Harris says she’s ‘scared as heck’ about a Trump victory

Vice President Harris on Wednesday said she’s scared about the possibility of former President Trump winning back the White House in November, arguing that’s motivating her to traverse the country to campaign.

“I’m scared as heck, which is why I’m traveling our country,” Harris said on ABC’s “The View” when asked about comments from prominent Democrats like former first lady Michelle Obama, who said she is afraid of what could happen in 2024.

“There’s an old saying that there are only two ways to run for office, either without an opponent or scared. So on all of those points, yes, we should all be scared,” she added.

Harris pointed to her recent travel to North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina and Nevada and said the Biden-Harris campaign faces the challenge of messaging to voters what they’ve been able to accomplish. 

“We don’t run away from something when we’re scared, we fight back against it. So many of us know, when we are scared for the future of our children, do we then stay in bed with the covers over our head? We can’t, we cannot,” Harris said.

“President Biden and I and all of us who are part of this administration, we got to earn reelection. There is no question. We got to be on the road,” she added. “We have to earn the reelect and we have to communicate what we have achieved. And that is going to be one of our big challenges. We’ve done a lot of good work, we need to let people know who brung it to them.”

President Biden has been struggling to get his economic message to resonate with voters, and polling suggests Americans don’t give him credit for the improving economy. Additionally, Biden has faced dismal approval numbers, with a new poll this week from ABC News/Ipsos showing only 33 percent of Americans approve of his handling of the job as president.

Former President Obama has reportedly expressed concerns over the structure of the campaign and David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, said this week that Trump is “a pretty formidable candidate” and that the Biden-Harris campaign has to “get into gear.”

The aggregation of polls kept by Decision Desk HQ and The Hill shows Trump with a lead of 1 percentage point over Biden in a hypothetical head-to-head contest.