Now that the legacy media is piling on Joe Biden for his mental decline that ultimately led to him dropping out of last year's presidential race, his former vice president appears to be grabbing a lifeline. Aides to Kamala Harris pounced on the Biden news to blame him for her loss last year, with one saying "it's all Biden" while another said Biden "totally ruined" Harris' election chances.
This wagon-circling by Team Harris appears to be an effort to use Biden's failure to absolve Harris of blame for her loss, and rehab her political image in the process. It is what one columnist calls the "Miraculous Rebirth of Kamala Harris."
Biden's failures aside, he hardly deserves all the blame for Harris' sound defeat in last year's election. Political analyst and podcast host Jeff Crouere says Harris was already unpopular as vice president, then ran a terrible campaign. "She refused to go on podcasts, she refused to do in-depth interviews, and then she refused to create any distance between herself and Joe Biden, which was a critical error," he says. "And I think that is what really hurt her."
Indeed, if Biden was the albatross that Harris' team believes he was, it begs the question of why she didn't try to set herself apart from him. "Joe Biden was very unpopular, and the American people wanted something new, they wanted a change," says Crouere. "She could have positioned herself as new face, new issues, new direction, but she didn't...and that was a real error."
If Harris does try to make a political comeback, Crouere says she will have to do a lot more than just blame Biden. "She will probably need to write a book, and then she should definitely do more media," he tells KTRH. "Get out there and answer questions, and go on programs where she'll be challenged, and show the American people something different."
Photo: AFP