A series of columnists recently published pieces advocating that Joe Biden drop Kamala Harris as his running mate in 2024. Josh Barro advocated for Biden to drop Harris for Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, in a piece suggesting Harris fails to address the interests of the broader racial coalition that makes up the Democratic Party, but which entirely fails to note how Whitmer would. Eric Levitz at New York Magazine suggested the president drop his veep because of her unpopularity, noting Biden’s age adds additional scrutiny, and that the Democrats need to set themselves up for a better standard bearer come 2028. And finally, The Washington Post’s David Ignatius – in a piece perfectly formulated to get a response from us – argued that not only should Biden have resisted picking Harris in the first place, but that now neither of them should run for reelection.

We’ll aggressively rebut the argument, yet again, that Biden should not run for reelection, in a piece to come in the near future. But today, feeling emboldened by months focusing on the vice presidential prospects and our – dare I say – particular expertise in this area of political coverage compared to these generalist opinion columnists, we want to firmly assert not only that the president will not drop his vice president, but that he affirmatively should not.

Harris History

Let’s start at the beginning. In 2020, we launched a thorough index to calculate the strongest possible nominee-running mate pairings for the Democratic Party. The index made the case that, given Biden’s nomination and 2020’s electoral environment – California’s then-Senator Kamala Harris was his strongest possible running mate. This is not to say they were the strongest ticket overall, but if Biden was the Democratic nominee – and he was – Kamala Harris was his best choice for vice president. 

And so it went – Biden ended up taking our advice (Mike Donilon must be a loyal reader or something) and picked Harris. The Biden-Harris ticket defeated an incumbent president in a hyper-polarized environment and carried two states – Arizona and Georgia – that Democrats had not won since the 1990s. Harris became the first vice president of color and the first woman ever elected to this country’s executive branch, but was ultimately saddled with low approval ratings – though, contrary to popular belief, they are not significantly lower than or all that distinct from Biden’s own approval rating.

Beyond the obvious additional scrutiny placed on the 49th vice president because of her race and gender, Harris faced a couple other obstacles that most of her 48 predecessors did not in capitalizing on the avuncular (or, in her case, materteral) role of her office. 

For one, for the first two years of the Biden presidency, the Senate was evenly split between 50 Republicans and 50 senators who aligned with the Democrats. This required, at the height of Biden’s administration-staffing and legislative agenda, Harris’ near-constant presence in Washington, DC, in order to split the Senate’s ties on everything from key nominations to signature legislation. This drew her away from the more ceremonial, pomp and circumstance, and campaign-oriented events across the country that gives the vice president a certain apolitical and affable appeal – they’re a salesperson jet setting across the country to sell the agenda, not a creature of Washington bogged down in decision-making.

To put this in context, Mike Pence cast 13 tie-breaking votes in his four years as vice president, Dick Cheney cast eight in his eight years, Al Gore only four in his eight years, and Joe Biden never cast a tie-breaking vote in his eight years. But, just this year and only two-and-a-half years into her term, Harris cast her 31st tie-breaking vote, tying the previous record held by two-term Vice President John C. Calhoun.1That John C. Calhoun – a prominent defender of slavery – is at risk of losing his record to someone like Kamala Harris is worthy of a historical nod. Needless to say, even in the 51-49 Senate we have now, the need to remain close to the legislative and nomination-clearing action in the Senate has created a temporal and geographic constraint for Harris that, while certainly not entirely responsible for her flagging approval compared to many vice presidents, is not negligible: she actually has to take a stand on things!

Though vice presidents are not strangers to scrutiny – Cheney and Pence (not to mention Spiro Agnew) both received plenty – the level of direct antipathy is of note. Attempts to characterize her as the evil mastermind of the Biden administration, pulling the strings behind a geriatric occupant of the Oval Office, haven’t really landed in mainstream discourse. And the rhetoric seeking to depict her as a radical extremist has a whiff of desperation from the Right (the Left has them beat; the “Kamala is a cop” memes are at least memorable). Compared to other recent vice presidents like Gore, George H.W. Bush, and Biden himself, only Cheney has a claim to best the disproportionate amount of disdain a vice president receives compared to their president.

Though the realities of her position, gender and racial bias, the partisanship of the nation, the closeness of the Senate, and the level of political vitriol she inspires are all factors to account for in a holistic consideration of Harris’ vice presidency, they are beside the point. Sure, they leave a solid amount of upside for Harris as she – over the course of 2023 and 2024 – will seek to reintroduce herself to voters and to America, but this piece is not a defense of Harris, it is a defense of the strategy. Had Biden selected Whitmer as his running mate in 2020, or anyone else for that matter, his best strategy, and the one he – like every modern president before him – will follow, would be to keep his running mate for the reelect.

