What Is Kamala Telling Us About The 2024 Campaign?

I've already cited uncertainty among some observers about the state of Joe Biden's fire in the belly as next year's presidential campaigns get under way. But another indication comes from Kamala Harris:

Vice President Kamala Harris has had 27 work days with nothing on her public schedule since the launch of the Biden-Harris reelection campaign, a Daily Caller analysis found.

On days the vice president had something on her public schedule, her schedule frequently consisted of having one event during the entire day. The events included having lunch with President Joe Biden, receiving a brief with the president, and eating with foreign leaders, the Daily Caller found using Politico Playbook records of Harris’ schedule.

The piece goes on to enumerate each of her schedule lacunae for individual months, which are pretty awful -- for instance,

The vice president spent seven weekdays with nothing on her public schedule in June. She spent one day with nothing but lunch with the president on her public schedule, one day attending a Juneteenth concert, one day receiving a briefing with the president, one day meeting the Indian prime minister on the South Lawn and eating lunch with the prime minister the next day.

But other than note the inactivity. it draws no conclusions, except to say that Joe hasn't been much busier:

Biden has also spent extended time away during the campaign. The president reached a personal record away from the Oval Office in August — going on two week-long vacations during the month.

On one hand, we might say this is almost a wise decision on the part of their handlers, since neither is articulate or especially charismatic, and if anything, Kamala's record is more consistently mediocre than Joe's. On the other hand, the Biden-Harris handlers seem at least to recognize the need to show some effort at rehabilitating Kamala. In Pollitico a couple of weeks ago:

Harris’ term has largely been marked by stilted performances at public events, at odds with the uninhibited interrogator she was known as in the Senate. They’ve fueled whispers about whether she’ll be a drag on the reelection ticket as the 2024 race heats up.

Now her political future, and quite possibly the success of the Democratic ticket in 2024, hinges on a simple question: Is it possible for Kamala Harris to make a second impression?

The story goes on to say that in her own mind, she doesn't see what the problem is:

“You could have followed me around in Iowa [ahead of 2020],” Harris told POLITICO in one of two exclusive interviews. “You would have seen the same thing four years ago. It’s always who I’ve been. So I can’t get into people’s heads about why they characterize things as being one way or another. It’s not as though I’ve just found myself. I’ve always been here and never went away.”

But the same stories were going around even then. On October 30, 2019, as Kamala's prospects for 2020 faded even before the primaries, Vanity Fair wrote:

With the Iowa caucuses only a few months away—and her poll numbers not improving—Senator Kamala Harris's 2020 campaign is changing course.

. . . News of Harris's campaign overhaul came within hours of the newest disappointing poll for the California senator, as a USA Today/Suffolk poll released Wednesday put Harris at just 3%. The senator's polling was tied with entrepreneur Andrew Yang, while Representative Tulsi Gabbard, who did not even qualify for the September debate, finished slightly ahead with 4%. (Former Vice President Joe Biden led the poll with 26%, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren followed with 17%.)

The story went on to suggest that by retargeting resources, the campaign could turn things around, but the basic problem seems to have been Kamala from the start. One puzzling thing about her as a candidate is that like Barack Obama, she has strands of African DNA, but she isn't the descendant of US African slaves. Despite that, Obama has always been able to seem authentic to African-American voters despite his privileged upbringing and elite education, while those same voters have never trusted Kamala.

Thus she had no credibility of her own to bring to the 2020 primaries, where her performance was dismal from start to her early finish. Her benefit to Biden was simply as a diversity hire to fulfill his promise to name a black woman as his running mate -- exceept she was about the least black of any black woman he could choose.

Was this a bug or a feature? We may surmise there was never any serious debate about dropping her from the 2024 ticket, notwithstanding in the absence of Joe at the top, she would be a weak candidate and a disastrous successor who could bring nothing positive with her presence -- at best, by remaining, she would forestall criticism from the people who'd put her on the ticket in 2020. I suspect the answer has something to do with what Franklin Foer in his new book calls Joe's "swaggering faith in himself".

So far, we might conclude that Joe is either firm in a belief that 2024 is a sure thing, or he just doesn't care much either way.