Friends, my latest article reflects on the incredible turn of events we saw last week: the Democratic Party decided to play Russian roulette with itself by doubling down on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. I thought for sure they'd rethink that latter pick, but no -- all's well in America, apparently, and we just can't do any better than Sleepy Joe and Kam-Kam. Okay... If you say so! Personally, I view this decision as a tad risky. Read all about it here:
Brandishing the Albatross
In a
week of major news stories, perhaps the most consequential
development of all got lost in the shuffle. Joe Biden, octogenarian
weakling, decided to run for reelection, and
he
left no room for doubt that Kamala Harris, the airhead who gives Air
Force Two most of its buoyancy, will remain as his Vice-President and
reprise her role as his running mate. This is a shocking decision
that speaks to the runaway hubris of our left-wing ruling elite.
Harris, to be clear, has been a massive disappointment since she
took office, and even before that. Her stumbles on the stump have led
the White House to sideline her for most of the last three years. Her
inability to get along with her own staff has led to unprecedented
instability in the Office of the Vice-President. Her first and most
high-profile mission, to take charge of the situation at the
U.S.-Mexico border, has been executed with such sloppiness and
negligence that she has been given little or no meaningful
responsibility since. What's more, Democrats across the country
running for office have mostly avoided appearing with Harris,
although, to be fair, especially in the 2022 cycle, few of them had
much enthusiasm for Joe Biden's company either.
The bottom line is that Harris is the considerably less popular
sidekick to a president whose own popularity and approval ratings are
already in dangerous territory. Harris is “underwater” in terms
of favorability (her unfavorable numbers outweigh her favorables) by
16 points, which precisely matches Donald Trump's performance – a
man Democrats regard as the Devil incarnate. To say that Harris is a
drag on the Democratic ticket, rather an asset, would be an
understatement.
In most election cycles, Harris's weaknesses would not matter. It is
a truism among political analysts that voters do not vote for
Vice-Presidents – they vote instead for (or against) whoever is at
the top of the ticket.
The problem for Joe Biden and the Democrats, however, is that voters
have grave doubts about Joe Biden's health, mental fitness, and
durability. They doubt whether he can finish his first term. They are
downright incredulous about whether he can finish a hypothetical
second term.
That means that, in this cycle, more perhaps than in any other in
American history, voters will be paying attention to who the major
candidates chose as their running mates. This will be especially true
if the Republicans nominate Donald Trump, in which case both major
parties will have chosen as their standard-bearers men well past
retirement age, and closing in rapidly on obsolescence. It would be
grossly irresponsible not to weigh carefully whether these candidates
have picked presidents-in-waiting who are up to the job.
Joe Biden's selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate – a
woman in whom he himself reposes little confidence, based on the
responsibilities his administration has been willing to grant her –
can be explained in only three ways, and probably all three have
equal validity.
One, Democrats have become captives of their own DEI (“diversity,
equity, and inclusion”) rhetoric, and they are simply incapable of
cashiering a woman of color in a position of authority under any
circumstances, because the optics would be less-than-progressive and
doing so would provoke howls of protest (the howls and the howlers
suggest themselves) from certain key constituencies of the Democratic
Party.
Two, Harris is to be retained because Joe Biden and his inner circle
regard the GOP as so dysfunctional and electorally inept that they
can put forward virtually anyone as their presidential and
vice-presidential candidates, and Americans will have no choice but
to vote for them. In other words, they view candidate quality as
irrelevant, because the opposition has disqualified itself and is no
longer viable. If you take seriously the claims made by Joe Biden in
his presidential campaign announcement – that the Republicans have
become“MAGA extremists lining up to take [our] freedoms away”,
and to blow up American democracy in the process – then it makes
sense that Americans would choose anyone and anything over four more
years of Trumpist tyranny. (On the other hand, Republicans won the
popular vote for the House in 2022 by 3 points, suggesting that
reports of the death of the GOP are greatly exaggerated.)
The last possible explanation for Joe Biden's retention of Kamala
Harris is more tactical in nature. Joe Biden's team, realizing his
weakness, may believe that he requires a foil: a patsy to stand next
to him who can, by his or her sheer awfulness, make “the Big Guy”
look comparatively wise, capable, articulate, and continent (okay,
three out of four ain't bad).
This
is the role that Kamala Harris was born to play. She's played it to
perfection since January 2021, provoking in Democrats and Republicans
alike the resigned admission: “Yeah, Biden is no prize pig, but at
least he isn't...her.”
And,
maybe, given the realities of American politics, in which voters
often vote for the candidate who they find least odious, this is
enough. Voters, in short, don't have to like
or believe in Joe Biden – they simply have to be able to imagine
something or someone worse.
Presto! Cue Madam Vice-President...
The other way to look at all this, of course, is to observe that, by
fielding a team of duds, the Democrats are almost certainly granting
the Republican ticket a golden opportunity to outperform expectations
in 2024, and quite possibly to seize back control of the White House
(and, in that case, in all likelihood Congress as well).
Some have said that in 2016 only Hillary Clinton – a singularly
weak and unlikable candidate – could have lost to Donald Trump. She
did so, of course, partly because Democrats had convinced themselves
that such a thing was impossible.
Could history be about to repeat itself in 2024? Could Biden fizzle
and let Trump into the White House through the backdoor – a door
held open by a bumbling, cackling Kamala Harris?
All we can do is wait and see.
Dr.
Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred
and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com.
He appears on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480/106.9.
And here it is at Townhall:
https://townhall.com/columnists/nicholaswaddy/2023/04/30/brandishing-the-albatross-n2622629
