Don’t get cocky about Kamala

Joe Biden on Sunday dropped out of the presidential election, to the surprise of none but the truest of true believers. Biden delivered the news through a post on X, of all places, but promised to “speak to the nation later this week in more detail about my decision.” Notably, his letter made no mention of his successor. That came in a second post roughly 20 minutes later, practically as an afterthought: Oh, yes, by the way, he offered his “full support and endorsement” to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Thanks for clearing that up, sir. Except the matter is hardly settled.

The party mandarins decided that Biden could not beat Donald Trump this time around. They face the same question with Biden’s hapless running mate.

Democrats gather in Chicago on August 19 for what could be the most contentious national convention in a century. In 1924, it took the party more than two weeks and 103 ballots to land on a nominee, John Davis, who went on to be crushed by Calvin Coolidge in the general election. “I belong to no organized political party,” the humorist Will Rogers quipped when the smoke finally cleared. “I am a Democrat.”

Note the hedge: could be, as opposed to will be or even likely will be. The Democratic Party is far more adept at fixing fights than it was a century ago. Just ask Bernie Sanders, the socialist scourge of 2016 who only a week ago took to the pages of the New York Times, urging his erstwhile party to stick with Joe.

“Enough!” the independent U.S. senator from Vermont wrote. “Mr. Biden may not be the ideal candidate, but he will be the candidate and should be the candidate.”

Will be? Oh, Bernie, when will you ever learn? The party establishment says who the candidate will be. You know this. Saving “Our Democracy” requires nothing less. Real democracy — actual voting — is much too risky.

The trouble with Kamala

With that in mind, do not assume that Kamala Harris is the clear heir apparent or that her nomination is a mortal lock. The party mandarins decided that Biden could not beat Donald Trump this time around. They face the same question with Biden’s hapless running mate.

Harris is not popular. Her approval rating has remained resolutely stuck below 40% all year and has peered over the 40% line only occasionally since 2022.

She has not won a single party primary vote, let alone a presidential primary election. Remember, Harris dropped out of the running in December 2019 a few weeks before the Iowa caucuses. She consistently polls lower than her boss, though she might get a boost in the coming days as some voters come to terms with Biden’s exit from the race.

Harris is, by many accounts, an insecure and erratic manager. A bit of a diva, as they say. Her office is reportedly a dysfunctional mess. A 2021 story in Politico described the atmosphere as “tense and at times dour.”

“People are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses, and it’s an abusive environment,” said a person “with direct knowledge” of how Harris’ office was run. “It’s not a healthy environment, and people often feel mistreated. It’s not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like s**t.”

Little seems to have changed in the interim. A February 2023 New York Times story, for example, described how Harris was “struggling to carve out a lane for herself” in the nation’s second-highest office more than halfway through her term.

Her defenders dismiss Kamala’s struggles as the unfair result of “sexism” and “racism” — as well they might. In a party ruled by identity politics, Harris checks many boxes. It’s impossible to read a story about her without rehearsing the fact that she is the first woman, first African-American, and first South Asian-American to hold her position. (Look! It happened again!)

Others blame the White House for her stumbles. “Many in the vice president’s circle fume that she’s not being adequately prepared or positioned and instead is being sidelined,” CNN reported in November 2021.

Ignore her gaffes and guffaws, Kamala’s boosters say. Look at what she does.

OK, let’s do that. Even as vice president, she has a record that Trump and Republicans can readily and easily attack.

One in five voters earlier this year ranked immigration as their top issue. Immigration remains high on the list even now, competing with the economy and inflation. Democrats may pretend that the post-COVID economic rebound was of their making, but they — Harris, mainly — also must explain how the worst inflation since the late 1970s and early ’80s is not their fault. For one thing, inflation is cumulative. Don’t take my word for it. Read Carol Roth.

Maybe more importantly, Joe Biden early in his administration placed Harris in charge of responding to the immigration crisis that he instigated. You might say she was not “adequately prepared or positioned” for such an assignment.

The rebuttal from Democrats is that Harris was never the “border czar,” contrary to maniacal right-wing disinformation. Biden simply asked his vice president in March 2021 “to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border.”

