Less than 24 hours after President Biden’s stuttering performance at a debate in Atlanta, Vice President Kamala Harris stood before a crowd of supporters in a crucial battleground state on Friday to defend his record and his fitness for office.
But now that Democrats are openly discussing replacing Biden on the candidate list, Harris is essentially making a case for herself as well.
She spoke plainly about Mr. Biden’s record in ways the president had not the night before. She sought to contrast Mr. Biden with his opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, whose lies and untruths were on full display during the debate.
But another striking contrast — between Ms. Harris and her boss — played out among Democrats as well. While the prospect of removing Mr. Biden from the ticket remains remote, Ms. Harris would likely be one of six candidates vying for the presidential nomination if Mr. Biden were to withdraw.
“You have to ask yourself, how did we get here?” former Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, said Thursday night, after Ms. Harris gave a powerful post-debate interview on CNN. “How do we get to the point where we spend so much of our time tonight talking about the vice president, instead of the president?”
Ms. Harris, 59, has spent much of her time as vice president struggling to distinguish herself in what is by definition a supporting role. Her poll numbers have remained stubbornly low, in line with Mr. Biden’s. And as recently as last year, some Democrats privately worried that she was becoming a burden on the campaign trail.
Yet, with the Biden campaign in crisis, there is renewed focus on Ms. Harris as she tries to calm a panicked Democratic Party. On Friday in Nevada, she made her loyalty to Mr. Biden clear.
“In a true leader, character is more important than style,” Ms. Harris said. “Donald Trump simply does not have the character to be president of the United States.”
Ms Harris has been campaigning intensively for months, drawing praise from some former critics for her work on abortion rights, Gaza and black maternal health.
Her aides say she is reaching out to voters who aren’t natural fits for Mr. Biden, such as minorities and younger voters. In the space of 12 hours this month, she traveled to Atlanta to talk about economic opportunities for black men, who have wavered in their support for Mr. Biden, before traveling to a summit in Switzerland to drum up support for Ukraine.
She has also become one of Mr. Biden’s fiercest defenders. In February she gave a legal trigger of the special counsel’s report that concluded that Mr. Biden was a “well-intentioned, elderly man with poor memory” and “had diminished his faculties with advancing age.”
On Friday, some Democrats said Ms. Harris’s post-debate performance was exactly what they wanted to see on the debate stage in Atlanta.
She spoke about the administration’s stance on abortion after Biden made a mistake on an issue that should have been a piece of cake for him. During her CNN appearance, she sharply criticized Trump for being “all over the place” on the issue and focused on how his Supreme Court picks were crucial to overturning Roe v. Wade.
“VP Harris last night channeled the feelings of millions of Americans into her real-talk defense of President Biden and total takedown of Donald Trump,” said Quentin James, co-founder of the Collective PAC. “We wanted to see more of that righteous indignation on the debate stage.”
Mr James said he hoped the government would send Ms Harris out more often: “She is the best spokesperson we have at the moment.”
In her CNN interview, Ms. Harris acknowledged a “slow start” for Mr. Biden in the debate. But she also tried to elaborate on what she saw as the premise: that a ninety-minute debate was less important than three and a half years of government.
On Friday, she repeated that same message. “In the Oval Office, negotiating bipartisan deals, I see him in the Situation Room keeping our country safe,” Ms. Harris said, adding that the race would not be decided by “one night in June.”
Fletcher N. Smith Jr., a former South Carolina state representative who served as a surrogate for the Biden campaign in 2007 and 2020, said there needed to be “a real conversation within the Democratic Party about where our leadership is going.”
But Mr. Smith said he was nervous about Ms. Harris taking the lead because of her handling of immigration, one of voters’ top concerns. Ms. Harris has faced criticism over record numbers of southern border crossings because Mr. Biden, early in his term, tasked her with tackling poverty and corruption in the region.
“If the Democrats decide to nominate her to be at the top of the ticket, we’ll still be in the same spot we are now,” Mr. Smith said. “It will still be a neck-and-neck race.”
Tension was high at Ms Harris’ campaign event on Friday.
Stephen Stubbs, an undecided voter, questioned Mr. Biden’s mental acuity.
“Who’s running the country?” Mr. Stubbs asked after watching the debate. “Let Kamala in!” he added, hoping Mr. Biden would step down.
Camille Kauer, a Black woman from North Carolina who attended Mr. Biden’s rally in Raleigh on Friday, called Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris a “dynamic duo.”
She said she was excited about the prospect of Ms. Harris one day becoming president. Ms. Harris has already made history as the first woman, the first African-American and the first Asian-American to serve as vice president.
But Ms. Kauer had doubts that Ms. Harris would have a shot at the top job.
“The party is not really good at supporting black women,” she said.
Simon J. Levien contributed reporting from Las Vegas.
