Why Not "President Kamala"?

Biden's Vice President Is One Reason The Hur Report Will Not Just Go Away.

The stubborn refusal of Robert Hur’s Special Counsel report on President Biden’s arguably criminal mis-handling of classified documents after his tenure as Vice President to fade from the public eye lies mainly in the explosive nature of its core finding: That Joe Biden might lack the competence to actually stand trial, and if he did stand trial, the jury would take pity on an old man with poor memory.

Special Counsel Finds President Too Old To Be Charged In Documents Case

Robert Hur concluded, rightly or wrongly, that Joe Biden is of dubious mental competence to stand trial. If we take Robert Hur’s report at face value, on what basis do we now presume that Joe Biden possesses sufficient mental competence to carry on as President of the United States?

On what basis do Democrats defend his candidacy for this fall’s Presidential Election?

On what basis do Democrats defend arguably having covered up Biden’s apparent mental incompetency for at least the past year?

Even corporate media is finding it impossible not to consider these questions.

Thus we find numerous Biden proxies stepping up to the corporate media microphone to offer their repeated assurances that Biden does not have memory or cognitive issues and that he is quite competent to continue to serve as President of the United States.

In the days since special counsel Robert Hur released a report that described Biden’s memory as “significantly limited,” presidential appointees and friendly lawmakers have been stepping forward one by one to attest to his acuity.

Biden asks “pertinent questions” and cares about “minute details,” they’ve told news outlets. He is “very engaging” and detail-oriented. The White House went so far as to put out a memo name-checking senior officials from both parties who’ve said they found Biden to be mentally sharp.

Among the most notable of Biden’s defenders: Vice President Kamala Harris. Indeed, the Hur report has, in the minds of some pundits, made her an essential part of Biden’s re-election campaign.

Fair or not, in the wake of special counsel Robert Hur’s damning assessment of President Biden’s mental fitness, Vice President Kamala Harris is now arguably one of, if not the, most important aspects of Biden’s reelection campaign.

Indeed, voters are acutely aware that Harris may well be forced to replace Biden midway through a potential second term. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of swing state voters say the vice-presidential candidate is “more important” in the 2024 election than in previous elections due to both Biden and Trump’s respective ages, per Bloomberg/Morning Consult polling.

Yet this positioning of Kamala Harris as essential to Biden’s re-election begs another question: Why not advance Harris herself as the Democratic standard-bearer for the fall election, given the questions about Biden’s mental fitness that seemingly refuse to go away?

A big part of that answer is that Kamala herself has the unenviable baggage of being seen as even less popular than Joe Biden—and that makes her problematic as a Biden replacement.

Perversely, another part of that answer may be that building up Kamala Harris as one capable to assume the duties of President while being a loyal and supportive Vice President is one of the reasons Robert Hur’s Special Counsel report does not fade away. Any positioning of Kamala Harris as a “backup” invariably brings attention back to the reality made plain by Hur that Joe Biden very likely is in need of such a backup. Thus Kamala herself is becoming a constant reminder that the Special Counsel documented Joe Biden’s cognitive deficits even as she works to rebut Special Counsel’s assertions about those deficits.

Being the loyal VP to a President on the decline may very well have made it impossible for the Democrats to put Harris at the top of the ticket in the fall election should Biden end up not running.

It surely is the most amazing of coincidences that, just two days before the Robert Hur report became public, Harris held an interview with the Wall Street Journal where, in response to concerns about Biden’s age, she declared her readiness to serve as President.

“I am ready to serve. There’s no question about that,” Harris responded bluntly. Everyone who sees her on the job, Harris said, “walks away fully aware of my capacity to lead.”

Alas for Kamala Harris, a good many people arguably already question that, and their ranks likely grew by the release of Hur report. Even as the Wall Street Journal published her assertion of fitness, op-ed pieces appeared rejecting that assertion.

Ronald Reagan may have gotten it wrong back in 1986 when the popular conservative Republican President said: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’”

That is because Vice President Kamala Harris, of word salad fame, has in the wake of elderly President Joe Biden’s diminished memory come up with ten words that are even more terrifying.

They are, “I am ready to serve. There’s no question about that.”

Indeed, even before the Hur Report was released, it had been anticipated by the chattering class that Harris was going to be a primary point of attack against Biden’s re-election bid by Republicans.

Special Prosecutor Robert Hur’s damning depiction of Biden as a doddering old man in his report on the mishandling of classified documents has ratcheted up already deep-seated concerns about Biden’s age and mental acumen. That has intensified scrutiny of Harris.

Whether the president drops his reelection bid or pushes ahead to November, the vice president will become the No. 1 issue in the campaign.

Republicans are already gearing up an attack strategy centered on the long odds of the 81-year-old president being able to serve out another four-year term.

The message: A vote for Biden is a vote for Harris.

Perversely, one reason Harris is not being advanced as a Biden alternative is the same reason some believe is the sole reason she was placed on the ticket in 2020: to solidify Biden’s support among African American voters.

Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley is making that a central theme of her long-shot bid for the White House.

“We can’t afford a President Kamala Harris — I will say that over and over again,” Haley has said several times in recent days. “Anybody is better than a President Kamala Harris.”

Voters appear to support that assertion. Harris’ approval rating hit an all-time low for vice presidents last summer, and now stands just slightly below that of Biden at 37.5%, with 53.5% disapproving.

The issue with Harris is one of gravitas. She has not presented herself as presidential material. Biden gave her the job of fixing the migrant crisis at the southern border, which obviously she fumbled. Now, she and her apologists are spinning her actual mission as border czar as fixing the root causes of the flood of migrants and asylum seekers, and not controlling the border itself.

