How Do Democrats Rid Themselves of Kamala Harris?

CLAY: So, Buck, we talked about when CNN went full attack mode on Kamala Harris. What’s that, probably been a month or so ago that that story came out at CNN which eviscerated her?

BUCK: I don’t know if it’s attack mode. I think —

CLAY: It’s as attack mode as you can get, what I’m kind of going with, with CNN and now the Washington Post both coming out and saying things that aren’t particularly surprising to anyone who has fall down Kamala Harris very closely. She’s not particularly likable. She’s not a very good person to work with.

BUCK: So you go Kamala… I’ve been told Kamala. But I’ve also heard she has said it both ways, which —

CLAY: It’s a fully inauthentic version of it. We talked about last week, Buck, that there were rumors and whispers in the White House that they were going to try to put Harris in the Supreme Court ’cause, of course, Joe Biden has promised to put a black woman on the Supreme Court. They can’t get Breyer to agree to step down right now — and, frankly, if he doesn’t step down in the really short term, I’m not sure that that the Democrats are gonna be able to get anybody seated on the Supreme Court anyway. But this is just a sign of how bad it’s going for her right now in the White House.

BUCK: Could I just…? To put this into context for everybody if they can’t tell: Clay and I, we’re not Kamala fans. I think you’ve figured that out, right? We’re definitely not Team Kamala here even among Democrats.

CLAY: I don’t even think anybody’s Team Kamala.

BUCK: Well, that’s the point.

CLAY: There’s not a single person.

BUCK: To put this into context, even Democrats are like, “Well, I’m not on Team Kamala either,” to include people who work for her, and this is the truly amazing line from the piece in the Washington Post ’cause this really for a lot of people summarizes the current vice president. This is the quote, folks. I’m reading to you from the Washington Post. “It’s clear that you’re not working with somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work,’ said one former staffer for Kamala Harris. ‘With Kamala, you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence. So you’re constantly sort of propping up a bully, and it’s not clear why,'” end quote.

CLAY: Devastating.

BUCK: That is like everyone goes, “Yeah, I can kind of see that,” ’cause this is somebody who so much of what she would do is ceremonial. It’s about the optics, right? I mean the vice president is like a glorified ribbon-cutting ceremony a lot of the time, because we have a 50-50 Senate it’s a little different right now, but a lot of the time. It’s messaging, right, Clay? It’s coordinating. It’s doing things behind the scenes. She can’t even manage to do that without becoming about as popular as a parking ticket. It’s amazing.

CLAY: Well, her presidential campaign was an abject failure. She dropped out before real votes were even cast, and she was polling less than 1% in many of the different jurisdictions in which she was hoping to be able to win the primaries. I don’t know how the Democrats rid themselves of Kamala, right? Let me explain what I mean by that.

If she is not the nominee, because she is black, because she is a woman, then it will be racist and sexist. This is maybe where Stacey Abrams comes in. Either they need to find a new black woman who is potentially more electable — and maybe that’s Stacey Abrams. I don’t know. I think Stacey Abrams, frankly, is gonna lose the Georgia election.

BUCK: She’s done a great job as the fake governor of Georgia ’cause she has no responsibility there.

CLAY: The difference is Harris at least managed to get herself elected to the Senate, so she has an office from which to be able to promoted to the next level. Buck, I don’t understand, and I continue to come back to this. That’s why I’m starting to think they may try and drag Joe Biden across the finish line again —

BUCK: It’s gonna be Biden.

CLAY: — because he’s the only way that they avoid having to coronate her.

BUCK: I’m gonna have to give you some money so you can place some those overseas political bets, Clay, because I would put money down. I don’t know if that’s legal.

CLAY: It is overseas.

BUCK: There we go. There we go I would put money down they’ll run Joe Biden again guys. They’ll run Joe Biden again. Mark my words.

CLAY: The 82-year-old Joe Biden.

BUCK: They will run Joe Biden again if they have to, you said, “push him over”? If they have to literally wheel him back into the position… I don’t know if they do another… Whatever the ceremony will be for a second term, but whatever it may be, if they have to wheel him with three blankets across his knees and a little straw where he’s getting apple sauce, they don’t care.

They don’t care. They will push Joe Biden forward because they want the apparatus of Democrat power to be where it is. They don’t want to take any risk here. So the notion of replacing him? I don’t think they have the imagination to replace Joe Biden or the fortitude of the intestines to replace Joe Biden with Kamala.

Look at who their candidate was. They had a very diverse field in the primary. None of the diverse candidates in the Democrat Party — not including, you know, Elizabeth, sorry — that actually… I just stumbled into that. Not including Elizabeth Warren.

CLAY: Pocahontas, yes.

BUCK: None of the candidates came close.

CLAY: Here is an interesting questioning. We probably talk about this when we come back for the next segment. Would Trump be able to win by running a Joe Biden…? I know he’s not going to do it, but just an idea for everybody as we go to break here. Could Trump win in 2024 by just running the equivalent of a Joe Biden campaign and staying at Mar-a-Lago? Because now the story is Joe Biden. Biden was able to run and say, “Oh, Trump, everything he did was so bad! Trump’s awful. He can’t solve covid.” Could Trump just basically run a low-key campaign?

BUCK: I don’t think so ’cause he doesn’t have… First of all, he’s off all social media, which he had in 2016 and was kind of a secret weapon for him. Second of all, he doesn’t have 90% of the media talking about how great he is all day to do all of his work for him.

CLAY: But I think Joe Biden is so bad that Biden is now the story. It’s not Trump. It’s how bad Biden is, and that’s what Biden tried to do in ’20 but it is an interesting point. Trump won’t do it, but I wonder on some level whether being off social media is helping him ’cause the people who are antagonized by his mean tweets, whoever they are, are not seeing him all the time.