Americans who watched the “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris that aired Sunday on CBS found themselves in the unusual position of being assured that the president of the United States is “very much alive.”
That’s good to know, of course, but it wasn’t even close to answering the question at hand.
And it no doubt told the country more about Kamala Harris than she wanted to say.
When the topic arose, “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker wasn’t asking if President Joe Biden can still fog a mirror. He wasn’t even asking specifically about Biden’s health.
What he was asking Harris was why it is that Democratic donors, the money behind the political machine that’s destroying the American political system, aren’t at all sure that the vice president is the heir apparent in the event that Biden doesn’t seek re-election in 2024.
“We were talking to some Democratic donors, and they have told us that, should something befall President Biden and he is not able to run, that there would be a free-for-all for who would run as president,” Whitaker said.
“You are in the spot that that would be a natural for you to step up. But we’re hearing from donors that they would not naturally fall into line. Why is that?” he asked.
It was couched in the kind of kid-glove treatment “60 Minutes” has given the Biden administration, but the thrust of the question was, “why doesn’t anyone who matters think you’re qualified to run in Biden’s place?”
Harris could have answered that in any number of ways without giving the impression she was waiting for the president to pitch over. The fact that she didn’t seemed beyond strange.
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She could have easily said something like, “I don’t know who you’re talking to, but as a vice president who’s been a key part of this administration from the beginning, I’m sure Democrats know where to turn to continue working for the American people.”
That would be a lie six ways from Christmas, of course. Harris has made a hash of pretty much every high-profile assignment she’s taken on.
She was supposed to act point on the administration’s efforts to pass national “voting rights” laws that were basically election-fixing schemes to combat Republican state-level efforts to guard election integrity. They ran into a Republican-led filibuster in the Senate.
She was — famously — supposed to be in charge of getting to the “root causes” of illegal immigration, but she made no discernible contribution to the debate one way or the other beyond parroting standard Democratic claptrap.
Most recently, Biden has put her in charge of the newly created White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, an effort aimed squarely at the Second Amendment and one destined to do little more than generate yet more Democratic talking points and potentially new regulations that will end up being overturned in court.
But it would have been something.
Instead, Harris’ attempt at dodging was the most transparent kind in politics — answering a different question entirely as a way of explaining why no answer would be forthcoming.
“First of all, I’m not going to engage in that hypothetical because Joe Biden is very much alive and running for re-election,” the vice president said.
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When Whitaker persisted — mildly — she shut down the conversation entirely.
“I hear from a lot of different people a lot of different things,” Harris said. “But let me just tell you, I’m focused on the job. I truly am. Our democracy is on the line, Bill. And I, frankly, in my head do not have time for parlor games, when we have a president who is running for re-election.
“That’s it.”
The answer was considerably different in content and tenor from when Harris answered a similar question in September by declaring she was prepared to step into the presidency if needed.
“Joe Biden is going to be fine, so that is not going to come to fruition,” she said, according to The Associated Press. “But let us also understand that every vice president — every vice president — understands that when they take the oath, they must be very clear about the responsibility they may have to take over the job of being president.
“I’m no different.”
Now, a Kamala Harris presidency might be the stuff of conservative nightmares, but at least she was relatively forthright in that answer.
The question is why she didn’t just repeat that sentiment to Whitaker and confidently — if dishonestly — assure him that the donors would fall in line in time.
The most likely answer is that Team Biden didn’t appreciate even the insinuation of the Harris statement from September.
For all their talk of “inclusiveness” and “diversity,” Democrats have a police-state caliber suspicion of anything outside the party’s talking points, and Harris acknowledging the obvious — even as a “hypothetical” — probably earned her a rap from whatever Ministry of Truth monitor was on duty that day.
The fact that she used the word “hypothetical” again in not answering Whitaker’s question is a pretty good indicator that she was nervous.
More to the point, though, is that Harris’ statement about Biden’s life signs is an indication that she knows exactly how much support she has in the party — and that the Biden-Harris “partnership” is essentially built on mutual blackmail.
When Biden chose Harris as his running mate, it was because he was indebted to South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, a black Democrat, and under extreme pressure from his party’s left wing to pick a black woman. Considering the ever-more-race-obsessed nature of the Democratic Party, getting rid of her now is politically impossible. (Biden picking another black woman would give the game away a little too obviously.)
Harris, meanwhile, is tied to Biden. With her unpopularity, her ineptitude and her fingernails-grating-chalkboard personality, she’s going nowhere on her own steam — and that answer to Whitaker shows she knows it.
In short, she assured Whitaker that Biden “is very much alive and running for re-election” because she had to.
Without Biden, she’s a second-rate senator from California whose biggest spot in the limelight was in 2018, trying to smear then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Even in a United States where the Democratic Party has warped the conversation to the point where skin color and gender (not to mention sexual behavior) have assumed outsized importance in political discourse, Kamala Harris knows being a black woman got her where she is.
Being a black woman won’t get her any further, and she knows that too.
And that’s more than she wants the rest of the country to know.
