Joe Biden is giving Kamala Harris the unpopular, controversial, grunt work. Maybe that’s all he wants her to do.
Slate senior writer Christina Cauterucci writes a largely sympathetic assessment of Vice President Kamala Harris, entitled “Why Kamala Harris’ Job as VP Is So Hard,” and what’s fascinating is that along the way, Cauterucci echoes with some of the more critical assessments of Harris on the right.
…instead of asking a woman to join his ticket on the basis of her political skills or legislative accomplishments—and leaving the gender mandate to speculation—Biden made sure everyone knew that his selection wouldn’t have to beat out the entire field of potential competitors, just the other ladies. He got to look like an ally who valued women, while ensuring his vice president would end up looking like a “diversity hire” who got a possibly unwarranted leg up because of her gender.
She was the payoff to a Biden campaign gimmick that relished in her communal identities more than her particular skills. As the first woman of color in the role, she was bound to face extra scrutiny. Biden didn’t just give her bad-faith critics a head start—he seems to have left his own administration and Harris herself in doubt about what exactly she’s there to do now that the campaign is over.
If Kamala Harris had the exact same skillset, the exact same experience, the exact same personality and leadership skills and mindset, and been a white male, Biden would not have selected her. No nominee and aspiring president looks for a first-term senator who flamed out before the primaries began.
It’s not that Harris is unqualified, Constitutionally, or among all of the potential options Biden had. It’s just that Biden had already promised he would pick a woman, and many African-American Democratic leaders loudly signaled they expected Biden to pick an African-American woman.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are a political marriage of convenience that is steadily growing less convenient. Keep in mind, certain members of Biden’s inner circle did not like Harris and were not shy about their feelings. And while they no doubt have repaired their working relationship, after that first harsh debate exchange Jill Biden was furious with Harris:
After a primary debate in June 2019, Jill Biden blew up over Kamala Harris’ challenges to her husband’s stance on race, according to the soon-to-be released book Battle for the Soul. On a call with supporters, the now-first lady reportedly said, “With what he cares about, what he fights for, what he’s committed to, you get up there and call him a racist without basis?” “Go f*** yourself,” she continued. Her press secretary, Michael LaRosa, did not dispute the quote, but said, “the first lady and her team do not plan to comment on any of [the retellings of the 2020 campaign.]”
Another excerpt from that book reveals:
“A few minutes later, the moderators paused for a commercial break,” Dovere wrote. “Biden leaned over to Buttigieg, at the podium to his right. They barely knew each other, but Biden was looking for someone to share the moment with. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘That was some f—ing bull—.’”
Keep in mind, despite Joe Biden’s seemingly eternal presence in U.S. politics, Biden and Harris barely knew each other before the 2020 campaign, beyond a few White House events when she was California attorney general. He was leaving Washington as she was arriving — although he swore her into the U.S. Senate.
In a White House with longtime Biden aides and associates like Ron Klain, Bruce Reed, Steve Ricchetti, Mike Donilon, Kate Bedingfield, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Anita Dunn, and Jake Sullivan, Harris stands out as the rookie on the team and the outsider. It’s not surprising that Harris is getting the grunt work and seems out of the loop; Biden already has the team around him that he wants. He doesn’t really need her to do anything other than the low-profile or controversial and unpopular stuff he doesn’t want to do — like Central America and the border and space policy.
Cauterucci isn’t afraid to offer unsparing assessment of what Harris brings to the Biden White House.
Biden doesn’t need her foreign policy know-how, and she doesn’t have it; nor does she have his long-standing connections in the Senate, which also has 10 more Republicans in it today than it did then. If Biden is expecting Harris to be the same kind of vice president he was—he reportedly put Harris on migration diplomacy duty as a show of respect, since Obama had given him the same task—he’s going about it all wrong. Harris will bring a different utility to the role, though both she and Biden still seem unsure about what exactly that will be. Harris should figure it out for herself before someone else, possibly one of her critics, establishes it for her. Otherwise, her tenure as vice president will follow the same track as her presidential candidacy: sky-high expectations, mediocre follow-through.
When people ask what Harris’ true role in this White House is, and observe that so far, she’s mostly getting the unpopular, controversial, grunt work… maybe that is what Harris’ true role in this White House is!