrats are looking past the vice-president at other possible contenders – Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois governor JB Pritzker, California governor Gavin Newsom and Maryland governor Wes Moore.
Jill Biden joins Joe Biden on stage at the end of the first presidential debate of the 2024 elections.
It’s a sign that Democrats have yet to fully embrace Harris as Biden’s heir apparent.
“To even discuss Biden stepping down while COMPLETELY IGNORING THE VP … is a serious look into how we see the importance, capacity and seriousness of women of color,” writer Tanzina Vega, said on X.
Despite a rocky start to her tenure, Harris has eased into the role, especially since becoming the administration’s leading voice on abortion rights. On Monday, Harris marked two years since the second anniversary of the US supreme court decision that overturned Roe v Wade with a fiery warning that Trump would not hesitate to further restrict women’s reproductive rights in a second-term.
Nodding to her background as a prosecutor, the vice president declared: “In the case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America, Donald Trump is guilty.”
Harris’s clear defense of abortion rights, by far Democrats’ strongest issue, stands in stark contrast to Biden. During Thursday’s debate, Biden fumbled an attack on Trump over Republican bans on the procedure, pivoting bizarrely to immigration and raising the case of a young woman murdered in Georgia.
ends
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