Kamala: I Can Handle Things! I’m Smart!

Never before has the nation needed such an affirmation more … and trusted in it less. 

After Robert Hur’s special counsel report forced the nation to realize that Joe Biden’s cognition wears no clothes, concern immediately escalated about back-up plans for his incapacitation. That concern doesn’t just involve the 2024 election, either, but also … y’know … the nuclear football, national security, and whether our president will ever be up for a serious interview or debate. Ducking the Super Bowl puffball interview for the second year in a row certainly doesn’t qualify as a show of confidence by the White House, after all.

Plan B in both instances necessarily involve Vice President Kamala Harris, whose interviews and public appearances are both numerically and qualitatively similar to Joe Biden’s. Interestingly, Harris and her team wanted to get out in front of any efforts to push her out of the way by declaring her fitness for office to the Wall Street Journal two days before Hur’s report went out:

Vice President Kamala Harris was detailing her priorities for the campaign during a flight on Air Force Two early last week when she was asked a delicate question hanging over the Democratic ticket: Do voters’ concerns about President Biden’s age mean she must convince them she is ready to serve?

“I am ready to serve. There’s no question about that,” Harris responded bluntly. Everyone who sees her on the job, Harris said, “walks away fully aware of my capacity to lead.”

The response during an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday came two days before a special counsel report on Biden’s handling of classified documents amplified concerns about the 81-year-old incumbent’s mental acuity. The report said Biden displayed “diminished faculties” in interviews and called him an “elderly man with a poor memory.”

The findings have intensified the scrutiny on Harris, 59, the first woman and Black vice president, whose tenure has been marked by criticism of her political skills. What had been quiet talk of whether Harris could step into the presidency is now spilling into the open.

Does anyone else find the timing of this unusually … propitious? Especially from Team Harris, which isn’t usually known for its public-relations competence? Granted, this could be just a coincidence if the question came from a reporter rather than Harris bringing it up herself. Still, the White House had seen the Hur report by that time, and one has to wonder whether the VP had been in the loop on its contents and any planned response.

Given the disorganized reactions on Thursday, probably not. But it seems pretty coincidental, and I’m not inclined to believe in coincidences.

Beyond that, the idea that anyone who sees her work is “fully aware of my capacity to lead” might be true, but only in an ironic sense. The people closest to Harris have largely delivered their awareness of that by either leaving (her staff) or keeping her sidelined (the White House). If Harris’ claim were true in the way she means it here, Biden’s team would have her constantly on the talk shows, the campaign trail, and in crisis locations like East Palestine, Ohio. That would give the White House cover to claim that Biden is too busy with the minutiae of leadership and executive action to campaign, a cover that they’d desperately looove to employ at this time. Instead, they’re keeping VP Word Salad under wraps almost as desperately as they keep Biden out of sight unless and until absolutely necessary.

About the only improvement Harris provides is that she doesn’t claim to have had conversations with long-dead world leaders. 

I’ve written about the Kamala Conundrum before, but it’s getting acute after the Hur report. A new ABC News/Ipsos poll that dropped over the weekend shows that nearly nine in ten Americans think Biden’s too old for a second term, and that includes nearly three-quarters of Biden’s own party:

According to the poll, conducted using Ipsos’ Knowledge Panel, 86% of Americans think Biden, 81, is too old to serve another term as president. That figure includes 59% of Americans who think both he and former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, are too old and 27% who think only Biden is too old.

Sixty-two percent of Americans think Trump, who is 77, is too old to serve as president. There is a large difference in how partisans view their respective nominees — 73% of Democrats think Biden is too old to serve but only 35% of Republicans think Trump is too old to serve. Ninety-one percent of independents think Biden is too old to serve, and 71% say the same about Trump.

Biden’s nomination is quickly becoming untenable. Even with Trump as a bete noire, voters have no confidence in Biden’s competency now, let alone for the next four year term. That leaves Harris as a back-up, and as Jim Geraghty argued today, at least dementia won’t be an issue. Stupidity remains, however:

Biden’s age impedes his ability to communicate, and a presidential campaign is all about communication. Everyone knows Biden is in no shape for three 90-minute prime-time debates, and his allies are already talking about reasons why Biden should skip them — lest they elevate Trump, of course.

Kamala Harris is, at least to all appearances, a healthy 59-year-old woman. With Harris as the nominee, you could do early morning events, late-night events, multiple events per day, lots of travel — all kinds of things that have disappeared from Biden’s schedule because of his age. …

And if 2024 is going to be a pure base-turnout election — certainly neither party seems all that interested in appealing to independents and centrists anymore — Harris’s loopy, off-the-cuff, Hallmark-card, haiku speaking style won’t matter as much. She raises money, pounds the podium on abortion, and presses the buttons for progressives in a way that Joe Biden can’t or won’t. Recast her as Obama, cast Trump in the role of Mitt Romney or John McCain — an erratic billionaire businessman who’s too old for the job — and roll the dice.

Except … Harris isn’t doing those things. The White House doesn’t use her as a surrogate, and she rarely does potentially adversarial interviews any longer. If she could do those tasks successfully, she’d already be doing them. 

With that sense, this sounds a lot more like Harris being defensive about her obvious shortcomings than a calm reassurance of being a Plan B. It also sounds familiar, kind of like, oh … going the whole Fredo. 

The country is in the best of hands.