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Allies of Vice President Kamala Harris expressed anger and frustration after she was left out of the conversation as a replacement atop the Democratic ticket following President Joe Biden’s horrific debate performance, according to a Saturday report.
Citing VP insiders, Politico reported that some of Harris’s allies chaffed as the post-debate conversation among party members regarding a potential replacement for Biden included names like Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, but not the VP, even as she was expected to defend her boss amid a tidal wave of criticism over his weak showing against a more assertive, more confident former President Donald Trump.
Names like Newsom and Whitmer “trended online as potential replacements for Biden on the Democratic ticket, while Harris — by several measures the most obvious and best-positioned candidate — was left to publicly defend Biden at the single worst moment of their four-year-old political partnership,” Politico reported.
That left some of Harris’ supporters frustrated that her name is not being mentioned alongside other ambitious Democrats, Politico said, adding that they are unable to do much about it as Harris is effectively required to defend him.
“There’s nothing that she could do externally that would be wise,” Democratic strategist Michael Trujillo told the outlet. “Her best strategy is to internally just be an amazing VP.”
But, as Politico noted, Harris was not about to try and put Biden’s horrendous performance in a better light:
She had to perform the role of good soldier almost immediately after the debate, with postmortem interviews having been pre-scheduled with CNN and MSNBC.
As Harris watched Biden’s face-plant, she and her team realized her response would be even more closely scrutinized, according to three aides granted anonymity to describe private discussions — and she quickly made clear to her staff that they shouldn’t try to sugarcoat how badly her running mate had performed.
Harris told her advisers her role was simple, the aides said: project confidence as quickly and clearly as possible as a leader of the party, while preserving credibility by recognizing how weak the debate had been.
“She wanted to have an acknowledgment of what everybody was seeing,” a senior aide to Harris told the outlet.
“The president said himself that it was not his best performance,” Harris herself noted at a campaign rally Friday afternoon before going on to accuse Trump of lying throughout the debate.
She then offered what has become a very familiar defense of Biden among Democrats and the vast majority of the media: That off-camera, the man who has spent more than a half-century in politics is just fine.
“I see Joe Biden when the cameras are on and the cameras are off, in the Oval Office negotiating bipartisan deals,” Harris told the rally. “I see him in the Situation Room keeping our country safe, [and] on the world stage meeting with world leaders who often ask for his advice.”
But it was the lack of her name being mentioned post-debate as a potential Biden replacement that left her allies fuming, Politico added, with close Harris allies making it about her race.
“The fact that people keep coming back to this is so offensive to so many of us,” a veteran Democrat and Harris ally told Politico. “They still don’t get that the message you’re saying to people, to this Democratic Party, is, we prefer a white person.”
Said another: “If they think they are going to get through South Carolina bashing an effective and qualified Black woman vice president — their instincts are as bad as I thought they were.”
Despite their angst, Harris has consistently polled lower than Biden throughout their term. Also, critics of the VP note that she’s not performed well with any of the assignments Biden has given her, most notably fixing the chaotic and porous southwest border.
