Psaki Praises

[George K]

McCarthy: "What must be going on behind scenes if they decided they had to put this out 9pm Sunday night?"

Oh...this:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/14/politics/kamala-harris-frustrating-start-vice-president/index.html

Worn out by what they see as entrenched dysfunction and lack of focus, key West Wing aides have largely thrown up their hands at Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff -- deciding there simply isn't time to deal with them right now, especially at a moment when President Joe Biden faces quickly multiplying legislative and political concerns.

The exasperation runs both ways. Interviews with nearly three dozen former and current Harris aides, administration officials, Democratic operatives, donors and outside advisers -- who spoke extensively to CNN -- reveal a complex reality inside the White House. Many in the vice president's circle fume that she's not being adequately prepared or positioned, and instead is being sidelined. The vice president herself has told several confidants she feels constrained in what she's able to do politically. And those around her remain wary of even hinting at future political ambitions, with Biden's team highly attuned to signs of disloyalty, particularly from the vice president.

She's a heartbeat away from the presidency now. She could be just a year away from launching a presidential campaign of her own, given doubts throughout the political world that Biden will actually go through with a reelection bid in 2024, something he's pledged to do publicly and privately. Or she'll be a critical validator in three years for a President trying to get the country to reelect him to serve until he's 86.

[Copper]

I can't believe a president would diminish the role of a VP.

No way.

[Doctor Phibes]

@copper said in Psaki Praises:

I can't believe a president would diminish the role of a VP.

The last one certainly didn't. He was right up there with all the other people he blamed for his own failure.

[George K]

https://althouse.blogspot.com/2021/11/my-hypothesis-bidens-deliberately-froze.html?m=1#more

I'm reading this CNN article — "Exasperation and dysfunction: Inside Kamala Harris' frustrating start as vice president" — and reading between the lines.

Read it yourself. It's very long. Too long to excerpt adequately. But let me know what you think. My hypothesis is based, first, on a belief that Jill Biden hated the way Harris treated her husband in that first debate. Let me cherry pick from the CNN article and quote just the things that reinforce my suspicion that the Bidens want to disable Harris:

Many in the vice president's circle fume that she's not being adequately prepared or positioned, and instead is being sidelined. The vice president herself has told several confidants she feels constrained in what she's able to do politically. And those around her remain wary of even hinting at future political ambitions, with Biden's team highly attuned to signs of disloyalty, particularly from the vice president....

She could be just a year away from launching a presidential campaign of her own, given doubts throughout the political world that Biden will actually go through with a reelection bid in 2024, something he's pledged to do publicly and privately....
She can't start running unless and until he says he won't run. She can't compete with him.

Harris is struggling with a rocky relationship with some parts of the White House, while long-time supporters feel abandoned and see no coherent public sense of what she's done or been trying to do as vice president.... Defenders and people who care for Harris are getting frantic. When they're annoyed, some pass around a recent Onion story mocking her lack of more substantive work, one with the headline, "White House Urges Kamala Harris To Sit At Computer All Day In Case Emails Come Through."...

She's perceived to be in such a weak position that top Democrats in and outside of Washington have begun to speculate privately, asking each other why the White House has allowed her to become so hobbled in the public consciousness, at least as they see it....

My hypothesis is that the Bidens want her not just hobbled but utterly deactivated.

A few more things:

When Biden picked Harris as his running mate, he was essentially anointing her as the future of the Democratic Party. Now many of those close to her feel like he's shirking his political duties to promote her, and essentially setting her up to fail. Her fans are panicked, watching her poll numbers sink even lower than Biden's, worrying that even the base Democratic vote is starting to give up on her....

Suspicion has sprouted out of the bitterness. Last month, White House aides leapt to the defense of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who was being hammered with outrage by Fox News host Tucker Carlson and like-minded online pundits for taking paternity leave after the adoption of his twins in September. Harris loyalists tell CNN they see in that yet another example of an unfair standard at play, wondering why she didn't get similar cover any of the times she's been attacked by the right....

Buttigieg... is a likely challenger for the next open Democratic presidential nomination, whether that comes in 2024 or 2028....

Several Biden campaign aides spoke of putting "a blanket" around Harris after she was picked as the running mate last year, and advised against bringing on staff from her presidential campaign, though the final decisions around hires and structure were left at her discretion. That's left her with just a handful of current aides who knew her before she was vice president-elect, and they don't know her well....

In and around Harris' circle, they speculate that there must be someone getting in her way.

Some think it's the President himself leaving her out in the cold, prioritizing his own agenda. Some blame specific West Wing aides whom they feel sure are out to undercut her...

[Doctor Phibes]

@george-k said in Psaki Praises:

My hypothesis is that the Bidens want her not just hobbled but utterly deactivated.

We can only hope.