Kamala Harris emerges as the bookies’ favourite to replace Joe Biden

Kamala Harris’s prospects of becoming the Democrat candidate for president have surged, as ‘leaked’ Trump golf video emerges.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Vice President Kamala Harris has pushed ahead of Joe Biden as the most likely Democrat to be elected president in November, as the White House braces for a chorus of congressional calls for Biden to stand aside following his widely panned debate performance against Donald Trump.

In the week since the 90-minute debate last Thursday (Friday AEST) the president’s prospect of being re-elected in November have tanked from 36 per cent to 14 per cent, according to the average of eight political betting markets tracked by RealClear Politics.

Kamala Harris’s have surged from two per cent to 15 per cent over the same period, while the former president’s have increased from 51 to 56 per cent, according to the same source.

The White House and the Biden re-election campaign have been in damage control since the debate, amid a surge of calls from mainstream media outlets, including The New York Times and Chicago Tribune, major party donors and a growing pool of elected Democrats for Biden, 81, to step aside.

As many as 25 Democrat congressmen could publicly call for the president to make way for a new candidate next week when they return to Washington after the July 4 break, adding their voices to two — from Arizona and Texas — who have already done so.

Separately, an allegedly leaked video went viral of Donald Trump in a golf buggy with his son Barron in which the former president told bystanders that Kamala Harris would emerge as the Democrats’ candidate, after crowing about beating “that old broken down pile of crap [Joe Biden]” at last week’s debate.

“He just quit you know, he’s quitting the race, I got him out; and that means we have Kamala, she’s going to be better; she’s so bad, she’s so pathetic, so f**cking bad,” he told a group of fans on his New Jersey golf course.

🚨 LEAKED VIDEO: Trump on Biden he’s “quitting the race.. I got him out” he’s an “old broken-down pile of crap… Now we have Kamala. She’s so f—king bad”

pic.twitter.com/G9eLy1hmIc

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 4, 2024

The president met with over 20 Democrat governors at the White House on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) to reassure them he intended to stay in the race, amid fresh polls that showed Biden trailing his deputy for the first time and support for him wavering more generally.

A CNN poll released on Tuesday gave Harris 45 per cent to Trump’s 47 per cent, within the margin of error, while Biden had 43 per cent to the former president’s 47 per cent.

Trump’s lead over the incumbent president doubled to six percentage points since the debate according to the influential New York Times/Siena College poll published a day later, putting the former president on 49 per cent.

A Wall Street Journal poll also released Wednesday gave Trump a similar lead — 48 per cent to 42 per cent — which was the widest in the poll’s history since early 2021.

Harris, 60, a former California Attorney-General, has maintained her public support for Biden, even as influential Democrat senator James Clyburn said he would support the vice president.

“We will not back down,” the Vice President told an campaign staff call on Wednesday. “We will follow our president’s lead. We will fight, and we will win. … Joe Biden has devoted his life to fighting for the people of our country. In this moment, I know all of us are ready to fight for him.”

All Democrat governors have so far expressed support for the president, including those typically canvassed as possible replacements including California’s Gavin Newsom and Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, although reports suggest some have expressed misgivings in private.

Newsom was campaigning for Biden in West Michigan on Thursday, adamant he would continue to support him while extolling the president’s stamina during the 90-minute White House meeting with governors a day earlier.

“It could have gone two or three hours,” he told reporters, adding he “believed in his character”.

“That was the Joe Biden I remember from two weeks ago. That was the Joe Biden that I remember from two years ago. That’s the Joe Biden that I’m looking forward to reelecting as president of the United States.”

For his part, the president has blamed his gruelling schedule and bad luck for his debate performance, telling a Milwaukee radio station in an interview that emerged on Wednesday that he had had “a bad night”.

“The fact of the matter is that I screwed up. I made a mistake,” the president told presenter Earl Ingram.

In another interview on July 4 with WURD radio in Philadelphia, the president conceded he’d had a “bad debate …but 90 minutes on stage does not erase what I’ve done for 3 ½ years”.

Under pressure from supporters to demonstrate to voters he’s still up to the job, the president will appear in a one-on-one interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Friday night at 8pm (Saturday 10am AEST).

Mr Biden will host NATO leaders in Washington next week, which will include a solo press conference.