A former communications director for Kamala Harris has made the unlikely suggestion that Joe Biden resign so she can become the first woman to serve as US president after her defeat to Donald Trump in the 5 November election.
Jamal Simmons offered the thought during an appearance as a panelist on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union news show when asked what should be the top priority for the US before Trump begins his second presidency in January.
Though there is no indication Biden has considered it, Simmons said he “could resign the presidency in the next 30 days [to briefly] make Kamala Harris the president of the United States”.
Simmons said the move would not only spare Harris from having to certify her own defeat to Trump in the US Senate as part of her role as vice-president – but it also “would dominate the news at a point [when] Democrats have to learn” to seize the public’s attention.
“Joe Biden’s been a phenomenal president,” Simmons said. “He’s lived up to so many of the promises he’s made.
“There’s one promise left that he can fulfill: being a transitional figure.”
Dana Bash, State of the Union’s host, replied by alluding to how the idea had previously been discussed among social media users who were disillusioned with how voters had returned Trump to the White House at the vice-president’s expense. “This has now jumped from an internet meme to a Sunday morning talk show,” Bash remarked.
Harris ascended to the top of the Democratic party’s ticket in July when Biden dropped his re-election bid in the wake of a disastrous debate performance against Trump in June. Biden endorsed Harris to face the Republican party leader in the 5 November election.
But the pair’s relationship became tense as she sought to distance herself from his record, making it difficult to see Simmons’ vision of Biden stepping down in the closing days of his presidency becoming reality.
Things between Harris and Biden came close to rock bottom in the waning days of the race, as her team tried to capitalize on a comedian at a pro-Trump rally in New York City insulting Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage”. They felt undermined in their effort when Biden soon came out and appeared to refer to Trump’s supporters as “garbage”, giving Republicans the opportunity to express offense in the press.
Biden’s subsequent clarification that he meant to only single out Trump’s “supporter’s … demonization of Latinos” – meaning the comedian’s – rang hollow.
Harris ultimately lost every key battleground to Trump, costing her the electoral college and the popular vote, leaving her as the first Democratic presidential candidate since 2004 to lose the latter.
David Plouffe, a senior Harris campaign adviser, soon wrote on the social media platform X that her team had “dug out of a deep hole” in running against Trump “but not enough”. The post from Plouffe – who guided Barack Obama’s successful 2008 run for the presidency – was widely interpreted as a dig against Biden for dropping out long after critics had first pressured him to do so.
Plouffe subsequently deleted his X account. And reportedly sources from within the president’s team told Fox News that Plouffe was a “sanctimonious ass” – and that Biden had managed to beat Trump in 2020 without his help.
Simmons served as Harris’s communications director for about a year beginning in January 2022. The political operative is the co-host of the TrailBlaze podcast.
