Who’s Surprised That Kamala Harris Is Toxic? - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Who’s Surprised That Kamala Harris Is Toxic?
by

One of the most entertaining items to pass across the internet in some time popped out from CNN’s website over the weekend.

Exasperation and dysfunction: Inside Kamala Harris’ frustrating start as vice president” read the headline. It was written by Edward Isaac Dovere and Jasmine Wright, and it’s very much a hit piece against Harris.

Dovere and Wright clearly got a call from Joe Biden’s handlers, and it’s pretty obvious that they felt the need to throw somebody under the bus amid poll numbers which have gotten so bad and a national rejection of Biden so persistent that in a Washington Post poll released over the weekend, the Democrats are now more underwater with “registered voters” than they are “likely voters” on the generic congressional ballot for next year.

When the low-propensity crowd is so alarmed at the failure of the Biden regime less than a year in, and so disgusted with its incompetence and petty tyranny — the unconstitutional vaccine mandate it insists on pushing, for example — that they’ve turned on the administration’s party, it’s pretty comically awful.

This despite a legacy corporate media which has carried water like a bucket brigade for the administration and its front man for the better part of two full years. But the New York Times and CNN can’t save Biden. That’s obvious. Those “Let’s Go, Brandon” cheers in the football stadiums continue apace despite the freakouts and the scoldings.

The American people won’t be made a scapegoat for the failings of the Biden administration. And the gaslighting operation is very much in the diminishing-returns stage. That was always going to be the case once its media shills were reduced to lecturing us that inflation is a good thing and, alternatively, that spending trillions of dollars of money we don’t have would drive prices downward.

That means somebody has to go under the bus. Bye, Kamala.

Worn out by what they see as entrenched dysfunction and lack of focus, key West Wing aides have largely thrown up their hands at Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff — deciding there simply isn’t time to deal with them right now, especially at a moment when President Joe Biden faces quickly multiplying legislative and political concerns.

The exasperation runs both ways. Interviews with nearly three dozen former and current Harris aides, administration officials, Democratic operatives, donors and outside advisers — who spoke extensively to CNN — reveal a complex reality inside the White House. Many in the vice president’s circle fume that she’s not being adequately prepared or positioned, and instead is being sidelined. The vice president herself has told several confidants she feels constrained in what she’s able to do politically. And those around her remain wary of even hinting at future political ambitions, with Biden’s team highly attuned to signs of disloyalty, particularly from the vice president.

She’s a heartbeat away from the presidency now. She could be just a year away from launching a presidential campaign of her own, given doubts throughout the political world that Biden will actually go through with a reelection bid in 2024, something he’s pledged to do publicly and privately. Or she’ll be a critical validator in three years for a President trying to get the country to reelect him to serve until he’s 86.

Few of the insiders who spoke with CNN think she’s being well-prepared for whichever role it will be. Harris is struggling with a rocky relationship with some parts of the White House, while long-time supporters feel abandoned and see no coherent public sense of what she’s done or been trying to do as vice president. Being the first woman, and first woman of color, in national elected office is historic but has also come with outsized scrutiny and no forgiveness for even small errors, as she’ll often point out.

Dovere and Wright at least managed to get both sides of the story…

Defenders and people who care for Harris are getting frantic. When they’re annoyed, some pass around a recent Onion story mocking her lack of more substantive work, one with the headline, “White House Urges Kamala Harris To Sit At Computer All Day In Case Emails Come Through.” When they’re depressed, they bat down the Aaron Sorkin-style rumor that Biden might try to replace her by nominating her to a Supreme Court vacancy. That chatter has already reached top levels of the Biden orbit, according to one person who’s heard it.

It goes on, attempting to describe Harris as a heavyweight who for some reason simply hasn’t been used correctly by the White House without coming right out and saying what the public well knows.

