This is certain to be the most fascinating week in the history of Democrat national politics because we’re about to witness the party apparatus — while using hundreds of millions of dollars — do the truly impossible: make the case for Kamala Harris as president.
Joe Biden on Sunday announced he is no longer interested in being the nominee — I wonder what got to him — and that he endorses Vice President Kamala Harris for the role as he finishes the remainder of his term. He didn’t endorse her to aid her in competing for the spot. He did it because he already knew it was secured for her. The Clintons have also endorsed her, and now we’re just waiting on Barack Obama — Kamala’s kindred spirit as a black person of sorts.
She will be the Democrat nominee. There will be no competition at the party’s convention next month. And in November, Harris will lose handily.
Unless…
Let’s not pretend for a second that this is a normal or fair campaign for the most powerful office on earth. After everything Democrats did to Donald Trump, including fomenting a violent atmosphere that led to his attempted assassination, they just sideswiped an incumbent president who got the primary votes needed for reelection — a scenario never heard of in campaign politics, and what everyone until now would have called political suicide. Even dumb people like Rick Wilson and Stuart Stevens would have said that.
So, now they have Kamala, a person rejected by Democrat voters in 2020 — she dropped out of the party’s presidential primary before the first contest — and a vice president who holds the record for being the least-liked individual in that position. She never quite got to be unburdened by what was.
Oh, boy, does that confounding phrase she loves to repeat take on a new meaning.
The Harris campaign will in no way be an effort at distancing itself from Biden’s abysmal record. She’s his vice president and she embraced all of it. She defended all of it. There’s no clean slate to be had, and as craven as Democrats are, they’re not going to pretend there is.
She will hug the president’s record, as first lady Jill Biden, WebMD, almost certainly ensured Harris would. And then Kamala will do a predictably awkward dance about how it’s both great and imperfect but better than the alternative — Donald Trump, the ultimate threat to democracy.
There’s no constituency for it. The party replaced a corpse for a breathing human, but that’s the extent of things, and it will ultimately prove to be worse for Democrats — minus rampant foul play or, more likely, an attempted assassination that this time hits the mark.
At least with Biden, the Trump campaign would have been loath to be seen as bullying a senior citizen incapable of defending himself. That’s no longer the case. Trump is now free.
