Earlier this week, CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) whether she thought Kamala Harris was the right choice to be Joe Biden’s running mate in 2024, and she made it more awkward than it ought to be. My friend and PJ Media colleague Robert Spencer pointed out how Pelosi never really answered the question definitively.
The former House Speaker stayed cagey throughout the interview, only lauding Harris as “values-based, consistent with the president’s values and the rest.” Later on, she let the cat out of the bag that the vice president doesn’t “do that much” other than serve as “a source of strength, inspiration, intellectual resource, and the rest.” Nancy loves “the rest.”
It turns out that Pelosi isn’t the only one who can’t muster a whole lot of enthusiasm about Harris. On Friday Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) appeared on CNN, and Jake Tapper asked him a similar question about how Harris fits on the Democrats’ 2024 ticket. And Raskin made the whole exchange as awkward and unintentionally hilarious as he could.
After Tapper showed Raskin the clip of Pelosi’s non-answer to Cooper’s question, Raskin went off on some boilerplate left-wing rhetoric, inexplicably blaming the question of Harris’ fitness for the ticket on conservatives.
“President Biden, Vice President Harris, Speaker Pelosi, for that matter all of us have been laboring under just a deluge of propaganda, disinformation, and criticism by the MAGA right,” Raskin said, before trying to change the subject to the looming government shutdown. “This is a rule-or-ruin faction, which takes the position that if they’re not going to be able to control the direction of government, they are going to throw grease in the gears to try to shut everything down. And what we’re all dealing with right now is this impending September 30 deadline, because the MAGA right wants to —”
Tapper then interrupted and refocused the conversation on Pelosi’s comments. “Is it, well, obviously she gave the right answer,” the congressman replied when Tapper accused him of avoiding the answer to the question like Pelosi did. “That’s President Biden’s choice and I think she’s an excellent running mate for President Biden.”
But Raskin wouldn’t give a straight answer. Instead, he tried to prop up the Biden administration’s record.
“Obviously, people are still trying to, you know, throw presidential politics into turmoil,” he said for some reason. “But President Biden and Vice President Harris are running on an excellent record: $1.2 trillion investment in infrastructure, the Inflation Reduction Act, record investment in climate action. We’ve reduced prescription drug prices, and so there’s a very strong policy record to run on there, and I want to resist the tendency to try to trivialize all politics by making it just about personality.”
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Tapper responded by saying that nobody is trying to make the question of Harris’ fitness for the ticket about personality and pressed Raskin to answer what is a simple question.
“I mean, like, it’s just a simple question,” Tapper insisted. “Do you think Kamala Harris is the best running mate for President Biden? You’ve said she’s excellent. That’s farther than Speaker Pelosi went, but do you think she’s the — I’m not trying to throw anything into turmoil. I actually think it’s a pretty simple question. Do you think Kamala Harris is the best running mate for President Biden? Yes or no?”
Raskin wouldn’t commit to a simple yes or no answer, instead blathering on about next year’s convention and not seeing any polling on Harris. He did conclude with, “I will tell you as a matter of substance and public policy, she be an excellent choice. And she and the President have done an excellent job.”
FULL EXCHANGE: Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin refuses — FOUR TIMES — to say if he believes Kamala Harris is Biden's best choice for vice president pic.twitter.com/ogTVKFf3nm
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 14, 2023
The exchange with Pelosi and this comical interview with Raskin both beg the question: why can’t anybody simply say they’re all right with Harris as Biden’s running mate for 2024? We conservatives know why.
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