Namely, that Kamala Harris is a nobody. That her rise in politics came from an extramarital affair she conducted for years with California legislative Grand Poo-Bah Willie Brown and, subsequently, her identity as a black woman who got elected as a statewide official. (READ MORE: Why It Should Matter to Women That Kamala Harris Slept Her Way Up)

Harris didn’t accomplish anything as California’s attorney general, unless you think it was an accomplishment to grievously violate the constitutional rights of investigative journalist David Daleiden in order to punish him for exposing the Planned Parenthood Body Parts Chop Shop racket. She certainly didn’t accomplish anything in the U.S. Senate. Why would anyone expect her to accomplish anything as vice president?

Joe Biden — or more importantly, the people who handle him — knew Kamala Harris exceptionally well. They knew that when the Democrats’ primary voting electorate got hold of her as a presidential candidate, their rejection was swift and complete. She went from early favorite to out of the race in no time flat, and she was put in that position largely on the strength of a complete dressing-down by Tulsi Gabbard, of all people.

Everybody knew Harris was a drag on the administration. You heard a little bit of the “Biden-Harris” stuff during the campaign — but not that much, and mostly it was tossed out there as a fig leaf in an effort to tamp down public opposition to Biden’s incessant gaffes and inexplicable doddering.

As soon as he was inaugurated, Harris was put out there in hopes that she could reassure the public. But the more Americans saw of her, the more we decided we don’t like her — and for obvious reasons. She cackles inappropriately. She’s blisteringly devoid of substance. And she’s very obviously only in it for herself.

And her defense is morbidly obvious, which is that as a black woman she’s being treated with disrespect and marginalized. Because what people love is excuse-making from their leaders.

Harris was put in charge of the border when public opposition to Biden’s disastrous abandonment of its enforcement blew up shortly after the administration took office, and her first step was to do exactly what Biden has done on oil — go down to Central America and beg the locals to solve a problem caused directly by the U.S. federal government’s policy. Harris was talking about “root causes” with the Central Americans, and their leaders were insulted. They know the root cause of the current migration is that Biden invited their people to come with the promise of free health care and other goodies. It’s identical to clamping down on domestic oil production and then begging OPEC to help resolve the quite foreseeable deficit of product on the market.

Harris’ people now claim she was sandbagged. But where is the evidence Kamala Harris ever had a plan to solve the border crisis or any interest in doing so?

Then there’s the toxic work environment reported by those who have spent time as Harris staffers. Because of course someone as devoid of merit as Harris would be an office tyrant. It’s only a matter of time before those quiet anecdotes aren’t so quiet anymore.

The CNN piece does Harris no favors, but if it intended to help Team Biden, it fails miserably on that score as well. After all, while Harris has a woeful 28 percent approval rating, Biden’s is colossally underwater as well — and in fact, his negatives are higher than hers.

And it really doesn’t help resolve what’s obviously an all-out war between Team Biden and Team Harris.

Which, honestly, is fine. It won’t negatively affect the running of the country, because that can hardly be worse. And if it destroys the Democrat Party — and particularly if Harris goes full scorched earth with the race card on Biden, something she already did during those primaries, which could spit out Space Program-style unexpected goodies for Republicans and conservatives heading into the 2022 midterms — then we can all sit back and enjoy some delicious popcorn while the morons in charge have their Woke Götterdämmerung.

Team Harris can call Biden an unreconstructed racist, and it’ll be believable. They can also dish on his mental fitness, and that’ll be believable as well. And Team Biden can prey on Harris’ office tyranny and lack of skill. That’ll also be true.

We’re for full disclosure as to the lot. In the name of transparency and an informed public, that is.

It’s like Henry Kissinger once said of the Iran-Iraq War: can they both lose? Why yes, they can. And it’s a good bet they will. Deservedly so.

Scott McKay
Follow Their Stories:
View More
Scott McKay is a contributing editor at The American Spectator  and publisher of the Hayride, which offers news and commentary on Louisiana and national politics, and RVIVR.com, a national political news aggregation and opinion site. Scott is also the author of The Revivalist Manifesto: How Patriots Can Win The Next American Era, and, more recently, Racism, Revenge and Ruin: It's All Obama, available November 21. He’s also a writer of fiction — check out his four Tales of Ardenia novels Animus, Perdition, Retribution and Quandary at Amazon.
Sign up to receive our latest updates! Register


By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: . You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact

Be a Free Market Loving Patriot. Subscribe Today!