Why Kamala Harris, if vice president nominee, may not help Joe Biden win
Update August 14, 2020:
Earlier this week on August 11, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden chose Kamala Devi Harris as his vice presidential nominee. The selection of Harris, whose mother was Indian, has excited Indians in America - as well as in India and elsewhere- especially supporters of the Democratic Party. Also, since Harris’ father was a black from Jamaica, some Indians have also pointed out the racism among Indians towards Blacks.
Harris may likely help Biden win the popular vote. But to become President, Biden needs to win a majority of votes - at least 270 out of 538 - in the electoral college, which is based on seats assigned to each state. Forecasts from The Economist and others predict that Biden will also win the electoral college. Some analysts say that Harris being from California is irrelevant and that she will not hurt Biden’s chances in the key swing states of the Midwest, where neither the Democrats nor the Republicans enjoy a big, unbeatable lead among likely voters.
Prior to the 2016 election, nearly all forecasts predicted that Hillary Clinton would beat Donald Trump. But her losses in the Midwestern swing states of Pennsylvania (with 20 electoral votes) Michigan.(16) and Wisconsin (10) cost her the election. In the upcoming election on November 3, voters in these states will likely decide whether Biden or Trump wins a majority in the electoral college and hence becomes the next U.S. President. The article below, published May 7, examines data showing why selecting Harris may not help Biden in the three key swing states.
By Ignatius Chithelen*
MAY 7, 2020: Last week Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate, set up a panel to help him select a vice-presidential nominee for this November’s election battle against President Donald Trump. Being 77 years old, Biden says, if elected, he will be a transitional president serving only one four-year term. So, voters will decide to support him or not based largely on his running mate since she could be president in 2024 or even earlier. Biden’s choice is also important because the nominee needs to help him win at least three swing states in order for him to be elected president.
On March 15 Biden said he will choose a woman as his running mate. This was ten days before Tara Reade, a former member of his staff, alleged that he sexually assaulted her in 1993. More than a dozen women are vying to be Biden’s vice-presidential nominee. Recent polls of Democrats show that Kamala Harris has the most support for the job, after Elizabeth Warren.
Majority of electoral college not popular vote
Kamala Devi Harris, 55, is half Indian and half black. Over 500 black Democratic leaders are lobbying hard for the selection of Harris or another black nominee. She is also being backed by many liberal media pundits. “Harris' combination of charisma, roots in a massive Democratic state and the historic nature of choosing her (she would be the first African and Indian American woman to be on a national ticket) make her the clear leader,” says Chris Cillizza, a CNN editor.
Harris would have helped Biden if the outcome of the presidential election was based on a majority of votes. She is a popular senator from California, which has 21 million registered voters, by far the largest of any state. In 2016, Hillary Clinton got three million more votes than Trump, due to strong support in California and New York, yet lost the election.
Instead Trump became president because he got a majority of the votes in the electoral college, which is based on votes assigned to each state. As in 2016, the outcome of recent presidential elections.have been decided by voters in five swing states, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump won the presidency by securing only 80,000 more votes than Clinton in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. So, even though a total of 137 million votes were cast nationwide in the 2016 election, a razor thin victory in three swing states is all that mattered.
Roughly 30% of registered voters are Democrats, 30% Republicans and 36% independents, according to recent polls. Given this balance between Republicans and Democrats, and the math of the electoral college, it is independent voters in swing states that largely decide presidential elections.
Breaking coconuts to try to win elections
In 2016, Harris was elected to the U.S. Senate from California. Earlier she was twice elected as the state’s attorney general. Before one election she asked Shobha Warrier, her aunt in Chennai, India, to pray and break coconuts for her victory at a Ganesha temple, Warrier wrote in Rediff.Com.
Harris’ mother Shyamala Gopalan, an immigrant from India and Warrier’s sister, was a breast cancer researcher. Gopalan studied for a Ph.D. in endocrinology at the University of California, Berkeley. Harris’ father Donald Harris, who emigrated from Jamaica, taught economics at Stanford University. Her parents divorced when she was seven and she and her sister were brought up by her mother, partly in Canada. Harris studied political science at Howard University in Washington D.C. and got a law degree from the University of California, Hastings College. In 2014, Harris married Douglas Emhoff, a lawyer, who has two children from an earlier marriage. They live in a multi-million-dollar home near Hollywood in Los Angeles.
