President Joe Biden, right, showed up at a White House news briefing Friday, where he insisted that Vice President Kamala Harris, left, played a vital role in all his administration’s actions. (Kamil Krzaczynski – AFP / Getty Images; Andrew Caballero-Reynolds – AFP Getty Images)
By Joe Saunders October 4, 2024 at 4:39pm
Somewhere, the Kamala Harris campaign was cringing.
When President Joe Biden (remember him?), took the podium at a White House news briefing on Friday, one of the questioners brought up the vice president’s approach to the “crises the country has been facing over the past several days” and the role Harris is playing in dealing with them.
For the Harris campaign, the answer could hardly have been worse.
“He is literally trying to destroy her campaign and it’s just incredible,” CNN’s resident conservative contrarian Scott Jennings wrote in a post on the social media platform X.
He is literally trying to destroy her campaign and it’s just incredible. https://t.co/bbOJ25Tmvg
— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) October 4, 2024
“Well, she’s … I’m in constant contact with her,” Biden said with his customary rhetorical sloppiness.
“She’s aware … we’re all singing from the same song sheet. We, uh, she helped pass all the laws that are being employed now. She was a major player in everything we’ve done, including passage of the legislation which we were told we could never pass.
“And so she’s been … and her staff is interlocked with mine, in terms of all the things we’re doing.”
Do you believe Biden wants Kamala Harris to lose?
About the last thing Vice President and President-Wannabe Harris needs right now is for American voters to be reminded that she’s “interlocked” with a president so bad his own party threw him over the side rather than risk riding to oblivion with him in November.
About the last thing Harris operatives want is for voters to remember that it was Harris’s tie-breaking votes in the Senate that passed the ludicrously misnamed American Rescue Plan in 2021 and the even more ludicrously misnamed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 — two huge government giveaways that are widely blamed for the runaway inflation torturing American consumers for the past two years.
And in an election that’s likely to be decided on the knife edge of independent voters in battleground states, it was about the last answer to be expected from a president who actually wanted Harris to win.
But if it was from a president — or that president’s team — still smoldering over his being coldly cast aside in favor of a woman he was essentially forced to appoint in the first place, and that president — or that president’s team — wanted to damage her chances with voters outside the Democratic fold, it’s almost perfect.
Does Biden have the mental acuity to realize that he was on the way to losing to former President Donald Trump even before his senile seppuku on stage at the June 27 presidential debate? Does he know the closer Harris is perceived to be to him, the further she is from winning the Oval Office?
If he does, that answer at the press briefing couldn’t have been calculated better to drag her down with him.
And if he doesn’t, if his well-documented dotage is so advanced he thought it was an actual endorsement, he’s not the only one at play here.
It’s not a secret that Biden gives every appearance of not knowing up from down half the time. But it’s also not a secret that he and his inner circle — primarily first lady Jill Biden, the Edith Wilson of our era — were all in on winning another term in office.
A crew like that could be understandably furious at being forced to give way — as Biden was — while he still had breath in his body (if not much else going on).
And they could well be priming Biden to answer questions about Kamala with lines emphasizing what a mover-and-shaker she is in his spectacularly failed administration, knowing full well — even if he doesn’t — that it could hurt her among the voters she needs the most.
In any case, Biden’s answer set social media buzzing with the idea that his words seemed to be full of self-serving praise, but were really a sort of bank-shot torpedo aimed right at her bow.
Here’s a small sampling:
BREAKING: Joe Biden tries to drag down Kamala Harris’ campaign even further.
“I am in constant contact with her. We are singing from the same song sheet. She helped pass all the laws. She was a major player in everything we’ve done.” pic.twitter.com/1OIzZo7An2
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 4, 2024
Good lord
Please drag down Kamala with you Joe
It’s for the good of the country
— Johnny Mac (@Capt_Emeritus) October 4, 2024
Trump campaign should get this out as an ad ASAP!
— (@lovemypups12) October 4, 2024
This is the sole reason Joe Biden came to the press briefing today. To get his revenge on Kamala Harris 👀
“We’re singing from the same song sheet. She helped pass all the laws. She was a major player in everything we’ve done.” pic.twitter.com/lz3P2y6oKv
— 🇺🇸Travis🇺🇸 (@Travis_4_Trump) October 4, 2024
On his afternoon show on Friday, Philadelphia-based conservative talk show host Rich Zeoli noted that if Harris loses in November, it will give Biden and the Biden family the bragging rights as the only candidate who could beat Donald Trump.
And it will consign Harris to the ash heap of women who lost to him. (Hillary Clinton could use the company.)
If Biden, or the Biden family, wanted revenge on the Trump-deranged Democrats, tanking the woman Democrats replaced him with couldn’t get much better than that.
And somewhere, Kamala’s campaign is cringing at the thought.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn’t need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
Nationality
American
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