CONS
Her own campaign fell flat
For all the excitement expressed about Harris’s selection, the fact remains that her own presidential campaign underperformed expectations in a big way.
After a huge rally in Oakland, Calif., started her bid on a strong note, Harris struggled to gain traction.
Biden is derided by some progressives on social media as the classic “old white guy” moderate, but polls showed him receiving far greater Black support than Harris did.
Harris also had some policy stumbles, notably on "Medicare for All." As far back as June 2019, a CNN analysis appeared below the headline "Kamala Harris can't get her story straight on Medicare for All. Again."
More broadly, there was long a question mark over where exactly Harris stood, especially in contrast to obvious moderates such as Biden or clear progressives such as Sens.
Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and
Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
Harris’s campaign did not even make it out of 2019. She called it quits in December, two months before the Iowa caucuses.
As Harris’s boosters talk about the excitement she will bring to the ticket, it’s reasonable to wonder why more voters weren’t more excited by her actual candidacy.
That debate moment
No sooner was Harris’s selection announced than the Trump campaign was out with a statement from senior adviser Katrina Pierson alleging Harris had previously called Biden a racist.
The president himself seemed to be alluding to the same moment at a news conference late Tuesday when he said Harris had said “horrible” things about Biden at a debate.
Harris did not, in fact, call Biden a racist.
But she did go all-in on an attack on his record on school busing — despite having a current position broadly similar to his. It was a fiery moment and one of the most heated clashes of the primary season.
Both Harris and Biden are likely to be asked about it for the rest of the campaign.
Will the left get restless?
Harris drew considerable fire from left-wing activists during her presidential run, in part because they argued her past record, particularly as a prosecutor, was far less progressive than she likes to suggest.
The same criticism was voiced in the media.
Law professor Lara Bazelon wrote in The New York Times in January 2019 that “Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and then the state’s attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent.”
Bazelon asserted that Harris had “fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions” and noted that in 2015 she had “opposed a bill requiring her office to investigate shootings involving officers.”
The desire to oust Trump is a powerful glue holding the different strands of the Democratic Party together. Sanders welcomed her selection on Tuesday.
But there will be plenty of people on the left who have misgivings about Harris — and whose doubts the Trump campaign will be only too happy to amplify.
Three pros and three cons to Biden picking Harris