Too Fun to Check: A Jill-Kamala Feud Keeping Biden in Race?

Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP, Pool

At least this explains the currently inexplicable. Does that make it accurate? It's safe to say we'll never know for sure, and the Daily Mail has a reputation for gossip packaged as news, but ...

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Admit it. In your heart, you want this to be true:

When Kamala Harris took to the stage during a Democratic primary debate before the 2020 election and implied that Joe Biden was racist, his wife, Jill's, response was crystal clear.

'Go f**k yourself,' the then-future first lady vented, as she allegedly admitted during a conference call with supporters. ...

Now, political insiders have told DailyMail.com that Democratic advisors are struggling to push past the powerful role that Jill Biden's loathing of Harris, 59, is playing in Joe's resistance to pass the mantle to his VP as pressure ratchets up for him to step down as presidential candidate and allow another Democrat tackle Donald Trump.

According to one former Democrat operative in Jill's circle, the women's long-seated animosity is 'one hundred per cent' part of Jill's resistance to having her 81-year-old husband step aside.

It certainly sounds plausible. That doesn't make it accurate, of course, but it does have the virtue of fitting in with existing facts and providing some context for some really questionable choices by the Bidens, although it doesn't entirely fit either.

First off, it goes a long way to explaining why Biden chose to run for a second term at all, after promising four years ago that his first term would serve as a "bridge" to the next generation of leadership. But that's not a great explanation, because Biden could have chosen not to run last year and encouraged an open primary to replace him on the ticket. Harris might have been the early favorite in such a contest, but ... she was an early favorite in 2019, too.

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But let's say that the Bidens thought they could get by in a second election, through hubris or just idiocy, whether or not that decision related to Harris. The exposure of Biden's senility in the debate might have been what caused Jill Biden to balk at the Harris succession, if the feud angle is accurate. That would explain why Democrats have for the most part tried to bypass Harris with Byzantine plans for a three-week primary among the convention delegates. Establishment Democrats might be trying to provide Jill a formula that would guarantee that Harris gets torpedoed for the nomination if Joe agrees to pull out.

That explanation may sound good, but again, there's a simpler explanation for Democrat reluctance to have Harris take the top spot, the easiest alternative in a Biden withdrawal. And that is Harris' performance in 2019. They don't need Jill Biden to tell them that Harris would be a disaster in a general election against Donald Trump. Harris got her ass handed to her in two debates by Tulsi Gabbard, flailed in humiliation both times, and her campaign collapsed three months short of Iowa. 

Finally, we should check the assumption that Jill Biden -- or any of the Bidens -- would willingly disconnect from power after 50+ years in Washington DC. Even if Jill and Kamala were the bestest of buddies, how likely would it be that the shareholders of Biden Inc would disconnect from the only product the business has: influence? 

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Occam's Razor applies here, and Mark Noonan sums it up well:

The simplest explanations are usually best ... even if they aren't as much fun. 

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David Strom 10:00 PM | November 13, 2024
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