Maybe the ‘Real’ Kamala Harris Problem Is the GOP Can’t Stop Attacking Her?: The idea that the Democrats are in a lot of trouble if Kamala Harris has to be their standard bearer in the new future is propagated by Republicans frequently and by Democrats hardly ever, as shown again in a Boston Herald column.
The Kamala Harris Problem…or Just GOP Fear?
There’s an old Internet argumentation concept known as “concern trolling.” The RationalWiki definition is a good one: “A concern troll is someone who disingenuously visits sites of an opposing ideology to disrupt conversation by offering unwanted advice on how to solve problems which do not really exist.”
Concern trolling is often associated with the early blogging era of the early 2000s, but it’s quite possible that no topic is more made for concern trolling than Vice President Kamala Harris’ status in the Democratic Party. The “Kamala Harris Problem,” as it has been called in a couple of dozen columns in the last two years.
The general gist of such columns is this: President Biden is running for re-election, and he’s 80 years old. Harris is his vice president, is confirmed as remaining on the ticket, and has a lower approval rating than Biden does. Therefore, about 3-5 columns appear every single week, laying out what a disaster this situation is for the Democrats.
Are the people writing these columns Democrats, expressing concern for the future of their own party? No, almost never. They are written almost exclusively by conservatives who dislike Biden, despise Harris, and would like nothing more than to see neither of them in office past 2024. These columns also tend to take it as a given that Biden is likely to keel over dead at any moment, while nearly always making room for shots at Harris’ laugh, for some reason.
There are some variations, either speculating that Harris could be dropped from the ticket, or even floating conspiracy theories that Biden has a secret plan to resign at some point and elevate Harris.
But overall, with these things, the assumption is always that “voters,” or “the American people,” have the exact same self-evident contempt for Kamala Harris that the conservative author of the op-ed does. It’s also treated as a given for some reason that Harris, should she need to lead the ticket in 2024, would be a sitting duck against Donald Trump, who has already been indicted twice.
Presidential candidate Nikki Haley came right out and said last month that “if you vote for Joe Biden you really are counting on a President Harris because the idea that he would make it until 86 years old is not something that I think is likely. In doing so, Haley seems to have acted as something of an assignment editor to every right-leaning op-ed columnist in the country.
New York Post columnist Miranda Devine wrote the umpteenth version of that column earlier this week, and now it’s the turn of Boston Herald columnist Joe Battenfeld.
“Democrats have a two-word problem in 2024 and it’s not Joe Biden,” Battenfeld writes. “The bigger overall headache for the party is Kamala Harris, the inept, inarticulate understudy who stands to become president if Biden can’t serve out a second term.”
Battenfeld goes on to suggest that Republicans heavily feature Harris’ vocal flubs in campaign commercials, although, unlike most columns of the genre, he stops short of mocking her speaking voice or her “cackle.”
Members of Harris’ own party are viewing the vice president differently. The Washington Post reported last month that the Administration was seeking to “elevate” Harris, including her participation in the then-current debt ceiling talks.
“The public staging of those moments, Democratic operatives say, is part of a concerted effort to bolster Harris’s image in the weeks since Biden announced his reelection. Republicans are already zeroing in on Harris with a sometimes morbid message that couples questions about the president’s longevity with doubts about the abilities of the woman who would succeed him,” the newspaper said.
Expertise and Experience:
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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