With the 2024 presidential elections just months away, political pundits on both sides of the aisle are making their recommendations on who should stay – and who should go.
Of those who should go, Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker thinks Vice President Kamala Harris should be one of them. In an Op-Ed titled “For the Country’s Sake, Vice President Harris Should Step Aside,” she believes Harris may prove to be Biden’s downfall.
“Harris’s résumé was impressive,” Parker begins. “A former California attorney general and sitting U.S. senator, she seemed to have been created by Central Casting. Or was it artificial intelligence? As the first Black woman and the first woman of Asian descent to be nominated for vice president, she was a doubleheader. But her evolving beliefs undercut that appeal.”
She continues: “As a presidential candidate in 2020, she followed the Democratic playbook on issues, except when she raised her hand in support of eliminating private health insurance. She also managed to imply that Biden was racist and segregationist, citing his long-ago stance against student busing. In her famous debate rebuke of Biden, she said she had been one of the little Black girls on one of those buses. Her touché was short-lived. Harris ended her campaign in December 2019, citing a lack of financial resources. Next thing we knew, she was moving into the Naval Observatory.”
She further noted Harris’ botched attempt to be a border czar did nothing to help her advance her positioning on immigration and her “rambling remarks” and laugh that “erupts from nowhere” have become mundane and unnecessary “lest she embarrass her boss.”
To add insult to injury, Parker argues that Biden, himself, has not played at peak performance. Shine My Crown wrote about this in light of a recent Bloomberg Op-Ed penned by Nia-Malika Henderson in which she backed similar sentiments with data from an NBC News poll, suggesting that 76% of voters believed that Biden did not have the mental and physical capacity to serve as a second-term president. The numbers included 54% of Democrats and 81% of independents.
“These are the voters Biden and his team will need to return to the White House,” Henderson continued. “Rather than level with Americans about Biden’s clear issues, they too often dissemble and get defensive or pivot to Donald Trump’s age. Yet to voters Trump, who despite being just three years younger, appears less frail. Only 48% of voters have the same concerns about Trump’s age and fitness.”
In essence, Parker believes Harris might offer her own justifications for seeking new opportunities. Maybe she and Biden could negotiate an arrangement where she assumes the role of the next attorney general — contingent on his reelection, she writes.
“Biden then could tap someone else with executive experience who could reassure voters that the next vice president would be ready to take the reins should events require it. Democrats and Republicans alike would be relieved.
Please, Madame Vice President, do it for your country,” she concludes.