Voters aren’t likely to buy that switch. The perception of Harris is that she was placed on the ticket to solidify Black support but wasn’t trusted enough to sit at the power table.

Though she’s clearly a liability, Biden can’t cut her lose for the same reason he added her in the first place — consideration of a key Democratic voting bloc.

If we follow that thesis, we quickly come to a conclusion that Kamala Harris is simply not an “electable” candidate for President on her own, and so is unsuitable as a Biden alternative should Biden drop out of the race later this year.

Regardless of why Harris was tapped to be Biden’s VP in 2020, there is no denying her abysmal polling numbers today. Based on the RealClearPolitics polling aggregates, nearly 20% more American voters view her unfavorably than favorably.

Even more damaging for Harris is that this is a perception which has evolved since she became Vice President. While even before the 2020 election she was a polarizing figure, since 2021 her standing with the American voters has steadily eroded, as illustrated by the Economist/YouGov series of polls..

To put her poll numbers into context, Kamala Harris is currently polling worse than Joe Biden.

To add insult to injury, Harris is also polling significantly worse than Donald Trump.

Even if Biden were of a mind to step aside, there is more than a little substance that he can’t if his successor is to be Kamala Harris. The American voters are simply not giving her any credibility as a potential President of the United States.

Despite the severe perception obstacles that stand between Kamala Harris and a fresh run at the Oval Office, there nevertheless has been an effort in the corporate media to present her as an effective interlocutor promoting Biden’s agenda. One area where she appears to have taken point is in the ongoing debate over abortion and abortion rights in this country.

It matters deeply that America has a woman as our vice president. That has never been truer than at this moment.

Nothing makes this more clear than Vice President Kamala Harris’ courageous decision to champion reproductive freedom in the midst of a full-on assault on the right to choose.

Right now, Harris is traveling the country on an extensive Reproductive Freedom Tour.

"The vice president has been the administration’s most forceful voice for abortion rights in the year and a half since Roe v. Wade fell," as noted by the New York Times.

Harris has been credited by some insiders as having been a substantial force in shaping the Biden Administration’s policy towards Israel in the wake of Hamas’ October 7 genocidal attacks.

Harris’ private push to shape the White House message about the war reflects the extent to which Democrats — even the top two officials in the country — are struggling to walk a careful line about the Israel-Hamas war, amid a gruesome conflict that has rattled the Democratic political coalition down to the local level.

It also underscores the delicacy of the tight political partnership that Harris has developed with Biden, despite some longstanding differences in perspective on various issues. She has long been more attuned to criticism from the left than her more moderate running mate, and more determined to align herself with younger and more progressive constituencies in the Democratic Party.

Kirsten Allen, Harris’ press secretary, said “there is no daylight between the president and the vice president, nor has there been” and that the two are aligned and “have been clear: Israel has a right and responsibility to defend itself; humanitarian aid must be allowed to flow into Gaza; innocent civilians must be protected; and the United States remains committed to a two-state solution.”

At the same time, Harris is being portrayed by corporate media as a loyal VP who is making sober and serious contributions to the campaigns messaging.

More than two dozen sources tell CNN that Harris has been gathering information to help her penetrate what she sometimes refers to as the “bubble” of Biden campaign thinking, telling people she’s aiming to use that intelligence to push for changes in strategy and tactics that she hopes will put the ticket in better shape to win.

Multiple leading Democrats, anxious about a campaign they fear might be stumbling past a point of no return, say their conversations with Harris have been a surprising and welcome change, after months of feeling sloughed off by the White House and Biden campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware.

“The ‘bedwetting’ complaints are running thin with people,” said a person who attended one of the meetings, describing the general state of anxiety circulating in top Democratic circles. “The West Wing and the campaign need to be better.”

Harris did a good job fielding those responses, the person added, “and deserves credit for it.”

The corporate media messaging is clear: Kamala Harris has evolved into an effective, competent, and loyal Vice President—everything that one would want to see in someone “ready to serve”.

The impact of that messaging has so far been dubious, however. Looking at the Economist/YouGov poll data, since Robert Hur’s report came out, Harris’ unfavorable percentages have increased, even though the longer term trend since the start of the year has been slightly improving.

Harris will need to see a much more positive response in her poll numbers for the corporate media messaging to be considered successful.

Yet that the media messaging is believed to be necessary itself highlights one of the problems surrounding making Harris an essential element of Biden’s re-election campaign: The rationale for having a capable Vice President is the expectation that there will be a need of such a “back up” plan. Playing to Harris’ contention that she is “ready to serve” carries the implicit suggestion that Biden is no longer “ready to serve”—and the longer that messaging continues the more voter attention is directed back to Robert Hur’s report.

At the same time, that a shift in corporate media coverage of Harris has been necessary highlights the reality that Harris’ first couple of years as Vice President oscillated somewhere between rocky and abysmal.

Even worse, Harris’ public and oft-repeated stance that Joe Biden is perfectly fine, perfectly healthy, and perfectly able to continue as President stands as a direct refutation of the Hur Report. Should it actually come to pass that Biden is not the Democratic nominee in the fall election, Harris especially would have much explaining to do on how she failed to notice the same signs of cognitive decline documented by Robert Hur.

Even without her own considerable political baggage, remaining loyal to Biden now all but assures Harris can never be the Democratic nominee for this year’s election. In 2025 at least, there will be no “President Kamala”—Kamala herself has taken that option completely off the table.