The Patriot Post® · The Democrats' Real Problem: Kamala Harris

It’s no secret that Kamala Harris isn’t ready for prime time. Nor was she ever. Indeed, her existence just a heartbeat away from the presidency is itself a powerful insurance policy against Crooked Joe Biden’s impeachment. And yet no one could have foreseen the thorny problem that she now poses to the Democrats’ hopes for holding onto power.

Hook any Democrat up to a sodium pentothal drip, and he’ll tell you that he’d love nothing more than for Biden to bow out of his bid for reelection. Already the oldest president in American history, Biden will be 82 by the time of the 2024 election and 86 by the end of a second term. Does anyone really think he’s mentally or physically equipped for five more years of this? Robert Hur doesn’t.

In the RealClearPolitics average of polls, the “sympathetic [sic], well-meaning [sic] elderly man with a poor memory” now trails Donald Trump by 1.7 points nationally, by 2.7 points in a five-way race, and by 3.8 points in the election-deciding battleground states. For comparison, Trump trailed Biden by 4.5 points in RCP’s final 2020 battleground poll. That’s a shift of more than eight points, which is massive in electoral politics.

These, then, are frightening numbers for the Democrats. Unfortunately for them, Biden isn’t going anywhere — at least not voluntarily. Eighteen months ago, our Mark Alexander speculated that Joe Biden won’t be the Democrat nominee. Alexander predicts that Biden “may withdraw his candidacy citing his age and obvious health issues, leaving the selection of the November Demo ticket in the hands of the delegates at the Democrat National Convention in Chicago” in August.

Since then, however, Biden has locked up the Democrat nomination, and he and his wife and his handlers and his surrogates have given us every outward intention that he intends to see this thing through Election Day.

Here, we’re reminded of what longtime Democrat strategist Jim Messina said one afternoon on Fox News many months back when talk of Biden bowing out rather than running for reelection had reached a fever pitch. Messina, who ran Barack Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012, was adamant that Biden would run again, and he suggested a personality attribute that those who seek the presidency all have in common: Once they obtain it, they’re not inclined to give it up voluntarily.

Messina didn’t say it in so many words, but he implied that Biden’s Democrat detractors would have to pry the presidency out of his cold, dead hands.

But let’s say Messina is wrong. Let’s say First Lady Herr Doktor Jill Biden, Ed.D, were to somehow convince her husband that enough is enough. Then what? Even if Biden were to bow out before Election Day, if he were somehow convinced to medically “resign,” or even if a cabinet-level coup invoked the 25th Amendment on him, where would it leave the Democrats?

With President Kamala Harris, that’s where. And she’d be facing an immediate presidential election campaign while carrying the baggage of an awful first term along with her status as perhaps the least popular vice president in American history. Yikes.

By the way, we conservatives have one person to thank above all others for the poison pill named Kamala Harris: Democrat Senator Amy Klobuchar. Recall that Biden vowed during the 2020 campaign to nominate a woman as his vice presidential running mate. And recall that when Klobuchar bowed out of that race in June, she said, “I think the right thing to do right now, and I told this to Vice President Biden, is to put a woman of color on the ticket as the next vice president of our country.”

The rest is history.

Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker surely knows this history, and she also understands the Democrats’ predicament. She recognizes that Harris severely limits their options for getting rid of Biden before the November election, and she offered Harris some unsolicited advice in her most recent column: quit. Yep, Parker is calling on Harris to “step away from the ticket,” arguing that she’s a drag on Biden’s reelection fortunes. She writes:

The Kamala conundrum comes down to this: She was picked because she was Black and female, a combo tantamount to job security. Now that she has become a burden to the Democratic ticket, Biden can’t fire her. He can’t risk alienating his base. … Biden’s diminishing faculties, notwithstanding his relatively successful State of the Union address, and his increasing physical frailty are concerning. …

Harris could provide her own reasons for moving on. Perhaps she and Biden could a cut a deal for her to become the next attorney general — if he’s reelected. Biden then could tap someone else with executive experience who could reassure voters that the next vice president would be ready to take the reins should events require it. Democrats and Republicans alike would be relieved.

Good luck getting this to happen. If Joe Biden is being driven by his place in history, then so is Kamala Harris. After all, she’s 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 if she can hold out a while longer, she just might become president herself.

To repurpose the weird words of Biden Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Harris would be yet another “historic figure.”

And who are we to deny her that — especially if it ruins the Democrats’ chances for hanging onto the presidency?