On Sunday, Kamala Harris’s former spokesperson, Jamal Simmons, floated the idea that President Joe Biden should resign, thus allowing Kamala Harris to become the first female president.
“Joe Biden has been amazing but he should fulfill one last promise—to be transitional,” he said in a post on X/Twitter. “Biden should resign and make Kamala Harris the first woman president.”
Simmons added that it would “turn [the] tables on Trump” and “keep Kamala from presiding over Jan 6, make it easier for next woman to run.”
Simmons, who is now a CNN commentator, elaborated on this on CNN.
“Joe Biden's been a phenomenal president,” he said, without evidence. “He's lived up to so many of the promises he's made. There's one promise left that he could fulfill being a transitional figure. He could resign the presidency in the next 30 days, make Kamala Harris the president of the United States.”
“He would absolve her from … having to oversee the January 6th transition, right, of her own defeat. And it would make sure that—it would dominate the news at a point where Democrats have to learn drama and transparency and doing things that the public wanna see—this is the time, this is the moment for us to change the entire perspective of how Democrats operate.”
NEW: CNN’s Scott Jennings starts laughing after Harris advisor Jamal Simmons calls on President Biden to make Kamala Harris the 47th president of the United States.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 10, 2024
Terrible idea. All the Trump 45-47 hats are already made.
“There's one promise left that he could fulfill being… pic.twitter.com/VbjTlVnIOw
Words cannot describe how stupid this idea is. I know leftists have become the party of robbing women of opportunities, but are we really at a point now where even the distinction of being the “first woman president” should be stolen from someone who actually earns it? And what would this say of how Democrats operate? What this really would say about the Democrats is how little they respect the office.
Seriously, why not go through the entire line of succession and let Pete Buttigieg get a few hours in as the first openly gay president? Frankly, that’s just as absurd a proposition as Joe Biden resigning to let Kamala hold the office for a little while to spare her the trauma of certifying the election results. Imagine if someone suggested that Bill Clinton should have resigned in 2001 to let Al Gore ascend to the presidency so he wouldn’t have to certify George W. Bush’s victory. It would have been laughed at from both sides. Yet, because Kamala is a woman of color, such an idea is actually being taken seriously.
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Remember, Simmons is neither the first nor the only one to propose such an idea. In fact, some people were calling on Joe Biden to make such a move before the election to boost Kamala Harris’s chances.
Whether floated before or after the election, the notion is deeply wrong. It suggests that the presidency—a position meant to reflect the will of the people through a free and fair election— not only can be treated as a political bargaining chip to sway an election or but can can be handed out as a consolation prize to a candidate who lost in a free and fair election just because she is a woman and a minority and doing so would make it historic.
This scenario would also undermine the significance of the first female presidency. A true milestone for women in leadership would come from winning a national election—a result of both the candidate’s merit and voter approval, not a bureaucratic handover.
America deserves a president chosen by its people, not an appointee who gets the job because the current president conveniently steps down to manufacture a historic moment.
