Vice President Kamala Harris might frequently embarrass Democrats and cause questions about her fitness for office; however, one Democratic strategist says the president can’t afford to dump her from the ticket next year.
These include her apparent failure to take issues such as the southern border off of Joe Biden’s plate and her tendency to put her foot in her mouth.
“Symbols in American politics matter greatly,” Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf, told The New York Sun. “It’d be very hard for Joe Biden to dump a Black woman from the ticket.”
Biden has referred to her as a “work in progress.” The two have had periodic difficulties getting along. Harris’ husband complained to author Chris Whipple in his 2021 book “The Fight of His Life” that his wife had not been tasked to do much that was important.
“He hadn’t asked Harris to do anything he hadn’t done as vice president — and she’d begged him for the voting rights assignment,” Whipple wrote.
Kamala Harris: Tenure as Vice President
Her tenure as vice president has been marked by howlers such as claiming last September that the U.S. was in an alliance with the “Republic of North Korea.” She has been cavalier in the past about dismissing her assigned role as the administration point person on immigration.
Harris dismissed NBC anchor Lester Holt in June 2021 when he asked her about when she would visit the border.
“At some point, you know, we are going to the border. We’ve been to the border. So this whole thing about the border, we’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border,” Harris said.
Republicans such as Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson have called for Biden to dump her from the immigration role because she has done little or nothing to control the border.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren created bad blood with Harris during an interview on Boston Public Radio in February during which she was asked if Biden should keep her on the ticket. Warren said it was up to Biden to decide what he was “comfortable” with. She later patched things up with the vice president and said she supported her and Biden’s bid for re-election.
“I think some Democrats are disappointed. There was a lot of excitement around her candidacy and the historic nature of her candidacy. And since she’s taken office, that excitement has fallen flat,” Carly Cooperman, a Democratic strategist, told Vox.
None of these issues matter much for the Democratic Party electorate, Sheinkopf said.
“So now he has a problem,” Mr. Sheinkopf said. “He can’t get rid of her without alienating African Americans or Black voters generally. And, on the other side, he doesn’t have a foil from the age issue, because she’s not competent carrying the argument.”
Dumping Kamala Harris would require Biden to find another black female to put on the ticket. Options could include former National Security Adviser Susan Rice or Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, or even former First Lady Michelle Obama, who remains popular among Democrats.
“I think there’s about as much chance of that happening as me winning the New York Marathon,” the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, Raymond Buckley, told the Sun.
John Rossomando was a senior analyst for Defense Policy and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
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