There was always something slightly "off" in the relationship between Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. We're told that they had a "warm, personal relationship" that was "productive."
But two Politico writers, Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, painted a much different picture in their 2022 book, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future.”
Biden's Communications Director Kate Bedingfield was exasperated by Harris's complaints that she wasn't being "used" the right way.
“In private, Bedingfield had taken to noting that the vice presidency was not the first time in Harris’s political career that she had fallen short of sky-high expectations: Her Senate office had been messy and her presidential campaign had been a fiasco. Perhaps, she suggested, the problem was not the vice president’s staff,” Martin and Burns wrote.
The massive turnover in Harris's VP office was well-known, as was Biden's belief that Harris was a drag on the ticket.
But they eventually papered over those differences and resumed a publicly smooth but privately tense relationship.
Then came the debate last June and the realization by Democrats that they didn't have a prayer with Biden at the top of the ticket. They deluded themselves into thinking they had a shot with Harris replacing Biden. That's where the real rift between the two began.
On the surface, Harris was steadfast in her support for the president. But there was a lot of friction behind the scenes, especially as Harris refused to play straw man for Biden's failures.
Harris has been reluctant to distance herself from Biden or criticize him throughout her vice presidency. Even as several top Democrats pushed her to break from the unpopular president after she replaced him atop the ticket, Harris refused. She vocally supported Biden after his halting debate performance in June, when several Democrats were calling on him to step aside, and when a special counsel report on Biden’s handling of classified documents amplified concerns about his mental acuity.
Her fraying relationship with Biden comes at a challenging time for Harris, who is dealing with a crisis in her adopted hometown of Los Angeles, where wildfires have caused broad destruction, as she transitions out of her public role. Harris has expressed deep sadness to people close to her over losing the election and Biden’s comments, some of those people said. She and her husband, Doug Emhoff, are planning on splitting their time between Los Angeles and New York after President-elect Donald Trump takes office Jan. 20, they said.
Now Harris feels betrayed. Biden comments several times this month that he believed that if he stayed in the race, he could have won have angered Harris and her handlers.
Biden gave an alternate history version of his decision to step down from the top spot on the ticket.
“I didn’t want to be one who caused a party that wasn’t unified to lose an election,” he said. “And that’s why I stepped aside.”
He was forced out when every prominent Democrat, Including his old boss Barack Obama, his close ally Nancy Pelosi, and old friends like Sen. Chris Coons called on him to save the party (and the country!) and hand the reins to Kamala Harris.
Some close to Harris said Biden’s assertion shows the “one-sided loyalty” of their relationship, which had turned into a warm, working one over the years but hit awkward patches when the vice president moved to the top of the ticket. Since the election, signs of frostiness have emerged.
As the five living U.S. presidents paid tribute to former President Jimmy Carter at his funeral this month, appearing chummy at times, Harris and Emhoff didn’t interact much with the Bidens, who were seated next to them. Both looked stone-faced ahead at the proceedings.
Harris has been considering a run for California governor. She still sees herself as a viable presidential candidate in 2028 despite the fact that she was not the first choice to replace Biden at the top of the ticket in July but got the "nomination" by default when raising a billion dollars by Election Day would have been impossible for anyone else.
If she had been a Republican woman living in Texas or Florida, I doubt that she would have risen as high as she did in California running as a Democrat. That's what the Democrats are stuck with for the foreseeable future, and it's why they will continue to lose elections.
