The New York Times issued a 2,200-word Sunday front-page encomium by White House correspondent Erica L. Green, in support of struggling President Biden’s suddenly significant second-in-command: “Kamala Harris Has Stepped Up. If Biden Falters, Can She Lead?” The print edition headline was less fiery: “Harris Emerges From Sidelines As Democrats Rethink the Ticket.”
Green tried to make the case that Harris, a word-salad gaffe machine and figure of mockery on the right, is ready to take over the leadership of the free world from Biden. Apparently she has already prepared for the moment.
By early this year, around the time a prosecutor called President Biden a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Vice President Kamala Harris already knew something had to change.
It was up to her, she had told allies, to finally distinguish herself in her job — something she had been struggling to do for more than two years — and reassure American voters that the Biden-Harris ticket was still a safe bet. She had been feeling sidelined in the early stages of the campaign, one adviser said, and she wanted a bigger role.
She fled the Washington bubble and embarked on an ambitious travel schedule, making more than 60 trips this year alone. She tossed talking points to speak out more forcefully on abortion rights, the war in Gaza and race….
After admitting that “Democrats have expressed concerns at times that she struggled to convey publicly that she was in command of the issues,” Green quickly pivoted back to playing defense.
In recent days, the Trump campaign and Republican critics have amped up their attacks on her, hinting at how a Harris candidacy could lead to even more of the kinds of racist and sexist assaults that she has been fending off during her time as vice president.
Indeed, the Times fiercely, even hysterically, defended Harris after the 2020 vice-presidential debate with Republican VP Mike Pence.
Green kept the race pressure on, finding a San Francisco donor to say that downplaying Harris as a possible replacement for Biden was “implicit bias and racism and sexism.”
And she’s growing in office, too!
During a meeting with Black pastors in South Carolina in February, Christopher Richardson, one of the attendees, noticed a difference. The son of one of the pastors in the room, Mr. Richardson had seen Ms. Harris at other events, and to him it seemed as though she was “singing somebody else’s song.”
…,
At the time, Ms. Harris was in the process of trying to change the narrative about her vice presidency. She had been so caricatured by critics that she had become too guarded and fearful of making a mistake that would provide more fodder, aides and allies said.
And while she realized she could reach critical constituencies in ways that Mr. Biden could not, one of her advisers said she felt she was being sent out to talk about only Black and women’s issues, and she was not satisfied with that.
Then the article took a weird anti-Israel turn.
On March 3, as Ms. Harris headed to Selma, Ala., to give a speech for the 59th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday attacks on civil rights marchers, she wanted to voice to the world what was weighing on her mind.
There were reports that weekend of families in Gaza eating leaves and animal feed, and the description of families who were shot by Israeli soldiers as they rushed a food convoy as “looters” had her stirring….Her speech that day did not go beyond White House policy, but it was confrontational and an explicit acknowledgment of the human suffering the war had caused….
Green even found a pro-Harris applause line from CNN national correspondent John King, who interviewed Harris after Biden’s disastrous debate performance:
In one indication of how the political conversation about Ms. Harris has shifted, [King] called it “political malpractice” that the White House had not made better use of her in the past few years.
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