What if Kamala Harris was the incumbent POTUS instead of Biden?

[Hardkill]

I forgot to mention this about a month ago, but after Harris lost to Trump, professor Lichtman said that in retrospect, the Democratic party never totally adopted his Plan B idea. Lichtman proposed this idea long before the election, in case Biden was forced out of the race by his own party.

The whole plan B was to have Biden resign from office to make Harris the incumbent POTUS. That way, Harris and the Democrats would've had the full advantage of incumbency and much stronger party unity.

He talks about it around 7:33.

I think that if Biden had resigned in 2023 or early 2024, allowing Harris to serve as president for about 1-1.5 years, she would have had the best shot at beating Trump.

That's because she would have received the greatest amount of free media attention, resources, and presidential power for her campaign, with at least 1-1.5 years to campaign for the 2024 election.

Additionally, members of her own party, particularly those foolish moderate Democratic officials, would have been less likely to publicly criticize her, unlike their treatment of Biden. This would have allowed them to present a much more unified front for the 2024 election.

Edited December 19, 2024 by Hardkill

[aurum]

I doubt incumbency was going to save Biden or Kamala. I made that mistake as well, thinking Biden had the advantage early on.

 

[Hardkill]

49 minutes ago, aurum said:

I doubt incumbency was going to save Biden or Kamala. I made that mistake as well, thinking Biden had the advantage early on.

 

Maybe.....or maybe not.....

Yes, there was this strong anti-incumbent sentiment going on around the world, but generally speaking, it's still always much more difficult to defeat an incumbent president than a non-incumbent because of all of the reasons I mentioned above along with having a much greater record of accomplishments to run on and because people tend to be naturally more comfortable with the person that's already in charge. 

Incumbent presidents often lose re-election when they govern so disastrously, as seen in Trump's 2020 loss. Another example is Jimmy Carter, who lost re-election in 1980 due to widespread discontent with the struggling economy, which was plagued by soaring inflation that peaked at around 14% by election year, along with a recession, bad handling of the Iran hostage crisis, very deep divisions and troubling conflicts within his own party, didn't enact real major policy changes to the degree that Obama or Biden did, and had both a very significant third party presidential candidate run against him. Carter also ran against a Republican presidential candidate who truly was exceptionally charismatic.

Objectively, Biden/Harris didn't govern anywhere near as bad as Carter in 1980 or Trump in 2020 did. They did as great of a job of running the country as Obama/Biden did during Obama's first term as president.

Edited December 19, 2024 by Hardkill

[Hojo]

They should have just nominated bernie sanders big wiff from them and they either did it to lose on purpose or they are stupid.

If a massive financial collapse happens under dems no one would vote for them again so they threw on purpose to let trump deal with it.

Both sides are lying through their teeth. There is no good guy here.

Edited December 19, 2024 by Hojo

[aurum]

@Hardkill people are too ignorant to appreciate the job Biden did.

[Hardkill]

1 hour ago, aurum said:

@Hardkill people are too ignorant to appreciate the job Biden did.

That’s partly true. 
 

It’s also because of the dominance of right-wing propaganda disinformation machine that unbelievably tricked the majority of voters into believing that Biden/Harris did very little to nothing good for the country.

I still think that if Harris was the POTUS for about a year or two then she wouldve been able to better command the attention of the public and communicate all of the accomplishment their party much better than Biden did.

Also, enough Americans might’ve gotten used to having a woman of a color be the President of the United States.

Btw, we don’t even know for sure if things would’ve been worse had Biden stayed as the Democratic presidential nominee. Anybody who tells you that it would’ve been worse really has no idea. The people could’ve elected him again by deciding “I am not happy with Biden and he really has gotten so old, but at least he’s the same good old white American middle class man named Joe Biden we both are already used to having as our country’s president and he already beat Trump before, which must really mean that Trump can’t ever beat Biden.”

Edited December 20, 2024 by Hardkill