ATLANTA — With President Joe Biden no longer seeking the Democratic nomination for president in November, political strategist Fred Hicks said Biden's legacy goes beyond just his four years in the White House.
"Going from potentially being a pariah in the party to the person who made history not once but twice, that's a tremendous sendoff for someone who spent more than 50 years in Washington, D.C.," Hicks said. “I don’t think his legacy is just as president of the United States. It was as the youngest senator at the time he was elected out of Delaware, someone who endured great personal tragedy, someone who was VP to the first non-white man president in the US, the first black president. Many people credited him with making people comfortable with voting for President Obama.”
Biden oversaw the widespread distribution of the COVID vaccine, signed the largest infrastructure law in decades and signed the Inflation Reduction Act, one of the largest investments to combat climate change. Biden also signed a law capping the price of insulin for seniors, partially forgave some student loan debt and nominated the first Black woman to the Supreme Court of the United States in Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Hicks said Vice President Kamala Harris stands the best chance to top the Democratic ticket in November. She has endorsements from Biden and a number of other key Democrats, but her nomination is far from automatic just weeks out from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
"Politics is a zero sum game, either you win or you lose," Hicks said. "Everything and every decision is around how do you get to 270 electoral college votes, and right now, the Democrats absolutely need Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and or Arizona as well to get to that 270 mix. There's a rollcall vote in the first part of August to decide and try to settle who's going to be the nominee before the convention. Democrats do not want to go into Chicago with this up in the air."
Emory University law professor Alicia Hughes said Harris's candidacy would be historic and could unite a party that has recently had issues in how to move forward.
"We make history in having the first black woman potentially being the candidate of a major party and potentially getting our first black woman to be president of the United States," Hughes said. “America and Americans want to see a ticket that reflects their values and ideals, and there should be some diversity to this not just in terms of color or gender, but it terms of ideals, ideas.”
Hughes said if Harris wins the nomination, her choice of a running mate could help decide the presidential election. When it comes to making history and leaving a legacy, Hughes and Hicks say Biden has done both.
“There are only two things in politics that really matter: votes and money," Hicks said. "And based on the polls, the votes just simply were not there for Biden to win reelection. But when you look at his time in Washington, I don't know that we'll see another career like his."
Watch the full interview with Fred Hicks below.