Kamala Harris' Campaign: The Strategic Absence Of President Biden

In the final stretch of the 2024 presidential race, one person seems notably absent from Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign: President Joe Biden. Since ending his reelection bid in July, Biden has largely stayed off the campaign trail, leaving Harris to carve out her own path and focus on distinguishing herself from the sitting president's record.

She has dropped all references to "Bidenomics" from her campaign speeches, a term which she and Biden's administration used to refer to its agenda of investing in domestic manufacturing, infrastructure, and clean energy. In its place, Harris has pivoted to what she calls the "opportunity economy," her plan to grow the middle class through tax cuts, a $6,000 child tax credit for new parents, assistance for first-time homebuyers, and tax deductions for new small business startups, among other plans.

Political experts suggest this strategic distance is necessary. Costas Panagopoulos, a professor of political science at Northeastern University, told Newsweek that Biden's presence could overshadow Harris and become a liability for her campaign. "Biden links Harris to the past, and she has built a campaign around looking ahead to the future. Featuring Biden prominently makes that difficult," Panagopoulos said.

He also noted that Harris has successfully leveraged other Democratic icons like Barack and Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton, while Biden himself has been preoccupied with numerous domestic and international crises, including Hurricanes Helene and Milton, making it a "delicate balancing act" for the Harris campaign.

Newsweek has contacted the Harris campaign and the White House via email for comment. Christian Grose, a political science professor at the University of Southern California, echoed this sentiment, telling Newsweek that Biden's unpopularity doesn't help Harris.

Despite a slight uptick in Biden's approval numbers since July, Grose said Biden is a "slightly net negative" for Harris' campaign, suggesting that it is wiser for her to use surrogates like Clinton and Obama, who are more popular with voters. Polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight currently gives Biden an average net favorability of -13.9 points. According to that tracker, his average unpopularity peaked in July at -18.6.

Downsized Role

On Sunday, NBC reported that multiple unnamed Harris campaign and White House officials confirmed there are no plans for Biden to appear alongside Harris before Election Day. Instead, he will privately leverage his political connections, particularly among labor leaders, and continue official duties at the White House to talk up his administration's achievements.

Biden's downsized role was a calculated decision between his and Harris' teams, with one White House official telling NBC that Biden's "most important role is doing his job as president," noting that "it's clear voters want something new."

Harris' need to distance herself from Biden is paramount as she aims to position herself as a "change agent." She has made repeated efforts to land this point, including telling Fox News in a recent interview, "Let me be very clear: My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden's presidency."

The messaging shift has had an effect. In August, a poll conducted by the Financial Times and the University of Michigan Ross School of Business found that 42 percent of voters said they trusted Harris more to handle the economy, compared with 41 percent who said they put their faith in former President Donald Trump.

While Trump's numbers were unchanged from July's poll, Harris' standing was a 7-percentage point improvement compared with Biden's numbers in July. Last week, Biden said Harris would "cut her own path" as president during a Harris campaign event in Philadelphia.

He said that Harris had also served as a loyal vice president and predicted that she would offer a "fresh and new" perspective to the office if she defeated Trump, who he argued was "totally dishonest" and pushing an "old and failed" perspective.

Harris has taken steps to differentiate her platform from Biden's by proposing policies that speak directly to voters' concerns, especially in areas where Biden's administration has not acted. For instance, Harris has proposed that Medicare cover in-home care, a policy targeted at Generation X voters and those caring for elderly parents.

Grose noted that this policy stands out as one that Harris can claim as her own and does not resemble anything proposed by Biden's administration.

Behind-the-Scenes Influence

However, despite Biden's absence from high-profile campaign events, his behind-the-scenes influence remains. The president has been working to support Harris by reaching out to labor leaders in key battleground states and mobilizing the Democratic base in places like his hometown of Scranton, a city in Pennsylvania, which is likely to be the pivotal state in deciding the outcome of the election.

Biden's physical absence from the campaign is also practical. "Campaigning is strenuous," Grose noted, adding that, given Biden's age and the demands of governing, it makes more sense for him to focus on his duties rather than campaign for Harris.

The dynamic between Kamala Harris and Joe Biden bears some resemblance to past presidential campaigns, notably those involving Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, though the situations differ in key ways. In 2000, Bill Clinton was still popular with the American public on policy issues but was personally mired in scandals, leading Al Gore to distance himself from Clinton during his presidential bid.

Clinton's policies were widely approved, and many believed he could have won reelection had it not been for term limits. However, Gore's strategy of downplaying Clinton's role likely contributed to his narrow loss.

In contrast, the 2008 campaign saw John McCain distancing himself from George W. Bush, whose approval ratings had plummeted due to the Iraq War and the 2008 financial crisis. Bush's deep unpopularity made his presence a liability, forcing McCain to carefully balance his own messaging while attempting to appeal to voters seeking change.

Grose said Harris was proving herself to be a stronger campaigner than Biden. "Biden was almost