As endorsements for Kamala Harris pile up from all corners of the Democratic Party, one omission is glaring: former President Barack Obama.
Claims out of Bidenworld have it that he’s convinced Kamala can’t win — and is spitting mad that Joe jumped the gun on crowning her as his replacement; ‘Bam had wanted several candidates to compete, with a winner chosen at the convention.
But the party, doubtless exhausted after weeks of tension over whether Biden would drop out, rushed to embrace Harris to end the drama.
And Democrats figure Harris is a (relatively) fresh face; though her approval ratings are as low as Biden’s, they’re surely not as firmly locked in.
The same messaging machine (including most of the media) that covered up Biden’s decline can now turn (shamelessly) to covering up her flaws.
They only have to make it work for a bit over three months to Election Day, and they’ve already got a social media blitz going.
The thing is, Kamala’s flaws are many: She’s crashed and burned while trying to discuss policy almost as often as Joe.
She has little experience actually governing, and she’s thrown her support behind lefty causes, like the Green New Deal and defunding the police, which centrist Americans oppose.
Not to mention the “border czar” fiasco — and her media enablers have already burned themselves trying to memory-hole that.
Nor is it clear how much the public trusts the press after the Biden revelations.
Plus, Harris’ former staffers (and she’s gone through a lot of them) routinely complain that she doesn’t do her homework, then blames her minions when she’s caught out.
Doesn’t bode well for live interviews (perhaps a repeat of her meltdown with Lester Holt?) or for debating Donald Trump.
To be clear: Switching out Joe for Kamala ups the challenge for the Trump-Vance ticket; polls suggest the race is already tighter, and the Dems’ convention, including her VP pick, might tighten it up more.
Republicans are still feeling out the right tone to attack a nominee who’s a black woman: Dems will call them racist and sexist no matter what, but the voters will judge for themselves.
Yet she may still bomb, and forcing out one nominee is surely the limit or Democrats will lose the “democracy” issue entirely.
We’ll likely never know for sure if Obama really wanted Sen. Mark Kelly or whomever, but we do know he’s a smart guy.
And we suspect the early coronation of Kamala Harris will prove not that smart.