No separating Kamala from Joe

Kamala Harris has bigger problems than malfunctioning teleprompters, though, such as the nagging and continued public existence of President Joe Biden, apparently under the impression that America still wants to hear from him. When Biden sought consolation for the humiliating end to his presidency from the ladies of ABC’s The View a few weeks ago, he tossed a grenade into Harris’s purse near the end of his appearance: “As vice president there wasn’t a single thing that I did that she couldn’t do, and so I was able to delegate her responsibility on everything from foreign policy to domestic policy.”

It was the sort of bear-hug that Candidate Kamala was desperate to avoid: one explicitly associating her with the Biden administration, in every aspect, almost as if tailor-made for Trump ads aimed at angry Pennsylvanians and disaffected Michiganders. At the time, I wondered whether Biden was up to something. Imagine how embittered Biden must be behind the scenes. (Imagine the insensate rage of Doctor Jill alone.) A perverse part of me thought maybe that sentence wasn’t just the over-enthusiastic endorsement of a senile old man but merely disguised to be excusable as one: The old bastard might have been doing it on purpose.

It turns out I am in good (bad?) company, for the Harris campaign is beginning to suspect this itself. CNN reports that Team Harris is fuming about Joe Biden’s recent attempts to “keep injecting himself into the campaign” and is contemplating retaliating against Ol’ Joe — whom they suspect of malign meddling — by publicly breaking with him on one or more policy issues.

It is to laugh. I’m sure these last-minute policy-position switches, if they happen, will be announced the same way they always are: by an unnamed aide to Politico. And truly, what a profile in courage from the Harris campaign: They want it to be known they are now contemplating publicly repudiating Biden’s policies only because the addled old coot can’t keep his trap shut in public and keeps reminding people that Harris was his vice president.

Whenever Biden appears in public these days he seems like Banquo’s ghost, except this time visible to all: ruining the “joy” of the Harris campaign by reminding everyone present that Harris indeed was a key part of the last four years. It will be fascinating to see whether Harris begins to change her political tone because of his stubborn refusal to simply vanish.