
"Despite Biden's travails in his first term so far, he has consistently had a higher approval rating than his Veep," Shanahan told Newsweek. and co-editor of The Trump Presidency: From Campaign Trail to World Stage. "In any president/vice president relationship, the White House incumbent invariably casts a long shadow," said Mark Shanahan, an associate professor in politics at the University of Surrey in the U.K. In his reelection campaign, Biden will surely drum up his administration's achievements-from falling inflation to the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill to efforts at student debt relief-and Harris may not get an equal share of the praise. His running mate will receive unusual scrutiny with respect to the 'heartbeat-away-from-the-presidency' role." Biden's Long Shadow "But Biden's claims about his running mate will have exceptionally obvious possible relevance. "Presidential candidates always tout their running mate's ability to serve as president in the event of their own disability or death," he said. Harris' approval rating remains low, like the president's. Vice President Kamala Harris and US President Joe Biden arrive to deliver remarks during National Small Business Week, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC, on May 1, 2023. "Normally, however, a presidential candidate is not going on 82 years old, as Joe Biden will be on election day in 2024," he added. "It takes a severely deficient candidate in the second spot-think Sarah Palin, Senator John McCain's running mate on the Republican ticket in 2008-to move the needle a point or two downward," Quirk said. "We know this because election poll questions that mention both the presidential and vice-presidential candidates-Trump and Pence versus Biden and Harris in 2020, for example-almost always get exactly the same result as those that only mention the presidential candidates," he said. "Normally, the vice presidential candidates have no detectable effect on the presidential election outcome," Paul Quirk, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia in Canada, told Newsweek.



from Mexico and the so-called Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Harris has long been the target of criticism from Republicans over her role in dealing with the U.S.-Mexico border-she had been tasked early on with addressing the "root causes" of migration into the U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are officially running for reelection but this time there may be even closer scrutiny of Biden's running mate as the president becomes the oldest person ever to seek a second term.
