Double act or double trouble? Kamala Harris uses Joe Biden sparingly on the US election campaign trail

[Pelican Press 0]

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Double act or double trouble? Kamala Harris uses Joe Biden sparingly on the US election campaign trail

Joe Biden may be out of the White House race but US voters haven’t seen the last of him, as Kamala Harris makes careful use of her boss on the campaign trail.

It’s less than six weeks since the 59-year-old vice president replaced the 81-year-old president as the Democratic contender, breathing new life into the party’s election hopes.

But instead of fading out, Mr Biden is taking on a targeted role in Harris’s campaign against Donald Trump, focused on certain battleground states and demographics.

They’ve even appeared together, with an energetic Biden and Harris competing to flatter each other at an event in the Rust Belt city of Pittsburgh to mark the US Labor Day holiday on Monday.

“If you elect Kamala Harris as president, it will be the best decision you will have ever made,” Mr Biden told a cheering crowd as he introduced her, before she praised him as “one of the most of transformative presidents” in US history.

Afterwards, they posed for selfies with supporters before Mr Biden invited Ms Harris into his limousine to the airport, where their planes — Air Force One and Two — were parked next to each other.

“I would guess that the calculation in the Harris campaign is that he (Biden) can do some good in midwestern Rust Belt states,” John Mark Hansen, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, said.

Indeed, Mr Biden travelled later in the week to two of those states — Wisconsin and Michigan — where he ******** popular with older, white, blue-collar voters.

But the question is: how much Biden is too much?

The vice-president faces a dilemma as she seeks to keep up the wave of excitement since she replaced Mr Biden at the top of the ticket.

“I think that there’s a fine line to walk for her,” Casey Burgat, of George Washington University, said.

Stick too close, and voters may just see her as a sequel to the 81-year-old president, instead of the breath of fresh air her campaign has made her out to be.

But to cut herself off from Mr Biden would be seen as disowning the same policies that Ms Harris endorsed for four years as his understudy.

“She needs him to be able to co-sign that she’s ready for the job and that she’s strong. But she also needs a little bit of wiggle room between her and the Biden-Harris administration,” said Rebecca Gill, a political science professor at the University of Nevada.

The historic circumstances of Mr Biden’s late withdrawal have also created a unique dynamic between president and vice-president.

The presidential shadow is often heavy, with just six vice-presidents having been elected to the highest office.

The last incumbent “veep” to do so was George H.W. Bush in 1988.

Ms Harris, however, is aiming to succeed a one-term president.

The last similar example was in 1968, when Lyndon Johnson stepped aside as candidate amid the Vietnam War — albeit only to see his vice-president Hubert Humphrey lose to Richard Nixon.

With Ms Harris, Mr Biden has vowed to do “be on the sidelines” but to do “everything I can to help”.

Professor Gill said the sidelines might be the best place, given that Harris is still something of an unknown quantity to most Americans.

“Having Biden front and centre might contradict some of that ‘getting to know you’ phase that a lot of voters are in with Kamala Harris,” she said.

But there’s one surprise development that may dispel concerns about a double act — the historically unpopular Biden is seeing some of his best polls in years.

A USA Today/Suffolk University poll this week showed his approval rating rising to 48 per cent from 41 per cent just before his candidacy-ending debate with Trump in June, and a number of other polls have shown similar bumps.

“He is more popular now than he was when he was running,” Professor Gill said.

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