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Vice President Kamala Harris admitted that she and President Joe Biden “have a lot of work to do” to win re-election, but said she is “confident” about the 2024 presidential election.
Harris made the remarks outside the White House after Democrats performed well in races across the country, while the president and vice president are polling poorly.
“It was a good night. And the president and I obviously have a lot of work to do to earn our re-election. But I am confident we’re going to win,” she said.
During an interview on “60 Minutes” last Sunday, Harris guaranteed Biden’s re-election after being asked why the president was neck and neck with former President Donald Trump.
CBS’ Bill Whitaker questioned the vice president about why she and Biden were polling so close to Trump despite the former president’s ongoing legal problems.
“The Biden-Harris ticket is running neck and neck with Donald Trump. Why are you not 30 points ahead?” Whitaker asked.
Harris stated that she is not a political pundit, but that the choice will be clear when Americans vote on Election Day next year.
“Bill, we’re going to win. Let me just tell you that. We’re going to win. I’m aware and I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. But we will win,” she said.
“You say that with such conviction,” Whitaker responded.
“I have no doubt, but I also have no doubt it’s going to be a lot of work. And everyone’s going to have to participate. This is a democracy,” she continued. “I look at it more as let’s keep getting out there. And, as with any election, we got to make our case to the American people. That’s part of our responsibility. And that’s this process. And that’s what it is. And that’s a fair process.”
Harris was also asked about a CBS poll that showed younger voters are losing support for the president.
“If you poll how young people feel about the climate and the warming of our planet, it polls as one of their top concerns. When we talk about what we are doing with student loan debt, polls very high. The challenge that we have as an administration is we got to let people know who brung it to them. That’s our challenge. But it is not that the work we are doing is not very, very popular with a lot of people,” she said.
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Later in the interview, Harris also made headlines when she bizarrely said Biden is “very much alive” and planning to run for re-election.
New polling data indicates that Biden is lagging behind Trump in five battleground states, which is alarming and perplexing Democratic senators and poses a political challenge to the party’s Senate candidates seeking office in those states.
Democrats are concerned about Biden’s low polling results and what they mean for his electability in 2024, but they also maintain that Biden will be the party’s nominee absent a dramatic change in circumstances.
However, they concede that a lot of voters find Biden’s age (80) concerning.
“I hear immense praise for what he has done and how well he is doing on foreign policy and extremism at home. He’s doing everything right, is what I’m hearing. And yet there’s this lingering concern about electability,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said.
“The question about the polls concerns people,” added Blumenthal, who noted that Trump, 77, isn’t much younger than Biden.
Senate Democrats claim that to inspire young voters, Biden needs to develop a stronger and more progressive political message. Among voters between the ages of 18 and 29, he and Trump are now virtually tied.
In 2020, Biden received 60% of the vote in this group, compared to 36% for Trump, The Hill reported.
Many Democratic lawmakers believed that after receiving state and federal indictments, Trump’s popularity among swing and independent voters would plummet.
Rather, a poll by The New York Times and Siena College indicates that Trump has surpassed Biden in five states that Biden won in 2020: Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Nevada.
Democrats are particularly concerned about the poll’s results, which show that 62 percent of registered voters believe Biden lacks the mental capacity to serve as president, and 71 percent believe he is too old to do so.
