Earth to Democrats: Vice President Kamala Harris is not your savior.
Itâs not that her poll numbers are low just because her personality is grating and sheâs been ineffectual whenever sheâs been given the opportunity to lead. Both of those are true, but thereâs another factor that needs to be looked at: Harrisâ inability to come to grips with the organizational side of politics.
Mainstream media outlets didnât want to pay attention to this when she was running for either president or vice president â even though the evidence is there. (This is the kind of ugly Media bias we fight every day here at The Western Journal. You can help us in our fight by subscribing.)
The most damaging aspect of this has been speculation regarding her staffers â how she treats them, how many of them end up quitting and what they say to the media after they walk out. Over the course of her vice presidency, thereâs usually been someone in her office who defended Harris against this. Thus far, itâs typically been Symone Sanders, Harrisâ chief spokeswoman.
She wasnât available this time, given that she was the one who quit.
But seriously, guys â she didnât quit because the vice presidentâs office is more dysfunctional than the weekend Charlie Sheen gets supervised visitation with his kids! Why, just listen to the reason she gave The Washington Post for why she left the office after two years of working for Joe Biden and one for Kamala Harris.
âIâve been with the president since before he announced his run for president. I staffed him on the road. I traveled with him for nearly two years and during that time, there were days when on Monday I would get on a plane with Joe Biden. And then the plane would land in Delaware I would drive from Delaware to Washington DC. And Tuesday morning, I would be on a plane with Kamala Harris,â Sanders told the Post.
âIâm getting married next year. I would like to plan my wedding. You know, I have earned a break. So me deciding that Iâm leaving has absolutely nothing to do with my unhappiness. I feel honored every single day to work for the vice president who gave me an opportunity to be her spokesperson at the highest levels.â
The problem for Harris with that carefully drafted statement is that it was appended onto the end of another nightmare piece about how Harris treats her staff â including more anonymous quotes to those who have left the office behind and attributed quotes from those who say they know how toxic the dynamic is.
The headline should say it all: âA Kamala Harris staff exodus reignites questions about her leadership style â and her future ambitions.â
But there were plenty of details inside the Saturday report from Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Tyler Pager, painting the picture of a domineering boss who abuses her staff.
For instance: âStaffers who worked for Harris before she was vice president said one consistent problem was that Harris would refuse to wade into briefing materials prepared by staff members, then berate employees when she appeared unprepared,â the Saturday report stated.
âItâs clear that youâre not working with somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work,â a former staffer told the Post, describing Harrisâ behavior outside the public eye.
âWith Kamala you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence. So youâre constantly sort of propping up a bully and itâs not really clear why.â
One source named in the article was blunt.
âOne of the things weâve said in our little text groups among each other is what is the common denominator through all this and itâs her,â former Democratic strategist and Harris aide Gil Duran told the Post. He quit working for her after five months in 2013.
âWho are the next talented people youâre going to bring in and burn through and then have pretend theyâre retiring for positive reasons?â
Whatâs the defense against this? Misogyny and racism, of course.
Usually, when pieces like this come out against Harris â such as a damning June article published by Politico â it was Symone Sanders picking up the pieces. She would parrot the same lines that Wootson and Pager described in their piece: that âcriticism against her is often steeped in the same racism and sexism that have followed a woman who has been a first in every job sheâs done over the past two decades.â
âHer selection as President Bidenâs vice president, they say, makes her a bigger target because many see her as the heir apparent to the oldest president in the nationâs history. They also say Harris faces the brunt of a double standard for women who are ambitious, powerful or simply unafraid to appear strong in public.â
Calling unnamed sources in the summertime Politico article âcowards,â Sanders noted, âWe are not making rainbows and bunnies all day ⌠What I hear is that people have hard jobs and Iâm like, âwelcome to the club.ââ
In that piece, hereâs how one individual with knowledge of how Harris ran her office described it: âPeople are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses and itâs an abusive environment. Itâs not a healthy environment and people often feel mistreated. Itâs not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like s***.â
Sanders is now out of the club, so the defense â at least for the Postâs article â fell to Sean Clegg, a partner in a political consultancy who advised Harris when she was a California state politician. He could have used a bit of brush-up on his ârainbows and bunniesâ talk, however.
âPeople personalize these things,â he said. âIâve never had an experience in my long history with Kamala, where I felt like she was unfair. Has she called bulls***? Yes. And does that make people uncomfortable sometimes? Yes. But if she were a man with her management style, she would have a TV show called âThe Apprentice.ââ
At National Review, John McCormack may have put it best: âItâs hard to tell whatâs worse for Vice President Kamala Harris in this Washington Post storyâthe comments from anonymous former staffers trashing her management style or the on-the-record comment defending her management style by likening Harris to Donald Trump.â
Whatever, the case, Harris burns through staffers like a tech startup burns through money â although the end product tends to be better in Silicon Valley than what weâre seeing inside the veepâs office. The problem is that Harris was given the second-in-command role with the knowledge she was heir apparent. Over the past few months, itâs become apparent the heir will be needed sooner rather than later.
Bidenâs poll numbers are in the toilet, with a RealClearPolitics polling average of 42.3 favorable and 52.2 unfavorable as of Dec. 2. Given his advanced age â not just 79 but a high-mileage 79 â he would ordinarily be passing the mantle on to the vice president.
Except Harrisâ poll numbers are even worse than Bidenâs; her RCP average, as of Nov. 30, was 40.2 favorable and 51.6 unfavorable. Sheâs come through on none of the leadership opportunities sheâs been given. And, as yet another departure has proved, she still doesnât have the organizational chops to make a run at the presidency in 2024.
None of this, obviously, is good for the United States of America. In a dangerous world, with rivals like Russia and China increasingly belligerent, the country needs stable, competent leadership in the Oval Office.
Unfortunately, thanks to the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and the current deranged state of the Democratic Party, thatâs not in the cards for another three years, at least.
From a political perspective, however, the only people benefiting from the dysfunction of the Biden-Harris administration are those who are or support politicians with the âRâ after their name.
As disastrous as it is for the county, Republicans will have an opportunity in 2024 to exploit the double-bind the White House is in: Run a senescent president who has neither the energy nor the initiative to do the job, or hand the reins to a vice president whose office seems to be imploding under the same mismanagement her presidential campaign did.
Thatâs the choice Democrats are stuck with at the moment. Fortunately, the country as a whole has other options.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
