With growing concern even among Democrats over Joe Biden’s mental fitness, Vice President Kamala Harris says she’s “ready to serve.”
The VP made the statement in a Wall Street Journal interview published on Monday, February 12, as voter concerns mount about Biden’s age and obvious mental decline in an election year.
The 59-year-old Harris has faced growing scrutiny about her own abilities as the first in line to the presidency should Democrat Biden, 81, be incapacitated or chose to step down.
“I am ready to serve. There’s no question about that,” Harris told the newspaper when asked whether voters’ concerns about Biden’s age meant she must convince them of her credentials.
Everyone who sees her on the job “walks away fully aware of my capacity to lead,” said Harris, the first Black, South Asian and female vice president in US history.
The interview was carried out two days before a stinging special counsel report portrayed Biden as elderly and forgetful. Special counsel Robert Hur’s probe into Biden’s handling of classified documents said the president should not face charges but damningly said he would come across to a jury as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
In the same WSJ interview, Harris criticized Hur’s report as “gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate” and said the comments about Biden’s memory and age were “clearly politically motivated.”
The White House also has hit back hard at the report, noting that Hur interviewed Biden when he was under intense pressure the day after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.
But does anyone really care if Harris is ready? She faces her own popularity issues, with an approval rating of a mere 37.5%. That’s the percentage of people who approve of Harris as of February 6, according to an average of the latest polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight. Those numbers are even lower than Biden’s approval rating, which is at 38.9% as of February 12, according to an average of polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight.