A vote for Joe Biden this November is a vote to make Kamala Harris president next year, or soon thereafter.
This president can’t possibly last another four years: His decline is unmistakable and plainly accelerating rapidly — however much he and the rest of his party deny it.
Indeed, the fact that most Democratic candidates will feel they have to tank their own credibility by denying it is a major reason so many want him to drop out.
And if he does drop, she’s the leading candidate to replace him at the top of the ticket.
Too bad her ratings are as bad as Joe’s — or were before his started sinking post-debate.
Worse is that few Americans have confidence in the Queen of Word Salads, not to mention the weird cackles or her near-invisible record as vice president.
And Biden did her no favors by supposedly putting her in charge of fixing the “root causes” of the migrant crisis three years ago.
The simple fact is that Joe didn’t tap her because she seemed able to step up as prez if necessary.
As with most veep picks, the point was to add something he (with his decades of experience) couldn’t bring to the ticket: her youth and sex and race.
That last was huge for Democrats in 2020, the year of fury over George Floyd’s death.
Our Charlie Gasparino took some flak for his column dissing her as potentially our “first DEI president,” but the shoe fits well enough.
Biden that year was full of DEI-speak, including lots of noise about “white supremacy”; he’d also vowed to pick a female No. 2: No men need apply.
And DEI in practice requires obsessive hiring on the basis of race (plus LGBTQ status, etc.), which makes calling Harris a “DEI hire” fair rhetoric, even if the choice also fits the ancient political tactic of ethnic ticket-balancing.
Yes, she’d won elections, for ’Frisco DA, California attorney general and US Senate — but she fell totally flat in the 2020 Democratic primaries, actually pulling out in late 2019.
The highlight of her campaign, ironically, was pulling the race card on Biden during a debate.
Most vice presidents are irrelevant; one compared the job unfavorably to a bucket of warm piss.
But this is one of those rare moments when the veep really matters. Let’s hope both parties learn the lesson.