GOP focuses on Harris and suggests Biden won’t live to 2028

President Joe Biden’s formal announcement that he seeks re-election has led to a boom in pieces on what role Vice President Harris will play, and an explosion of conservative commentary that 2024 is just as much a referendum on her as it is about the candidate at the top of the ticket.

Harris appears prominently and frequently in the president’s official launch video – not just at Biden’s side, but on her own. There’s nothing especially surprising there. She’s the sitting vice president and his running mate. It would have been weird if she had been absent.

In some ways, what’s going on over in the GOP is more interesting, even if the political payoffs are pretty obvious.

• First and foremost, the tactic reminds voters that Biden, at 80, is the oldest president ever and would be 86 when he finishes a hypothetical second term. (Former president Donald Trump, who leads the Republican pack, is 76.)

• It puts the spotlight on a vice president whom GOP base voters dislike even more than they dislike Biden. (Her overall job approval isn’t that much worse than his, though neither possesses enviable numbers.)

Two caveats: The GOP has attacked Harris since she was picked, and the argument didn’t work in 2020 or 2022.

GOP’s actuarial table argument

Many Republicans are not being subtle in their message to voters, and it’s a bit macabre: They argue Biden is likely to die of old age before the end of a possible second term, and Harris would become president.

“I think that we can all be very clear and say with a matter of fact that if you vote for Joe Biden you really are counting on a President Harris,” GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley told Fox News last week. “Because the idea that he would make it until 86 years old is not something that I think is likely.”

“Joe Biden is 142 years old,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told Fox Business last week. “In a very real sense, this election, the Democrats are suggesting Kamala Harris for president” because there’s “a very real possibility that Kamala Harris becomes the president” if Biden wins.

The counter on age

Biden’s doctors recently declared him “a healthy, vigorous, 80-year-old male who is fit to successfully execute duties of the presidency.” He is known to resent the persistent discussion of his age.

At the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday, the president turned to humor to try to defuse the question. (He did the same thing at last year’s dinner, so when it comes to inoculating him, the event isn’t exactly burying the needle.)

Samples:

• The First Amendment? “My good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it.”

• “You might think I don’t like Rupert Murdoch. That’s simply not true. How could I dislike the guy who makes me look like Harry Styles?”

And of course, part of the strategy is to argue that Biden has a capable successor in Harris.