Great! So she wasn’t in charge, which is likely why she only visited the southern U.S. border once, in June 2021. The man in charge was and has always been the impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whom Democrats also defend as a competent leader who in no way abetted an invasion of military-age Chinese nationals and known Venezuelan gangsters. Harris was merely responsible for the failed diplomacy over the last three and a half years that resulted in 10 million or more people crossing the border illegally. Why is that so hard to understand? We’ll find out soon enough.

Harris wants the Oval Office so badly. And she is manifestly not cut out for it.

Could it be possible Harris isn’t very good? She seems incapable of speaking in anything other than platitudes and clichés. “You got to know what you stand for, and when you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for,” Harris told the New York Times in 2023. “What that translates to in tangible terms is less clear,” the Times writers deadpanned. (Media bias is real, comrades — even on the left. They don’t like her either.)

We know Harris is to the left of Biden on socialized medicine and even abortion. Her instincts are to his left on immigration and national defense, too. If you thought Biden was too cozy with Iran, just wait until Harris takes the oath of office.

She’s also an accomplished opportunist in a party brimming with them. She owes her entrance into politics to former California Speaker of the Assembly and later San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, with whom she was involved romantically in the mid-1990s. Brown gave her two lucrative appointments to state boards when he was speaker and was instrumental in her election as San Francisco’s first black district attorney in 2004.

Recalling the maxim “there is no principle in politics,” Harris ran for California attorney general as a law-and-order liberal who was very happy to imprison black men — and keep them there past their terms — before it was uncool. Some years later, she helped pay for rioters’ and killers’ release on bail. Please don’t look for any consistency in it. She is exactly what she appears to be: a climber. An operative. A sycophant. A striver. A jobber.

A hack. The first female, African-American, South Asian-American hack to achieve the vice presidency.

She wants the Oval Office so badly. And she is manifestly not cut out for it.

If not Harris, who?

The next days and weeks will be a thing to behold. Future historians and poets will grasp for the vocabulary to describe the preposterousness and horror of it all. Some will not survive the ordeal. Reuters on Sunday reported that all 50 state Democratic Party chairs switched their loyalty from Biden to Harris. That remains to be seen.

What do the donors say? NBC News on Friday reported that 300 major Democratic Party donors left a Zoom call with Harris dispirited, though they didn’t blame her exactly. “One person on the call referred to it as ‘mismanaged’ and ‘rushed.’ They added expectations had not been managed well and some participants left feeling admonished.”

“During the call, Harris, who was asked to join the call by Biden’s senior advisers, praised Biden, according to campaign officials,” NBC News reported.

So Harris lied about her boss. Until it was impossible to do so. And now she and her inept team attempt to rewrite the truth.

In a clash of the titans, Harris is not “adequately prepared or positioned” to win.

What do the Democrats have to offer other than Harris? The “contenders,” according to the conventional wisdom, include a bevy of governors: Gavin Newsom of California, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan all come up. Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota could make a Quixotic run.

Never mind any of them. They’re ambitious and craven, but they’re not stupid — for the most part, anyway.

The plain fact is that Biden is out of the running because Barack Obama wanted it so. Bill and Hillary Clinton might have had a word to say on the matter, too.

The Clintons on Sunday released a statement supporting Harris for president. “We’ve lived through many ups and downs, but nothing has made us more worried for our country than the threat posed by a second Trump term.” That’s correct, prima facie. But if we learned anything from Bill Clinton’s career, it's that his statements must never be taken at face value. So the Clintons’ endorsement of Harris comes with an implied question and a massive caveat: Can she avert a second Trump term, or can’t she? If not, she’s out.

And if so, why not the Democrats’ 2016 nominee? Why not the candidate they believe was robbed of the presidency? Why not her?

Barack Obama, notably, has had nothing to say about Kamala Harris or her candidacy. His bride, Michelle, has said she isn’t interested in the presidency. But that was before Biden’s extraordinary, history-altering withdrawal. How could Michelle Obama possibly ignore history’s call?

Imagine it. A 2024 Democratic National Convention battle like no other, between three larger-than-life women: Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, and Michelle Obama. I wouldn’t presume to guess the outcome, but I would wager this much: In a clash of the titans, Harris is not “adequately prepared or positioned” to win.