Over the past few years, we’ve chronicled the sad tale of Vice President Kamala Harris in her role as President Biden’s subordinate.
When she’s the center of attention, she’s a terrible speaker. When she’s not in the spotlight, she’s barely noticeable within the administration. Her office complained early that she didn’t have much work to do, then she promptly failed at the job handed to her by Joe Biden, her boss.
Speaking of the Biden administration, it began somewhat officially to be known as the Biden-Harris administration, but that hyphenated West Wing governance soon fell off the radar as news of tension between various camps caused rifts between the President and Vice President’s office.
There have been a handful of stories that illustrate the quiet grumblings of rank-and-file Democrats who fear that handing over the party to Harris in 2024 or even 2028 would be an abject disaster.
The latest iteration comes from the Washington Post and demonstrates just how widespread the fear of what a future Kamala Harris nomination would mean:
As a longtime leader of the Cobb County Democrats, Jacquelyn Bettadapur has become highly attuned to the factors shaping her party’s fortunes in her home state of Georgia: the rise and fall of Stacey Abrams, Democrats’ unexpected surge in 2020, the enduring influence of Donald Trump.
Now, Bettadapur is worried about the political prospects of the woman positioned to be President Biden’s heir — Vice President Harris.
“People are poised to pounce on anything — any misstep, any gaffe, anything she says — and so she’s probably not getting the benefit of the doubt,” said Bettadapur, who recently stepped down as county party chair. Many Democrats, Bettadapur said, “don’t know enough about what she’s doing” — and, she added, “it doesn’t help that she’s not [that] adept as a communicator.”
Such concerns about Harris’s political strength were repeated often by more than a dozen Democratic leaders in key states interviewed for this story, some speaking on the condition of anonymity to convey candid thoughts. Harris’s tenure has been underwhelming, they said, marked by struggles as a communicator and at times near-invisibility, leaving many rank-and-file Democrats unpersuaded that she has the force, charisma and skill to mount a winning presidential campaign.
To say Harris is “not adept as a communicator” is putting it gently. She’s one of the most condescending and pandering members of the ruling class and her tone is often one of treating her constituents like five-year-olds asking for more candy.
She’s routinely mocked in the foreign press for the way she prattles on about childish things:
However, the conundrum presented by Kamala Harris is one that Democrats created themselves. Should Joe Biden choose not to run for re-election in 2024, can Democrats really push aside the first female vice president of color in favor of a better option? Hilariously, according to the WaPo story, while some Democrats are concerned about the appearance of prejudice, they view Harris as such a bad option, they simply don’t care:
Some Democrats acknowledge that bypassing a woman of color because of electability concerns could be seen as a concession to historic prejudices — but they still wonder if, at this moment, the party can have both a big tent and a winning ticket.
They still wonder if it’s worth dumping Harris in favor of practically anyone else even if it looks bad within the lens of racial bias they force everyone else to view the world through. That’s how poorly many Democratic strategists view Harris’ future prospects. It’s worth the bad optics so long as they get rid of her.
Harris hasn’t helped herself, either, with the long parade of staff turnover in her office and the endless “resets” of her image and agenda:
Harris’s team, aware of her stumbles, has signaled any number of “resets” to suggest that the vice president is about to hit her stride. Harris officials say Jamal Simmons, Harris’s second communications director, was brought in to in part address the visibility issue, and he tried to increase the vice president’s travel, encouraging her to meet with key constituency groups across the country.
Remember the “reset” when Harris appeared with paid child actors to extol the virtues of looking at the moon “with your own eyes”?
Cringeworthy, to the max:
In the end, Democrats will settle to tell themselves that it’s not Kamala Harris’ own shortcomings, it’s that the country is racist:
Erick Allen, chair of the Cobb County Democrats, counts himself as a Harris loyalist but said he recognizes the forces in the party — and the country — pushing against her.
“There’s a segment that just will not vote for a woman for president, and there’s another segment that will not vote for an African American. Having two of those check boxes, you’re just going to have a higher threshold regardless,” Allen said. “Hillary had just one of those checks, and she was able to be vilified and beat up to the point where she couldn’t recover.”
That’s a Democrat fearing that “forces in the party” are pushing against Harris, not just the entire racist country.
What is she even saying? It’s like a random compilation of words that sound good together but convey nothing:
The bottom line is that Kamala Harris has always been a mediocre politician, at best. Part of that stems from her easy ride in California where anyone with a D next to their name can win elections. She faced no real opposition and was never forced to figure out how to connect with average voters. As a result, she’s an out-of-touch elitist who talks down to voters at every turn. She’s often unprepared to speak to the issues and spews word-salade platitudes and pretends she said something meaningful.
All this is to say, Republicans should cheer if Harris ascends to the 2024 or 2028 Democratic nomination. Democrats, it seems, won’t let her get that far.