Where's Kamala?

Biden: “If Trump wins in November, I'll feel as long as I gave it my all and did the goodest job I know I could do.”

“The goodest job” 😂
pic.twitter.com/zQuGYUdI0F

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) July 6, 2024

It's a holiday weekend, Congress is out of session, and it seems to have taken longer than usual for any sort of consensus to build over Joe's Friday interview with George Stephanopoulos. But the standout point that nobody seems to want to mention is Joe's remark that he "did the goodest job I know I could do". Let's face it, this is how a toddler talks. For me, it matches Joe's forehead bump with Pope Francis at the G7, which I characterized at the time as "acting like a toddler".

It' s significant that even David Axelrod in a generally clear-eyed piece at CNN had to redact Joe's actual words into "did as good a job as I know I can do", when even the ABC transcript says "I did the goodest job as I know I can do". In other words, this sort of thing is such a delicate matter that even people who want to have an adult-level talk about it must avoid calling it what it is. Nobody wants to mention that the President of the US at key moments functions at the level of a toddler.

All we know for now is that some Democrat representatives are going to have a zoom chat with Leader Jeffries this afternoon, and some Democrat senators are going to meet with Virginia Sen Warner tomorrow. Others have commented that if David Axelrod is going public with the comments he made at the link -- "he will eventually do what duty and love of country requires, and step aside" -- it must be with Obama's knowledge and tacit approval.

Of course, the idea that Joe should "step aside" is conveniently vague. Does it mean simply withdraw as a candidate for the November election but remain in office until January, or resign as president now in favor of Vice President Harris? Well, isn't this the sort of issue that leadership in Congress and the vice presidency should maybe start to work through? It's hard to avoid thinking that there's going to have to be a delegation that will visit Joe sooner rather than later, and it will have to present him with a specific agenda that covers those alternatives.

That in turn means there needs to be a game plan, and that game plan needs to encompass the contingency that Joe will refuse to step aside, where "step aside" means resign the presidency. In that case, the vice president will need to line up a majority of the cabinet to sign a letter to the House Speaker and the president pro tem of the Senate that the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, at which point congressional leadership will have to be ready to line up two-thirds of both houses to support that conclusion -- and any delegation to the Oval Office will need to have this in their pockets when they walk in.

This places a major responsibility on the vice president to step up and begin to exercise real leadership. Even if the wise heads get together and decide all that's needful is for Joe to withdraw as a candidate for the election but continue in office until January, the vice president will need to portray herself as a calm and stable figure who under the circumstances is doubly ready to succeed to the presidency. But even then, the assumption we've been hearing is that if Joe withdraws as a candidate but stays until Inauguration Day, Kamala will be the one to pick up the mantle and campaign for November.

But this brings up at least a couple of obvious questions: if the open border is one of the main issues for November, Kamala is the one who had nominal resonsibility for solving the problem throughout Joe's term, and she did nothing about it. But now we'll have an even more pressing question: under the 25th Amendment, it's the vice president's responsibility to exercise the leadership needed to start the process of declaring the president unfit. So far, she's done nothing in that direction, either.

But there's a question beyond that: the reports we've been hearing are that Joe's comdition has grown noticeably worse in recent months -- in the Stephanopoulos transcript, he even asks, "Do you dispute that there have been more lapses, especially in the last several months?" As far as we know, Kamala theoretically has lunch with Joe once a week, although other reports say this happens only "occasionally". But one of Kamala's implicit responsibilities, in addition to being border czar, is to keep tabs on Joe's health -- or at least, that's what we might surmise.

An entirely reasonable question that might come up for Kamala, either from the press or in a debate, would be whether she herself noticed any change in Joe's condition, since others have been pointing it out, and what she may have done, given her responsibilities under the 25th Amendment, to plan for contingencies and make others aware of them. What is her role, if any, in the discussions that are said to be taking place among Democrat congressional leadership?

What discussions -- entirely prudent and reasonable under the circumstances -- has she initiated with Speaker Johnson and Leader Schumer, or among Joe's cabinet? Is she prepared even to make non-committal but reassuring statements to the press regarding her current role?

Given the speed at which events are likely to develop, these are questions that all of these leadership figures need to be ready to address. In fact, I suspect there's steadily growing pressure from down-ballot politicians and major Democrat donors to address such questions sooner rather than later. The one figure in current leadership who seems by far least able to address them is Kamala Harris, but she's the one who's going to be most likely to have to deal with them within a fairly short timeframe.

Try to imagine what interviews and press statements she'll have to give when the contingency arises, whether it's either Joe withdrawing just as the November candidate or resigning the presidency entirely -- and she'll have to make them on almost no notice. And this just leads to a whole additional set of new contingencies, because let's face it, Kamala's job up to now has been to be a useful idiot, and I don't see her suddenly rising to her new role.

The only thing that's at least partly reassuring is that if nobody else, Trump and Speaker Johnson have almost certainly been thinking them through. Leader McConnell, though -- not so much.