If unusually frank words had been exchanged between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on Sunday, July 21st, and if Harris had followed through on this frankness, the presidential race might have turned out differently. Maybe.
Harris: “So you’re doing this? You’ve firmly decided?”
Biden: “If I don’t fold the tent and pass the torch, Pelosi and the gang will further challenge and undermine me, and I’ll almost certainly wind up losing to Trump by an even greater margin than previously projected, and I’ll go down in history as an even greater villain…a withered, stubborn old coot who surrendered the country to MAGA facism, and all because of my Irish, bone-headed arrogance.”
Harris: “I’ve always supported you. I participated in the general gasllghting about you being mentally alert and fully able to continue doing the job, and I’m supporting you now…I respect and support your decision to withdraw.”
Biden: “So it’s on you now, Kamala. Do your best and go with God. You’ll need to hit the road running. I presume you and your team have been preparing for this all along, and particularly since my absent-minded debate performance last month.”
Harris: “Actually, no, we haven’t.”
Biden: “You haven’t?”
Harris: “We’ve been in kind of a holding pattern, waiting to see what you’d do.”
Biden: “Since 1.20.21 you’ve been one heartbeat away from the Presidency, and you haven’t done a single thing to prepare, policy-wise and contingency-wise, for the possibility of taking over if something, God forbid, were to happen to me? You’ve just been plotzing?”
Harris: “We didn’t want anyone saying that we were preparing to take over prematurely. That would’ve looked ugly and craven.”
Biden: “Jesus, man!”
Harris: “What’s important now, Joe, is that I’m going to be the Democratic candidate. I’m grabbing the reins, and…well, please don’t take this the wrong way but I have to speak frankly to you, and more importantly to the voters between now and November 5th.”
Biden: “Uh-oh, here it comes.”
Harris: “If I’m going to have even a prayer of winning, I’ll need to throw you under the bus a little bit. I can’t run as Kamala Biden…I can’t be a rubber-stamp successor. If I do that, Trump will win. Your numbers have been in the toilet for a couple of years so let’s cut the shit. I have to be able to say two things. One, the vice-presidency is a ceremonial position without any real agency of its own. Every vice-president except Cheney has acknowledged this and said as much to journalists and historians. I was obliged to be loyal to you and that’s how I played my cards up unti now.”
Biden: “But no longer.”
Harris: “I have to stand up for my own beliefs and goals, Joe. Hubert Humphrey never caught on as the Democratic candidate in ’68 until he broke with LBJ over the Vietnam War, and I have to break with you also. Over the border and over inflation. I have to state what I personally believe in, tactically and vision-wise, in my own words and on my own terms and how I will run things differently.”
Biden: “And I’m supposed to do what? Sit silent? Admit I made some big boners and say you might do better?”
Harris: “It would be better for me, frankly, if you were to take issue with me…maybe even get a little peeved and call me disloyal.”
Biden: “You haven’t been disloyal to me, Kamala, and I can’t put on a phony mask and call you a betrayer. That wouldn’t be the truth.”
Harris: “So? We’re talking about political theatre, Joe. We have to be a little bit at odds. If I run as your loyal second-in-command, I’m dead. I have to run as myself, and the more I think about it the more I’m convinced I’ll be better off if you speak of me with a tone of irritation and sarcasm, or even if you condemn my disloyalty. I’m serious.”