Dance With the One That Brung Ya

Let’s get the really obvious point out of the way: Kamala Harris is Biden’s running mate. Biden has never said anything to the contrary and has, in fact, always said this would be the case – including when he announced he was running for reelection. Much like the deluge of reporting that Biden may not run for reelection despite the fact he was clearly gearing up for it, any reporting that Biden seriously considered dropping Harris is, at best, grossly opportunistic clickbait. There is no historical basis for this, there was no hint that he would ever do this, and he constantly affirmed that he would run for reelection with her. And yet, because of the state of political journalism these days, we were among the few willing to go out on a limb and state the obvious. So yes, with the campaign now announced and rearing up, and T-shirts and yard signs printed, I implore you to realize that Harris is on the ticket and any one seriously suggesting that change in the year to come has no concept of reality and is just trying to get your clicks.

But why are we willing to go one limb further and also suggest that keeping Harris on the ticket is the best strategic choice? Though we don’t have a vice presidential power index for the incumbent Democratic ticket this year, the equation would look much simpler than the algorithm that runs the current iteration, probably something like this:

Okay, this is a bit tongue in cheek, but it’s almost that clear cut. This was a line we hit on constantly in our exploration of modern vice presidential picks on Running Mates. If you change the ticket for your reelection it acknowledges that you made the wrong choice, that you want or need to change direction. This is not a great starting point for an incumbent president’s campaign.

Furthermore, the actual value add of a given vice presidential running mate is not particularly high. There’s little evidence to show that selecting a running mate to win a specific state matters in turning out significantly more votes for that ticket – it appears to be around 2% more in a given state, which is not nothing in a key swing state, but it bears noting that this advantage is larger in smaller states. There’s also little evidence that a running mate representing a particular demographic or voting bloc makes much difference either. Geographic diversity is important, as campaigns often prioritize different regions of the country. Based on our preferred regional metric, 90% of non-incumbent campaigns since 1968 have had candidates from different regions of the country. What tends to matter is a balance of experience – years of insider (federal) experience versus outsider (non-federal) experience and types of roles held. There has never been a ticket featuring two people without experience in the federal government. This also tends to account for a difference in age – as more years of government service correlates, literally, with age. There are small benefits to reap on the margin based on a given running mate, but inertia is a really powerful driver here overall. The vice president’s strengths among voting groups, in their home state or region, and in both their lived and political experience do not change from one cycle to the next. Vice President Harris is still from the West, she is much more of a DC “outsider” than the 79-year-old Biden who has spent more than half his life as a federal politician, and this will be as true in 2024 as it was in 2020.

Finally, the incumbency advantage bears some mention here. Only ten presidents have ever lost reelection – a remarkably skewed ratio given the furore each election cycle. In part, this is because an incumbent president running for reelection holds a number of advantages over a challenger: subsidized housing and transportation (and you get to use Air Force One as a backdrop), universal name recognition (they don’t usually have to introduce or reintroduce themselves to voters), a campaign infrastructure they already built four years ago (along with lists of voters and a large war chest of money), and access to other “soft” government resources that aren’t necessarily campaign-related but can’t hurt (franking, television airtime, getting to issue official statements, and being called “the president.”).

An incumbent vice president, with the glitz of Air Force Two, a national spotlight, and the varying official resources of their office in carrying out “non-campaign” events can’t hurt a reelection effort. Swapping a vice presidential nominee is more expensive, forgoes this key incumbent advantage, and leaves the nation wondering about the sitting vice president fuming their days away in Washington as the president actively campaigns with someone else.

To paraphrase what we said back in 2022, you should not be surprised at Biden’s insistence that Harris will remain on the ticket in 2024. Not because she’s particularly strong, or despite any particular weakness, nor anything she’s done or failed to do, nor even if they privately despise each other – but because it’d be incredibly wasteful, foolish, and unprecedented for him not to. Leaving your vice president high and dry for the reelect is an indication that you made a mistake – that you do not have faith in or stand by your own choices. Once you choose a running mate, the benefits to keeping them on the ticket will always outweigh any potential rewards in dropping them.

But Why Do We Care So Much?

This whole saga has me asking – how many times do we have to beat this drum? Opinion columnists who waste ink arguing the president should drop his running mate are unworthy of your time. If – and that’s a big if – they are read by any person with serious sway over the president, they are ignored or taken as a puff piece for the future political careers of the suggested alternatives (read: Gretchen Whitmer’s 2028 stock is on the rise!).

And maybe that’s all they’re doing – trying to generate buzz for their down-the-line favorites or desperately vie for attention in this oversaturated media environment. But don’t take them seriously, because their suggestions aren’t. Their columns are a fantasy: they evoke imagination, not serious consideration.