Joe Biden drops out of the 2024 presidential race and endorses Kamala Harris. Her path to victory might hinge on her ability to unify the party around the one issue that nearly all Democratic women agree on: abortion.
On December 19, 2023 the vice president’s office quietly launched a new policy initiative. “Kamala Harris will embark on a nationwide reproductive freedoms tour,” read the press release, “to continue fighting back against extremist attacks around the country.”
Harris supporters have worried throughout her time as second-in-command that the Biden administration has saddled her with unwinnable issues, like voting rights and immigration. These were problems with far-off solutions in our current political moment. Abortion, though, is different. Polls, while not always reliable, show that a whopping 89 percent of Democratic women support national laws that guarantee the right to abortion.
President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race on Sunday, throwing his support behind Harris in the effort to beat Donald Trump in November. “I am honored to have the president’s endorsement and it is my intention to earn and win this nomination,” Harris said in a statement, signaling an unprecedented shake-up at next month’s Democratic National Convention.
She’s now tasked with energizing a Democratic ticket that is deeply fractured around issues a host of issues, including Israel’s war on Gaza. But the party does seem motivated, and unified, by one key plank of the platform: abortion.
Harris’s chance to win might depend on her ability to make voters believe that she is their last chance to save reproductive rights. Former President Donald Trump has already bragged about ending abortion rights and his vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, has advocated for a national abortion ban.
Biden’s departure from the top of the ticket comes after weeks of maneuvering by Democratic party leaders who expressed deep concerns about Biden’s age and mental acuity. But she’ll still have to prove, amid much doubt, that she is the right person to win in November.
Harris has made a career of firsts under her belt. She’s the eldest of two daughters from a multiracial family; her father, Donald J. Harris, is an economist from Jamaica, and her mother, Shymala, was a cancer researcher from India. Her parents, both activists who met as graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley, divorced when their kids were young, and the girls were raised primarily by their mother in Oakland and, later, Montreal. Her life story is important. And it will be part of the appeal, beyond abortion, as she reintroduces herself to a wider audience.
Jamilah King is an editorial director at Mother Jones.
