I will open with a very speculative thought that the Presidency of Joe Biden may eventually create chatter for adding another amendment to the Constitution stating that no one 80 years of age or older can be inaugurated as the President of the United States. So, perhaps one could still serve if elected as a sprightly 79-year-old, but it would be a one-term deal.
As I see it, the founding fathers had, for obvious reasons, the foresight to say nobody under 35-years-old could be POTUS, but with the times as they were, they didn’t envisage a world in which the average person lived to be about 80.
We are electing one of the most powerful human beings on the planet into office. We need to ensure that they have the physical and mental health required to carry out the job.
This is not a largely ceremonial role like that of other Heads of State, for example, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom or Emperor Naruhito of Japan.
No—the POTUS is serious business. Even when the country elects a clown to serve (or to exploit the people, in the case of #45), it’s a person who holds the lives of millions in their hands. And a wrong decision over a pandemic, a financial crisis, or a perceived act of war could be devastating.
Suppose you look back at photographs of the first inauguration of Presidents Clinton, W. Bush, and Obama and compare them to when they left the Oval Office. The clear evidence of the stress of the job and the toll it took on their faces and hair is unmistakable.
So, watching an elder statesman like President Biden falling apart before our eyes is concerning. Both in terms of strong government and strong leadership.
However, it also points to the general issue of having a POTUS who is already older than the average life expectancy of men in America in charge.
POTUS#46 could keel over and take a permanent dirt nap at any moment. Then we would be left with nobody’s first choice of replacement, i.e., Vice President Kamala Harris sitting behind the Resolute Desk.
[NOTE: In a previous article, I wrote about what would happen if Biden did not run in 2024 and Harris, being tainted, was also unable to run.
Today’s article, however, is different as I go into more detail about Harris and why I think she is a non-starter in 2024 and almost certainly 2028 too.]
How Did We Get Here with Harris?
On paper, Kamala Harris was an excellent pick for Biden. It was about time that the Democrats picked a woman to be on the ticket. So, it was hardly unexpected when Biden made it clear that he would choose from that demographic—i.e., one consisting of a little more than half the country’s population.
Of course, this made the little boys on the far-right cry about some nonsense or another and whined that Biden wasn’t interested in picking the best person for the job.
Sure thing. Because none of the 95,000,000 American women of 35-years or older could be qualified to wait for him to die, right?
Honestly, it would be funny if not so tragically true.
Of course, Harris is not just some random woman picked from a hat. Her parents, both immigrants, are Ph.D. graduates from the prestigious University of California, Berkely. So, Kamala comes from a brilliant family. She got her undergraduate degree from the historically Black, Howard University in Washington DC before attending the University of California, Hastings College of Law, graduating Juris Doctor in 1989 and passing the California Bar the following year.
Harris became Assistant District Attorney for Alameda Country, California, in 1990 and then Assistant Attorney for San Francisco, California, in 1998. In 2002 Harris ran to be the District Attorney of San Francisco and won with 56 percent of the vote. In 2010, after two terms in the role of DA, she ran for the Attorney General of California. She was sworn in as the first woman, first African-American woman, and first South Asian American ever to hold that office. After serving two terms, Harris ran for a US Senate seat in 2016, which she won handily with 60% of the vote.
While in the United States Senate, Harris served on the Committee on the Budget, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Committee on the Judiciary—along with some subcommittees.
Harris attempted a run at the White House in 2020, but her campaign never really took off. However, one moment stood out when she went toe to toe with Biden in a debate on the bussing of minority children—showing herself to be a powerful force who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. It was after this debate that I realized it was going to be a Biden/Harris ticket.
As expected, Joe Biden tapped Harris to be his Veep. Therefore, as the fake and idiotic drama of a stolen election continued to play out, the US Senator from California resigned from the Senate on January 18th, 2021, allowing her inauguration as the 49th Vice President of the United States on January 20th, 2021.
Also, two weeks ago, on November 19th, 2021, while Biden was knocked out for a colonoscopy, Harris became Acting President of the United States and only the third person in US history to assume the powers of the POTUS under the Twenty-fifth Amendment.
Therefore, technically, we had our first female POTUS for one hour and twenty-five minutes, and the world did not fall apart.
Harris, However, is Hella Hated
It seems like a lifetime ago now, in a more innocent and patriotic world when the threat to the United States was from foreign terrorists as opposed to internal cult members—a time when a dangerous cockwomble, i.e., Dick Cheney was Vice President of the United States.
Dick “accidentally” blasted 78-year-old Harry Whittington with a shotgun on February 11th, 2006—the birdshot entered Whittington’s body, causing him to have a non-fatal heart attack and suffer a collapsed lung, along with sustaining injuries to the face and neck.
However, even after shooting a dude, and even though he was the driving force behind an unnecessary war to benefit his buddies in the oil industry that cost some American families a disgraceful number of lives and all American taxpayers their national treasure, Dick Cheney never saw his poll ratings fall below 30%.
I give this perspective because earlier in November 2021, a Suffolk University/USA Today poll found that Vice President Kamala Harris had an approval rating of 27.8%, the lowest recorded for any Veep in modern history—including Dick.
What is wrong with Kamala?
It is hard to say what it is about Kamala that is such a hard no.
On the positive side, she is capable, intelligent, attractive, and seems like she is secretly fun at parties. However, on the other side, she comes across as very smarmy. She has an obnoxious air of superiority about her. She gives off absolutely nothing that makes me think she can relate to Americans outside the Ivy Towers of privilege or the Capital Beltway.
Thinking of Joe Biden, he is from the old-school, the working-man/union left. One sees him wolfing down a hotdog and relating to regular folks—he is genuine, and it comes across with his interactions. On the other hand, his Veep seems like she eats avocado toast for brunch every day and talks bollocks with Identity-Politics obsessed assholes while actively despising the poor.
Ultimately, there is no way she can turn this around. The middle of the country can’t abide the woke (or whatever those cultists are calling themselves this week), and VPOTUS Harris is a dead-end for the Democratic Party.
So, What To Do?
I can’t imagine anything but extraordinary luck that will help Harris and the Democrats now.
Suppose Biden were to become seriously ill or die, and Harris is inaugurated as POTUS. In that case, I don’t see it turning things around if she didn’t have an awful lot of great fortune with the economy and unforeseen events.
Ultimately, an elected term as POTUS for Harris is, to be kind, unlikely.
And, who is going to challenge her for the nomination? The Secretary of State for Transportation Pete Buttigieg seems like the clear favorite among the younger generation. However, instead of tapping the Transportation Secretary to distribute funds for the infrastructure package as expected, Biden has given the job to former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu.
If suspicious of political motivations, one may question this move by Biden as it makes it impossible for Buttigieg to sell himself and his experience of handling a nationwide project if and when he decides to run against Biden (in the unlikely event that #46 is fit) or, more likely, against Harris in 2024.
Final Thoughts
Essentially, if the Democrats take the shellacking they are expected to get from the Republicans in the midterms of 2022, Biden has to go. He blew his load in 2020, and he isn’t going to get a repeat in 2024. If the Democrats attempt to nominate Harris as their Heir Apparent, they will get destroyed in the general election. They need a big, open nomination, and the people, not the party leaders, need to make sure they are excited about who they pick.
In the unlikely event that Republicans return to their political roots in 2022 and the actual GOP regain control of the right during the midterms, I am not so concerned about 2024. However, suppose the authoritarian Cult45ers win and nominate either #45 himself or one of his insane and irrational toadies? In that case, the Democrats’ nominee will probably be the most crucial choice of the century.
It is going to be interesting. Molloy