Every step forward she takes, the more vulnerable she appears.
Every step forward she takes, the more vulnerable she appears.
M aybe it was being shivved in a debate by Tulsi Gabbard, a figure unlikely ever to be the Democratic nominee. Maybe it was the experience of dropping out of the 2020 presidential race without ever getting serious traction — and before even a vote was cast. Maybe it was the run of bad press that greeted her upon her election to the vice presidency. Or maybe it was the very high-handed, even undermining treatment by the Biden people that formed Kamala Harris into the plainly needy and painfully insecure person we saw in the Dana Bash interview this week.
In July of this year — just a few weeks ago, really — Alex Thompson of Axios could report that her vice presidency had been defined by “staff turnover,” “retreat from politically risky responsibilities,” and “mocking from some Beltway insiders.” And that the Biden White House had a low view of her because she avoided “any task with risk.”
Harris, it has widely been reported, would have her staff stage mock dress rehearsals of friendly dinners with the press — the sort that most politicians handle without any more preparation than a brief conversation with aides or a note card.
The long-awaited CNN interview showed us that without all the razzamatazz of a giant arena of chemically and politically stimulated Democrats to decorate her ascendance to her party’s nomination, Kamala Harris is not at all comfortable in her own skin, not at all confident in her ideas, and not at all competent to think on her feet when the moment requires. She’s the same Kamala Harris who had a 37 percent approval rating until a few weeks ago, except now she’s trying not to laugh or talk about Venn diagrams as much as the old version.
Even against the more aged Donald Trump, this Kamala Harris just isn’t up to the task that Democrats have for their 2024 nominee, which is to finally and irrevocably exorcise American politics of Donald Trump, and thereby to save democracy both at home and abroad. She is hampered by her own lack of legitimacy — namely, the fact that she didn’t win her party’s primary, meaning it isn’t clear whether she is in charge of the party or whether the party elites who effected her nomination are in charge of her.
It’s perfectly understandable that Democrats think that her fresh face can be enough. The prospect of two geriatric men who have been known to the public since the disco era contending for the presidency was giving the country fits. This past decade has been a big bummer for millions of Americans — especially those millions of Millennials who feel suddenly re-excluded from the American Dream by inflation at just the moment their salaries had promised to grant it to them.
But Kamala’s name just being co-branded with “the future” is not enough. Americans may be willing to ditch the last decade of “bad vibes,” but they aren’t ready to chance the presidential election on a candidate who seems to not have or want to have the burden of a policy agenda that addresses their problems.
Kamala Harris has been intimidated and somewhat bossed around by the Biden staffers, by the left wing of her party, and now by Dana Bash. Voters will naturally wonder if her lack of spine is as debilitating in an American executive as Biden’s mental infirmities. At least when Biden came to a judgment, his senility would substitute stubbornness where steel might be required. Kamala can’t be out front and simultaneously take stage directions from the polls, from Nancy Pelosi, from the Obama people, and from the media investing all their hopes in her.
Every step forward she takes, the more vulnerable she appears.