Indian American VP says she and Joe Biden haven’t discussed running for re-election in 2024
As Vice President Kamala Harris suggested she and President Joe Biden have never discussed whether he plans to run for re-election, White House asserted Harris will be Biden’s running mate if he does so.
It isn’t a topic she thinks about as they near the end of their first year in office, America’s first female and first Indian American vice president said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published Thursday.
“I’m not going to talk about our conversations, but I will tell you this without any ambiguity: We do not talk about nor have we talked about re-election, because we haven’t completed our first year and we’re in the middle of a pandemic,” she was quoted as saying.
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Asked if she assumed Biden would run again in 2024, Harris said, “I’ll be very honest: I don’t think about it, nor have we talked about it.”
Meanwhile, the White House asserted Harris, daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, would be President Joe Biden’s running mate should he run for reelection.
“Yes, he does,” White House principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Thursday when asked if Biden would keep Harris as his running mate, adding: “There’s no change.”
Jean-Pierre would not comment on possible conversations between Biden and Harris on any possible reelection plans saying, “I can’t speak to a conversation that the vice president and the president had.
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“I can only … reiterate what (White House press secretary) Jen (Psaki) has said and what the President has said himself: that he is planning to run for reelection in 2024.”
Harris has been in the national spotlight as a potential future leader of the Democratic Party as Biden, 79, was the oldest president to be sworn in and he would be 81 on Election Day in 2024.
Since the start of his term, some Democrats have privately questioned whether he would mount another campaign. The White House has repeatedly said Biden’s intention is to run for reelection, and allies have indicated he has said as much privately.
But that has not stopped speculation from churning about who might replace Biden atop the Democratic ticket should he opt not to run again, the Hill newspaper noted.
Harris, as vice president, would be well positioned to lead the party. She has previously dismissed talk of 2024, telling ABC in a November interview that the next presidential election year was “absolutely not” being discussed.
Her interview with the Journal comes on the heels of reporting by multiple outlets that other would-be candidates, like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams (D), are all unlikely to be scared off of a potential 2024 run by Harris, according to the Hill.
In the Journal interview, Harris said the administration and Democrats have to better get across to voters how their policies are helping boost Americans through investments in childcare and elder care, among other areas.