‘Heading into uncharted territory’ MSU experts weigh in on VP Harris nominee

LANSING, Mich. (WLNS)– Political experts say we are heading into uncharted territory with President Biden’s recent withdrawal from the race.

Some of the biggest political leaders in the state have voiced their support behind Vice President Kamala Harris, and experts say that’s smart politics. But at this point, it’s the only option.

“Well, this has obviously been an amazing few weeks in American political history, a campaign that a month ago was seeming to be a boring repeat of 2020 has had a lot of events and now has a lot of Americans who had been tuning it out, paying a whole lot more attention,” said Matt Grossmann, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University.

“If there been some sort of a process a year ago where Biden had decided that he didn’t want to run for reelection or couldn’t run for reelection, then you would have had more candidates jump in. But this late in the process, when there’s a clear focal point, it’s really not in anyone’s interest to doing it,” said Grossmann.

Vice President Harris appears to be more competitive in states like Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada, which opens up more of a possible path to victory than Biden had.

“It had looked like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were sort of the key swing states…Kamala Harris seems to be likely to perform slightly better in those southern swing states, so we may now move from kind of a three-state contest focused on the upper Midwest to a six-state contest,” said Grossmann.

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