There are many problems facing the Democrats heading into 2022’s midterm elections. These issues are not the same ones they will face in 2024. The Washington Post handicaps the potential Democrat candidates (see this post by my colleague Susie Moore, Even WaPo Isn’t Excited About the Dems’ 2024 Prospects), and the list they come up with looks like a cross between the Star Wars Cantina (Cory Booker? Pete Butttttigieg?) Leftovers from Soviet Politburo
As Susie notes, “the glummest notes are reserved for the two who Should be the “most likely to’s”….”
It is absurd to think that the Oval Office dementia lollipop will ever be allowed another term. He has not only shown that he is wildly corrupt and incompetent, but he also appears to be on the slippery slope to custodial dementia. Kamala Harris should be the frontrunner with Biden being institutionalized. But as the Washington Post observes, things aren’t working out well for her.
- Kamala Harris, Vice President (who, by the way, doesn’t even land in the top two) — “We’re dropping Harris down a slot this time. Being vice president is certainly a good launchpad, but it’s not at all clear Harris has put it to good use. Her numbers are similar to Biden’s, and she’s done little to change the perceptions that harmed her 2020 campaign, including on her ability to drive a message.”
Harris has a lot more problems than her “ability to drive a message” (is that what the kids are calling it these days?). Best casing it, she’s a midwit poseur who got to where she is by a combination of using the race/gender card and riding Willie Brown. Although you can label me a misogynistic troglodyte, the facts prove it. The record of her public life is a mix between undistinguished at its peak and brutally ignorant at its lowest point. Tulsi Gabrield sets Harris on fire by following her around at one of the Democrat presidential primaries.
Everything Harris touched turned into crap. The mess at the Southern Border was created by President Biden, and she took over. She’s been missing in action. While war was raging in Ukraine, she was assigned to represent our interests during a meeting in Poland with frontline ally Poland. She engaged in strange and inappropriate laughter regarding the fate for Ukrainian refugees. (Kamala Cackles or Goes into More Confused Word Salad In Poland).
She is an idiot in management. According to insiders, she doesn’t listen to briefings and blames staff for not adequately preparing her. She’s reputed to be a bully, and about a dozen senior staffers have bailed out of the dumpster fire she presides over. This does not indicate that she is a political star. She is not as popular as Joe Biden, despite how hard it may be to believe.
As we are wrestling with a European war on the verge of spilling over into other countries, the dollar seems to be headed the way of the Weimar Reichsmark, and over a million illegals are projected to enter the nation this year; Kamala Harris is visiting Philadelphia to talk about mask mandates and Sunset, Louisiana, to tout Biden’s record on high-speed internet.
None of this is a sign of Biden’s team trying to keep a gaffe-prone loose cannon out of public sight. No, according to Politico, this is part of a clever strategy to burnish Harris’ image: Kamala Harris keeps traveling to unconventional places. Here’s why.
After a one-month long trip to Poland, and while making numerous calls to senators in order to confirm Judge Ketanji Jackson Jackson’s confirmation, Kamala Harris, Vice President, took a day trip, among other places, to Greenville, Mississippi.
It is not the typical stop for a national Democrat to visit a rural community of 30,000 people along the Mississippi River. Nor one who serves as the nation’s second-most powerful politician. Harris, however, had traveled to the area that day in an attempt to promote small businesses and community lending.
…
The swing to Greenville is part of an under noticed strategy for the VP’s office, one in which she’s homed her focus on the ways in which administration policy is intersecting with overlooked communities. It’s brought her to other far-off, non-traditional locales, including a recent swing to Sunset, Louisiana, a rural town of fewer than 3,000 people, to tout the administration’s work expanding rural broadband. And it’s manifested itself in the ways in which she’s approached some of the White House’s big-ticket items.
Weeks after the bipartisan infrastructure bill was passed into law, Harris convened a briefing with administration officials to go over the part of the bill related to charging stations for electric vehicles — an interest that had animated her dating back to her time in California politics. She asked questions as staff navigated from one page to the next in her briefing. What would it take to build and distribute 500,000 charging stations? These charging stations would not be possible without the help of anyone. What does it look like for the overlooked communities?
“[She said] ‘Talk to me about a community that has been left behind, a rural community. What are their plans? How are they going to get put there?” Mitch Landrieu, senior adviser to the president, recounted to POLITICO. “Now talk to me about an urban neighborhood that has been left behind where people are renting.’”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but “left behind” communities have bigger fish to fry than sweating out the allocation of charging stations for rich people’s cars.
Vice presidential historian Joel K. Goldstein says Harris’ approach could help her turn the corner on how she’s perceived in the press and across the country. “It’s part of sort of strengthening the perception so that six months from now, people are writing stories about how effective she’s being internally rather than why is her staff leaving,” Goldstein told POLITICO.
Actually, they aren’t.
Everybody, including the Biden White House, Democrat party and Beltway media realizes that Kamala is out of her element and a political liability. The Democrats will face difficult years in 2022-2024, according to most observers. They don’t need Harris cackling as they discuss abortion, genocide or any other serious topic. The clincher is that the Biden team can’t put her on ice without creating a massive issue for themselves, so they have to find something for her to do. That something is to send her out on the road to places where she can’t screw anything up because the Democrats know they aren’t going to win those areas anyway.
“It’s not necessarily that we’re going to win Mississippi or Louisiana, but it makes a difference in people knowing that they’re seen and they’re heard,” senior adviser to the president Cedric Richmond told POLITICO.
The goal is to give her the opportunity to be a national leader, without all of the risks and authority associated with that position. And they succeeded. The team is now trying convince everyone that it is part of a grand strategy to succeed, and not just running away from the ticking clock.
About Post Author
