OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Vice President Kamala Harris couldn’t escape the shadow of President Joe Biden during her truncated one-and-a-half billion-dollar failed campaign against now-President-elect Donald Trump, so she must have decided to emulate him after her loss.
Both Biden and Harris have been in perpetual vacation mode since the election, with Biden sticking close to his Delaware homes save for a quick economic summit in Brazil earlier this month.
Harris, meanwhile, has been to Hawaii and, on Saturday, ventured to a Washington, D.C.-area bookstore as part of “Small Business Saturday,” a post-Black Friday event that encourages Americans to patronize small mom-and-pop shops.
WATCH:
Kamala is working tirelessly in her final days as VP.
She just spent a week in Hawaii and now she’s out visiting bookstores.
Her husband Doug Emhoff also appears to be waving at no one 😂😂pic.twitter.com/Yo1cUIH5pu
— Martin Walsh (@martinwalsh__) December 1, 2024
Harris and second husband Doug Emhoff visited Bold Ford Books in northwest DC, which was opened by Clementine Thomas in 2020.
“Coming into work just expecting a busy day. It’s small business Saturday which is usually a big day for us,” said Thomas. “It’s sort of the kickoff to the holiday season. The holiday season is when we make most of our sales that allows us to operate through the rest of the year.”
Thomas then described her encounter with Harris.
“She’s a real home cook and is obviously super passionate about cooking. Kind of knew what she wanted, but was open to recommendations,” said Thomas who showed the VP around the store. “It’s just so fun to talk to someone who really, really loves cooking.”
“Our dollars go back into our community and we’re providing a space for our neighbors to come through and like-minded people and I think that’s true of all small businesses,” Thomas told WUSA. “Small businesses give our communities so much texture and richness that it would be a sad, sad place without them.”
“There’s so much hype around Black Friday, you don’t really want to spend your money on all these big chains, so I think it’s great she was supporting this store,” said Chappel.
Last week, longtime Democratic strategist James Carville issued a stark warning, stating that the Democratic Party’s reputation was severely harmed by excessive spending during Harris’ unsuccessful presidential campaign.
Speaking on Politics War Room, Carville predicted future challenges in fundraising and called on the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to conduct a thorough audit to restore trust and provide accountability for the campaign’s expenditures.
“The resistance is going to have trouble raising money. These fundraisers are burnt,” Carville said. “They’re really pissed now, and the damage that the 2024 campaign has done — the damage that this decade has done to the Democratic brand — is almost unfathomable. Almost unfathomable.”
“So I have people that are contacting me to run for DNC chair. Promise you I’m not going to to get in the middle of that … But I would say the policy, number one, is we’re going to audit everything,” Carville continued. “We’re going to audit the campaign. We’re going to audit Future Forward.
“We’re going to audit the DNC so people can know,” he added. “But I’m telling you, without complete transparency, the campaign — we think — raised a billion and a half dollars. Okay, we know that Future Forward, the last we saw, was $900 million, so we can assume that they got to a billion before the election. That’s two and a half freaking billion dollars.”
Future Forward, the primary Super PAC aligned with Vice President Kamala Harris, raised over $900 million to support her presidential campaign—a record for external political groups in a single election cycle, according to The New York Times.
“Do you have any idea where that money went? Does anybody have any idea where that money went?” Carville asked. “I mean, I have some places I’d start looking … I promise you this: the amount of money and the amount of lobbyists that were involved in this campaign is staggering.”
