Dismissing Washington “chatter” about whether Joe Biden should run for re-election in 2024 and whether her own party thinks she would be a suitable replacement if he did not, Kamala Harris said the US president “has said he intends to run for re-election … and I intend to run with him as vice-president”.
Harris was speaking to NBC News at the Munich Security Conference.
Biden has not formally declared a run but all signs suggest that he will. On Thursday, the White House physician pronounced him “fit for duty, and [to] fully execute all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations”.
Also on Thursday, however, Politico reported concern among Democrats that at 80, and already the oldest president ever, Biden is too old to run for a second term by the end of which he would be 86.
The site also reported that some insiders believe Harris would not be a good presidential candidate herself.
Speaking to NBC, Harris said: “I think that it is very important to focus on the needs of the American people and not political chatter out of Washington DC.”
She was also asked about Nikki Haley, the 51-year-old former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador now running for the Republican presidential nomination, who has called for a “new generation” of leaders and said politicians over the age of 75 should be subject to mandatory mental health tests.
Haley’s only declared opponent for the Republican nomination, former president Donald Trump, is younger than Biden but only by four years. Haley has not said Trump is too old.
Harris, 58, said Haley was using “very coded language”, adding: “What I know from traveling our country is that the American people want leaders who will see what’s going on in their lives and create solution.
“In Joe Biden, we have a president who is probably one of the oldest and strongest American presidents we have had in his response to the needs of the American people.”
Haley made headlines on Thursday by saying she did not think a controversial “don’t say gay” law governing the teaching of sexual orientation and gender issues in elementary schools, signed by the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, went “far enough”.
DeSantis, 44, is widely expected to run for the Republican nomination and is the only close challenger to Trump in polling.
DeSantis has also targeted the teaching of African American history. Harris, the first woman, the first Black American and the first South Asian American to be vice-president, said: “Any push to censor America’s teachers and tell them what they should be teaching in the best interest of our children … is, I think, wrongheaded.
“The people who know our children, are their parents and their teachers … and it should not be some politician saying what should be taught in our classrooms.”