With President Joe Biden sidelined at his Delaware home as he recovers from a bout with COVID-19, Vice President Kamala Harris was on the campaign trail in North Carolina on Thursday to give brief remarks advocating for their ticket as the Republican National Convention entered its final day and speculation about Biden’s future reached a fever pitch.

“Today, we are 110 days out from the election. And while many of us have been involved with these elections for every four years, practically, nearly every time we will say this is the one. Well, this here is the one,” Harris said to a crowd of several hundred supporters at a high school gym in Fayetteville, N.C. “The most existential, consequential and important election of our lifetime. And there is so much at stake.”

It was Harris’ seventh trip to North Carolina this year and 15th since entering office, according to the campaign. She was last in the state exactly a week ago. Top Biden campaign officials have set their sights on the state as a possible pick-up opportunity after Trump won the state by around 1% in 2020. Recent polls have Trump up by an average of around 6.5%, according to polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight.

Harris used her speech to attack the Republican’s newly crowned nominee for vice president, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, and contrasted Biden’s agenda and record with that of former President Donald Trump.

As she has consistently in recent weeks, she did not discuss the ever-growing debate within her party over whether Biden should continue to remain on the top of the Democratic ticket and reports that party leaders — including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and former President Barack Obama — have privately expressed concerns that the current president’s chances of beating Trump are growing slim amid questions over his age and ability.

“This race can be boiled down to a single question: who fights for you? Now, we know whose side our president, Joe Biden, is on,” Harris said. “He understands everyday struggles because he has actually lived them. So friends, I say the contrast between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is like night and day.”

Of Vance, who accepted his party’s nomination in a speech on Wednesday night, Harris said he offered a “compelling” story of a troubled youth growing up in working class Ohio. But, she argued, “it’s a compelling story and it was not the full story.”

“He did not talk about Project 2025, their 900-page blueprint for a second Trump term. He did not talk about it because their plans are extreme and they are divisive,” Harris said, referring to the plan authored by former Trump aides and current allies at the Heritage Foundation that the former president and his campaign have attempted to distance themselves from. “In recent days, they've been trying to portray themselves as a party of unity. But here's the thing, here's the thing, if you claim to stand for unity, you need to do more than just use the word.”

She pointed to Vance’s support of a national abortion ban and statements that he would have worked with Trump to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss, as well as the Republicans’ economic agenda that she says is “designed to prioritize billionaires and big corporations over the middle class.”

Biden, on the other hand, has seen the creation of 800,000 new manufacturing jobs during his first term and will protect Social Security and Medicare from cuts proposed by Republicans. The president has also pushed major pharmaceutical companies to cap insulin prices at $35 a month and has worked to strengthen the Affordable Care Act, which Trump attempted to eliminate during his first term.

“I think it is clear. If Donald Trump… were to win in November he will continue to sell out working families, he will continue to attack reproductive freedom and he will continue to undermine our democracy,” Harris said. “The question we face is, what kind of country do we want to live in? Do we want to live in a country of freedom, compassion and rule of law, or a country of chaos, fear and hate?”

As Biden’s polling suffers in national and key swing state polls, data suggests Democrats and potential Democratic voters would be more favorable to a different and younger candidate than the 81-year-old president. A poll released Wednesday by The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public affairs Research found that just 28% of all voters and just 35% of Democrats believe Biden should continue to run for reelection. 

Harris’ favorability rating in that poll, 43%, was higher than both Biden’s 38% and Trump’s 37%. And an Emerson College poll of seven swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — released on Wednesday found Trump was leading Biden in all seven, gaining ground in six of the seven since March.

But when respondents were asked to pick between Trump and a “younger Democrat,” the hypothetical younger Democrat garnered more than 50% support in each state, breaking 55% in Michigan and Georgia. Harris is 59 and will turn 60 in October. 

Another poll from The Economist and YouGov found 79% of Democrats would approve of Harris replacing Biden as their party’s nominee, though it found Trump’s lead over Harris in a hypothetical matchup was slightly larger than his lead over Biden among all voters. 

Harris is not guaranteed to replace Biden if he chooses to step aside. (He and his campaign continue to insist he isn’t going anywhere). But she would benefit from being the only Democrat who could easily access the Biden campaign’s roughly $240 million in campaign cash and is one of the few Democrats with a national profile as Election Day rapidly approaches.

The one Senate Democrat to call on Biden to call it quits, Peter Welch of Vermont, argued in an interview with The Atlantic on Thursday that Harris shouldn’t be the default successor and that a quick, but “open process” to pick the next Democratic candidate is preferable. But he said if Harris is the nominee, she would have a better shot at beating Trump than Biden.

“I don’t want a coronation of anyone. It’s not about a coronation of the vice president. It’s to make our candidate the strongest possible candidate,” Welch said. “We have never had a coronation. So I don’t think that would sit well with Democrats.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, California’s likely next senator and a proponent of Biden dropping out, and South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, a top Biden ally who says he’s “riding with Biden,” have both name dropped her in recent weeks as a favored replacement were the president to make a different decision.

“I’ve known Kamala Harris for more than 12 years, going back to our days as state attorneys general together. I know she's a fighter. I know that she gets the job done,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said in Fayetteville on Thursday. “And I know that she and Joe Biden need four more years to finish the job.”