Kamala Harris’s Biden Burden

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

 

Just when Americans had all but forgotten about the senescent apparition haunting the Oval Office, Joe Biden wanders aimlessly in from the wings to remind the voting public of its resolve to usher him out of public life forever.

 

During a Tuesday pop-in at a Democratic campaign office in New Hampshire, Biden embarked on one of his customary rambling disquisitions. It included a variety of attacks on Donald Trump, including the charge that the former president “thinks he has a right under the Supreme Court ruling on immunity to be able to — if need be, if it was the case — to actually eliminate — physically eliminate, shoot, kill — someone who is, who he needs to be a threat to him.”

 

That would be a more serious accusation if it came from a serious person. Indeed, if the sitting president’s pronouncements carried any weight with the public, this would have been the comment that made news. But it wasn’t. Rather, it was a follow-up remark that piqued reporters’ interest.

 

“I know this sounds bizarre,” Biden continued. “Sounds like, [if] I said this five years ago, you’d lock me up. We’ve got to lock him up.”

 

Biden caught himself amid the applause of his Democratic audience and clarified that he meant “politically, lock him up.” Of course, the clarification makes no sense at all, but Biden at least had the presence of mind to know that he had just stepped on a rhetorical landmine. For the last 20 months, Democrats and the White House have dismissed the claim that Democratic political objectives played any role in Trump’s indictments or convictions as a paranoid right-wing fantasy. Biden’s comments — however off-hand and absent minded they clearly were — ratified a pro-Trump talking point, and at the worst possible moment.

 

You could almost hear the slapping sound as hundreds of Democratic palms met with Democratic faces in Axios reporter Alex Thompson’s attempt to gauge the party’s reaction to the president’s flourish. The response ranged from exasperation (“We gotta lock Joe up”) to rationalization. “For better or worse, no one is listening to him anymore and his words have little power and less reach,” one unnamed Biden administration official said of the current president of the United States. “Gone in any meaningful way by mid-day tomorrow if it makes it that long.”

 

That’s not an unreasonable prediction, although it says more about the president’s diminished stature than the sordid sentiments his comments betrayed. Still, at the very least, even Biden’s few remaining apologists would have to concede that his presence in the national discourse is not helpful to Democratic prospects. Kamala Harris appears to disagree. The vice president continues to brush off every invitation to create political distance between her and the unpopular president she’s served.

 

In an interview with NBC News reporter Hallie Jackson, Harris was once again offered the opportunity to explain why her powers of observation failed her when it came to Biden’s obvious infirmities. “Can you say that you were honest with the American people about what you saw in those moments with President Biden as you were with him again and again repeatedly in that time?” Jackson asked. The excruciating exchange that followed is illustrative of the box Harris believes Biden has put her in, and why her risk-aversion compels her to languish in it.

 

“Joe Biden is an — extremely accomplished, experienced and capable in every way that anyone would want if they’re president. Absolutely.” Harris replied. The response raises the question of why his ouster was even necessary given his manifest competency.

 

Harris dismissed the debate performance that killed Biden’s career as a “bad debate,” saying “people have bad debates.” Again, the response might lead her audience to wonder whether it should draw any conclusions about Donald Trump’s middling debate performance against Harris.

 

When asked why she replaced Biden if he is as proficient as she claims, Harris meandered and dodged. To her credit, Jackson wouldn’t let the vice president get away with it. “It’s a judgment question. That’s why I ask,” she continued. “Can the American people trust you in these moments, even when it’s maybe uncomfortable for Americans to have, to level with Americans in that way?” But Harris stuck to the script.

 

“Joe Biden is the one who was able to bring NATO together during a crisis where for the first time in 70 years Europe saw and has seen war,” she said. “Joe Biden has done the work that has been about being a leader on what we have done to fix so much of what has been broken in terms of the economy because of Donald Trump’s mismanagement,” she insisted.

 

“I speak with not only sincerity, but with a real first-hand account of watching him do this work,” Harris concluded. “I have no reluctance in saying that.”

 

The vice president just hasn’t seen evidence of Biden’s decline — evidence with which we’re all intimately familiar and which was on display just yesterday. If Harris is going to self-discrediting lengths to protect Biden from deserved criticism, Biden isn’t repaying the favor.

 

Why is she doing this? One theory is that Harris gets no points for honesty. If she were to loosen her embrace of the former president, it would instantly become a Republican attack line. On balance, Democrats would not be enthused by the admission — they might be discouraged by it. This calculation seems to dominate the thinking in Wilmington. But Harris’s dissembling contributes to one of her biggest weaknesses: the perception that she is a creature with no fixed beliefs or values — the product of a public-relations campaign, who will say whatever is necessary to get into the White House.

 

The Harris campaign has recently started to take more risks than it invited at the outset of the vice president’s candidacy, but she just won’t hazard a negative word about the president. Her association with Biden’s record is weighing her down, but her campaign cannot think of a creative way to slough off that burden. If Harris comes up short in November, that will be due in part to the fact that lugging Biden’s legacy across the finish line with her was just too heavy a lift.