Kamala Chameleon

It's hard enough trying to cat herd all the Dems in one direction these days, but the one thing that all Democrats seem to agree on is that Kamala Harris is somehow a "major problem".

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. 

Few of the insiders who spoke with CNN think she's being well-prepared for whichever role it will be. 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. Being the first woman, and first woman of color, in national elected office is historic but has also come with outsized scrutiny and no forgiveness for even small errors, as she'll often point out. 

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." When they're depressed, they bat down the Aaron Sorkin-style rumor that Biden might try to replace her by nominating her to a Supreme Court vacancy. That chatter has already reached top levels of the Biden orbit, according to one person who's heard it. 

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. 

"She's very honored and very proud to be vice president of the United States. Her job as the No. 2 is to be helpful and supportive to the President and to take on work that he asks her to take on," said Eleni Kounalakis, the lieutenant governor of California and a longtime friend. Kounalakis spoke with the vice president last Monday morning before Harris departed for a diplomatic mission to France. 

"It is natural that those of us who know her know how much more helpful she can be than she is currently being asked to be," Kounalakis said. "That's where the frustration is coming from." 

An incumbent vice president should be a shoo-in the next time the party's presidential nomination is open. But guessing who might launch a theoretical primary challenge to Harris has become an ongoing insider parlor game. Other politicians with their own presidential ambitions have started privately acknowledging that they are trying to figure out how to quietly lay the groundwork to run if and when Harris falters, as they think she might.

 

I'd say all this is CNN slander against the first Black woman veep, but as J. Jonah Jameson reminds us in the first Spider-Man film on the subject of slander, "It is not. I resent that. Slander is spoken. In print, it's libel."

 

The knives are definitely out for Harris, and in an America that treated Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as badly as they did, here in 2021 Harris is getting the worst of both. Everyone it seems wants to dunk on her, and while Joe Biden could actually put a stop to it among Democrats, apparently he doesn't want to right now.

I shouldn't be surprised by this. Nobody should. This is what happens to Black women with even a modicum of power, they are dismantled and destroyed, their careers ended. We've seen it time and time again, because it's so easy to do in order to clear the decks for others to come in, corporate, entertainment, political. Every time.

And I will do my best to every time call it out.