Americans are not confident Kamala Harris can be president, says former Democrat VP candidate

Former Democratic VP candidate Joe Lieberman told the ‘Brian Kilmeade Show’ Thursday that Vice President Kamala Harris needs to gain Americans' confidence in her ability become president. The former Connecticut senator, who was Democrat Al Gore's running mate in 2000, said Harris will need to be "out there" on the campaign trail to assure voters she's ready to become president amid concerns about the president's age. 

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JOE LIEBERMAN: Biden can't change running mates, although there will be people urging him to do that. But it's not his nature and it's pretty hard to do in this case with an African-American woman, even though he could replace her with somebody else. I never served with her. She came into the Senate after I left it. I've met her a few times. I saw her just this last February at the Munich Security Conference. She gave a good speech. 

But look, I talked about President Biden's age as the big test for him, the sub-test to that and it's a big one. If you start to think about, unfortunately people will say will the president be okay? And after two, three, four more years in the White House? If not, she is the one. The vice president, of course, will have the responsibility. I mean, God forbid if he doesn't live but if he's not well. ... President Trump will raise the question about Vice President Harris' capacity to be president and this is a great challenge for her. She had a wonderful reputation as attorney general of California, and she came into the Senate with that and then the vice presidency. But she hasn't gained the confidence of people and that's the test for her. But she's got to be out there in the next couple of years to try to reassure people that she's ready to be president.

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Harris is an unpopular vice president. Like her running mate, President Biden, she has ridden the low 40s in most approval polls as of late. 

In fact, across approval rating polls, Harris hasn't gone out of the 40s in her approval rating since her first year in office in 2021.

Americans' negative views of Harris and Biden create political baggage going into what is expected to be a tough re-election for the presidential pair, and coupled with Biden's age — he will be 81 on Election Day 2024 — the incumbent ticket will have its fair share of challenges.

Harris has dismissed her unpopularity among her own party as D.C. "political chatter," but that dismissal couldn't escape Politico's report that Democrats are afraid to express concern over Biden's age ahead of the 2024 election publicly because they fear the vice president as the alternative.

Biden and Harris announced their re-election candidacy on Tuesday with an online video titled "Freedom." 

Axios reported on Wednesday that top White House officials are scrambling to rehab Harris' image and raise her approval ahead of 2024, being unable to dump her for a different candidate without it showing he botched his veep pick.

At his press conference on Wednesday, Biden addressed his age.

"With regard to age, I can't even say how old I am," Biden said. "I can't even say the number I've done. It didn't register with me."

"But the only thing I can say is that one of the things that people are going to find out, they're going to see race and they're going to judge whether or not I have it or don't have it," Biden continued.

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Fox News' Houston Keene and Brandon Gillespie contributed to this report.