‘She’ll have to compete’: Democrat leader dodges a direct answer when asked if Kamala Harris is the future of the party

A Democrat who played a major role in electing Joe Biden as president in 2020 is stopping short of endorsing current Vice President Kamala Harris as the face of the future for the Democratic Party.

Jim Clyburn of South Carolina is co-chair of the Biden/Harris 2024 reelection campaign.

During the 2020 election season, he endorsed then-candidate Biden just before the South Carolina primaries, propelling him to victory, helping Biden secure the Democratic nomination and subsequently win the presidency.

But he is now dodging the very simple question of whether Harris is ready for the top job if and when the time comes.

Speaking Meet the press On Sunday, Clyburn, now the assistant Democratic leader of the House, was asked if he saw Harris as the future of the Democratic Party.

“I definitely see her as part of that future,” he replied.

‘Is she the future?’ pressed the anchor.

‘That could very well be the case. She is running a very good campaign and I consider her to be the successor to this president, but I also know the history of that,” Clyburn explained before revealing his doubts.

‘It’s not a given. You don’t automatically move on. She will have to compete with everyone who has dreams and ambitions – and I think she will acquit herself well,” he said.

Clyburn has represented South Carolina’s 6th Congressional District since 1993, making him one of the longest-serving members of the House.

While the issue of re-election as president has been a given for most modern presidents, that has not always been the case for Biden.

A significant portion of Democratic voters have indicated they would prefer he not run, in part because of his age — concerns that Biden himself has called “perfectly legitimate.”

Biden, 80, announced his bid for a second term with Vice President Harris in late April — but questions have been raised over the past year about whether the president is too old or unfit to serve four more years.

Senior Democrats still appear to be in denial about the issue, at least publicly, in part because there is no obvious alternative.

A slew of Democratic governors, from California to Illinois and Pennsylvania, are ready to throw their hats in the ring if Biden decides to withdraw, but it’s not clear if anyone could win the general election.

However, party executives agree that Vice President Kamala Harris, 58, is not the answer.

She was elected in 2020 to counter arguments against Biden’s age, but in office she has become the least popular vice president in electoral history.

Even prominent voices in the left-wing media have begun to encourage Biden to step aside and let someone else, younger, run for the party in 2024 — but certainly not Kamala Harris.

In recent weeks alone, Democratic strategist James Carville, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, columnist Andrew Sullivan and David Ignatius of The Washington Post have all publicly called on Biden to consider his age and relinquish the nomination.

Yet few things have united Democratic voters like the prospect of Trump returning to power. And Biden’s political position within his party stabilized after Democrats performed stronger than expected in last year’s midterm elections.

For now, Trump, 76, is the favorite to emerge as the Republican nominee, creating the potential for a historic sequel to the tumultuous 2020 campaign.

But Trump faces significant hurdles, including evidence that he is the first former president to face criminal charges.

On Friday, Biden gave his vice president a new task for her overcrowded portfolio.

Harris — the first woman to become vice president and the first Black person and person of South Asian descent to hold the job — will now oversee the new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.

Harris, a former prosecutor and attorney general, has years of experience on this issue.

But the vice president now has some of the country’s most prominent policy issues on her plate — including voting rights, abortion and the increase in migration across the border into the United States.

They are also the most politically charged issues, which are difficult to resolve and can be a minefield to navigate.