As speculation continues to swirl around the frenzied campaign to replace Joe Biden and just who that replacement might be, the names of several prominent blue state governors have been widely reported on and discussed, like Gavin Newsom in California and Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer.
Vice President Kamala Harris, on the other hand, has almost been an afterthought.
In a hypothetical situation where there is talk of replacing the president at the top of the ticket, you'd think the default answer would be to turn to the veep - and stay there.
But we are not in normal times, this is not a hypothetical situation, and Kamala Harris is not your typical vice president considering what she knows about actually leading a nation, especially through troubling times, could be placed in a thimble with plenty of room to spare.
The Democrat Replacement Theory Faces a Kamala Quandary
Harris, a failed presidential candidate, was of course picked in 2020 for DEI-esque reasons as Joe Biden at the time was under immense pressure from powerful Democrats to select a woman of color for his VP nominee or else. He settled on Harris to try and quiet the wokesters in his party, the same ones who are now threatening to "blow the party up" should the DNC overlook Harris in the event Biden is replaced - especially if that person is a white man.
But as the media puff pieces about Kamala crank up, and as she is likely in the midst of measuring the drapes, the "open secret" about Kamala Harris is also once again bubbling to the surface - and it is one that I believe is fueling the "anybody but Kamala" panic on Capitol Hill and among big Dem donors, as explained well by left-leaning political commentator/author Matt Stoller:
We've already had a preview of sorts on this front, as Harris was hit the night of Biden's disastrous debate performance with a question from CNN's Anderson Cooper about what people were saying about it. Here's a partial video clip from that exchange:
Just cringe on steroids, and it won't get any better. This is who Kamala Harris is and always will be, never being able to rise to the moment and expecting to be shown deference because of the much-hyped historical "firsts" represented by her vice presidency.
Well here's another modern-day "first" for Kamala: Democrats don't want to elevate the vice president to the presidential nominee role in this situation because they know deep down she's not very good at what she does, as evidenced by the fact that there's nothing she's done since taking office that disproves that very inconvenient fact.
In short, Democrats are confirming in their own way that they know much of what their conservative critics said about Kamala Harris' "skills" all along is true, just like much of what has been said about Joe Biden's incoherency and acuity since before he was sworn in was true.
Even shorter and more to the point: Toldjah so. Or as Die Hard's John McClane would say, "Welcome to the party, pal."