Harris’ website notes that she is the second African American woman senator and the first South Asian American senator in U.S. history. “Whether black or brown” Harris is a caring person, says her aunt Warrier.
Biden’s campaign lags far behind Trump
Trump is playing a double sided strategy over the sexual assault allegations against Biden. Facing similar allegations from numerous women, Trump is on TV saying that famous guys are victims of false claims and advises Biden to “Just go out and fight it.”
Simultaneously his supporters, along with Fox News and other conservative media, are fueling the allegations against Biden, even as they ignore numerous similar cases involving Trump. Perhaps some Trump supporters may be financially backing the alleged victim Tara Reade to continue to go on TV and attack Biden. Conservative media personalities are battling to interview Reade, possibly even paying a fee for her consent. Last week she could afford to hire a prominent and expensive lawyer to represent her. Reade, who is white, says she wants Biden to withdraw from the presidential contest.
Biden says the allegations against him should be taken seriously and vetted, even though the incident “never, never happened.” Maria Cardona, a Democratic official, says that ”…an allegation this serious would have surfaced during Biden’s vetting process for vice president,” both in 2008 and 2012. (In late May, news reports revealed that Reade had misrepresented herself by falsely claiming to have a law degree, when she was hired as an expert witness for domestic violence court cases in California. Since then Reade has largely disappeared not spoken to the media.)
Meanwhile at the start of April, Trump and the Republicans had $244 million for his campaign, four times more than the $57 million with Biden and the Democrats. Also, as a Washington Post reporter discovered, Biden’s fund raising and voter mobilization operations are primitive compared to that of Trump’s team. Both Biden’s fund raising and campaign operations must be improving with backing from Michael Bloomberg and other billionaires and the the active involvement of former Democratic President Barack Obama and his advisers.
Harris is seen as a coastal elite
In the swing states, if Biden were to choose Harris as his running mate, he risks losing support from single as well as suburban white women and blue collar whites. In 2008 and 2012, enough of these whites ignored Obama being black and voted for him and helped elect him as president.
In 2016, some of these white Obama voters did not vote at all. Even though they disliked Trump, they did not support Hillary Clinton because they saw her as being part of the coastal elite who look down on folks in the Midwest. Harris, like Clinton who was a senator from New York - as well as Elizabeth Warren a senator from Massachusetts - will be similarly seen as part of the elite and that too from the very liberal state of California.
Recent polls show Trump with a lead over Biden in Ohio and Florida. In Ohio, whites make up 84% of the voters. Trump has good support among them, especially the non-college educated whites who make up 55% of the voters in the state. In Florida too Trump has sufficient support among whites, including those who are college educated.
Polls show Biden with a slight lead in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and tied in Michigan. In 2016, Trump won these states by 22,000, 47,000 and 10,700 votes respectively. As these numbers show, small shifts in voter turn out will likely determine if Biden wins or loses. Harris may not help Biden even in Michigan, where blacks are 13% of the voters, since higher black voter turn out may not overcome loss of white votes.
Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan may be the best choice
Biden, who is a Catholic, is popular among blue collar whites, especially in Pennsylvania. But to defeat Trump in November, he needs to get sufficient white votes to win at least three swing states. Gretchen Whitmer is the running mate who can best help him do this, assuming there are no damaging details in her past. Being the popular governor of Michigan, she will improve Biden’s chances of winning the state as well as attract white women voters in the other swing states. In February, Whitmer was asked by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, to deliver the Democratic response to Trump’s State of the Union speech.
Similar to its successful strategy in 2016, this time the Trump campaign is widely publicizing the allegations against Biden to raise enough doubts among some who dislike Trump, and may have voted for Biden, to not vote in November. Already some feminists and liberal commentators are attacking Biden and say, rather than support Biden, women should not vote at all.
Given the Republican media and social media campaign accusing Biden of sexual assault, similar attacks on him from some feminists, and a so far behind the scenes, ugly fight for the vice-presidential nominee between supporters of black, Hispanic and white women candidates, Biden’s presidential campaign could easily go off the rails.
The 2020 U.S. presidential election could once again be decided by whether the Republicans or Democrats can motivate 80,000 people to stay at home or come out and vote in the swing states. An early choice of a credible vice president nominee, with strong appeal in the swing states, will vastly improve Biden’s chances of defeating Trump in November.
