Since his first year in office, there have been rumors that Joe Biden wants to kick Kamala Harris to the curb and replace her with a different running mate in 2024.
Just as common as the reports of Biden wanting to ditch Kamala are reports of tension between his team and Kamala’s team, with the latter increasingly frustrated that she’s been given trash assignments that don’t enhance her resume or profile. Kamala’s office has also been plagued by a series of high-profile resignations.
But the rumors are ramping up again, and even Democrat insiders are dumping on her.
“But the painful reality for Ms. Harris is that in private conversations over the last few months, dozens of Democrats in the White House, on Capitol Hill and around the nation — including some who helped put her on the party’s 2020 ticket — said she had not risen to the challenge of proving herself as a future leader of the party, much less the country,” the New York Times reported earlier this week. “Even some Democrats whom her own advisers referred reporters to for supportive quotes confided privately that they had lost hope in her.”
The rumors have been swirling enough that CBS’s Gayle King even addressed them during an interview with Harris on Wednesday.
“Your supporters are saying you personally are taking a lot of incoming: ‘Will she be on the ticket?’ ‘Will she not be on the ticket?’ ‘She seems to be in a damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t situation.’ How are you feeling about the job these days that you’re doing and people’s perception of you on the ticket?” King asked.
“Well, let me first of all say, as the president has said, he intends to run, and if he does, I’ll be running with him,” she said. “As it relates to the work of being vice president, listen, I love the American people.”
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It’s no secret that Joe Biden only picked Kamala Harris as his running mate because she’s a woman and a minority. Even then, it was a bizarre choice. Prior to Biden officially declaring his candidacy, Kamala said she believed the women who had accused him of sexual misconduct. Then, during one of the primary debates, she all but accused him of being racist over his past statements on working with Democrat segregationists, particularly on the issue of school busing. Despite the reports of tension between Biden and Kamala, he’s stuck with her now, as Biden does not want to risk the negative optics of cutting loose the “first female and minority vice president,” even if she is as useless as a refrigerator in the Arctic. So, if Biden runs—and that’s a huge if—Kamala Harris will be on the ticket. There’s no doubt about that.
But the fact that such rumors got to the point where Kamala was actually asked about them is really humiliating for her.