The Patriot Post® · Kamala's Disappearing Act

“Let me think of a specific anecdote, and I’ll have somebody follow up.”

That was Jeff Zients, Joe Biden’s chief of staff, fumbling a seemingly simple question from Atlantic writer Elaina Plott Calabro: Could he “recall a moment when Biden had noticeably leaned on [Vice President] Harris for guidance?”

Joe Biden leans on things all the time. To steady himself. But he apparently doesn’t lean on Harris, either literally or figuratively. And this speaks volumes about her role as vice president, and about his disastrous decision in letting affirmative action determine who would be a heartbeat away from his feeble presidency. As Calabro writes:

Ease and confidence have not been the prevailing themes of Harris’s vice presidency. Her first year on the job was defined by rhetorical blunders, staff turnover, political missteps, and a poor sense among even her allies of what, exactly, constituted her portfolio. Within months of taking office, President Joe Biden was forced to confront a public perception that Harris didn’t measure up; ultimately, the White House issued a statement insisting that Biden did, in fact, rely on his vice president as a governing partner. But Harris’s reputation has never quite recovered.

With friends like this, who needs a proctologist? But seriously: What reputation was there to recover? What reputation has Kamala Harris built beyond being the first Bay Area progressive woman of Jamaican-Indian descent who grew up in Canada and whose ancestors were slaveowners to be elected vice president? And before that, the first Bay Area progressive of Jamaican-Indian descent who grew up in Canada and whose ancestors were slaveowners to be elected to the U.S. Senate? And before that, the first Bay Area progressive of Jamaican-Indian descent who grew up in Canada and whose ancestors were slaveowners to be elected attorney general in California? You get the idea. Kamala Harris’s entire career has, sadly, been one affirmative action hire after another. And she reached Peak Peter Principle long ago.

In another recent profile piece, a tedious pondering of her dismal reputation and her stubbornly bad approval ratings, The New York Times’s Astead Herndon asked Harris how she feels about the perception that President Joe Biden made a quota hire when he picked her as his running mate.

“He chose a Black woman,” said Harris. “That woman is me. So I don’t know that anything lingers about what he should choose. He has chosen.”

That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement either of herself or the process.

Just how bad is it for Harris? This bad: Earlier this year, an NBC News poll found that 49% of voters have an unfavorable opinion of Harris, which is the lowest such rating for a vice president since NBC began conducting the poll in 1989.

Think about it: Kamala Harris is looking up at Dan Quayle’s approval numbers.

No wonder Joe Biden’s handlers sent her off on a month-long college tour. Yesterday, instead of being in the situation room with the rest of the president’s cabinet members or sitting down for an interview on the situation in the Gaza Strip, Harris was at the College of Southern Nevada as part of a “Fight for Our Freedoms” College Tour. As the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports, she’ll be “visiting community colleges, historically Black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, apprenticeship programs and state schools, according to the White House.”

Yes, the veep otherwise known as Joe Biden’s impeachment insurance has been mostly tucked away of late, mostly relegated to vice-presidential Amber Alerts (or is that Ebony Alerts?) — and for good reason.

Back in March 2021, just a few weeks after Joe Biden took office, we wrote that his handlers “are likely to keep him propped up until the task becomes untenable and until they can figure a way out of the mess they’ve created — most likely by compassionately escorting him off the stage in favor of The First African-American-Indian-Jamaican Woman President in History.”

The first part of that assessment has proven spot-on, but the second part hasn’t aged well at all. Kamala Harris isn’t presidential material, and everyone now knows it.