Does Biden Want Harris to Lose? CNN Contributor Drops Big Take as Joe Keeps Kamala Within Reach

Somewhere, the Kamala Harris campaign was undoubtedly cringing.

When President Joe Biden (remember him?) took the stage at a White House news briefing on Friday, one of the journalists raised a question regarding the vice president’s approach to the “crises the country has been facing over the past several days” and the role Harris is playing in addressing them.

For the Harris campaign, the answer could hardly have been worse.

“He is literally trying to destroy her campaign and it’s just incredible,” CNN’s so-called conservative contrarian Scott Jennings wrote in a post on X, the social media platform.

“Well, she’s … I’m in constant contact with her,” Biden said with his usual rhetorical clumsiness.

“She’s aware … we’re all singing from the same song sheet. We, uh, she helped pass all the laws that are being employed now. She was a major player in everything we’ve done, including the passage of the legislation which we were told we could never pass.

“And so she’s been … and her staff is interlocked with mine, in terms of all the things we’re doing.”

The last thing Vice President and presidential hopeful Harris needs right now is for American voters to remember that she’s “interlocked” with a president so unpopular that his own party has essentially moved on, unwilling to risk their political future by riding along with him.

The last thing Harris operatives want is for voters to recall that it was Harris’s tie-breaking votes in the Senate that led to the passage of the misleadingly named American Rescue Plan in 2021 and the equally misnamed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 — two massive government spending bills blamed for the soaring inflation plaguing American consumers over the past two years.

And in an election that could hinge on the slimmest margin of independent voters in battleground states, Biden’s response seemed like about the last thing a president hoping for Harris's victory would say.

But if that answer came from a president — or his team — still nursing resentment over being sidelined in favor of someone he reluctantly brought into his administration, and if the goal was to hurt her appeal to voters outside the Democratic base, then it was almost perfect.

Does Biden have the mental sharpness to realize he was on track to lose to former President Donald Trump even before his self-inflicted collapse during the June 27 presidential debate? Does he understand that the closer Harris appears to be to him, the further she is from winning the Oval Office?

If he does, that press briefing answer couldn’t have been more calculated to drag her down alongside him.

If he doesn’t — if his well-documented decline is so advanced that he thought it was genuine praise — then he’s not the only player here.

It’s no secret that Biden frequently appears unaware of what’s happening around him. But it’s also well-known that he and his inner circle — led primarily by First Lady Jill Biden, often compared to Edith Wilson of our era — were all in on him securing another term in office.

A group like that could understandably be furious at having to step aside — as Biden had to — while he still had life in him (even if not much else).

And they could very well be preparing Biden to answer questions about Kamala with lines highlighting her role as a “mover-and-shaker” in his largely failed administration, fully aware — even if Biden himself is not — of how damaging that might be to her among the key voters she needs.

Either way, Biden’s comments set social media buzzing, with speculation that his words seemed full of apparent praise, but were more akin to a well-aimed torpedo targeting her campaign.

Here’s a glimpse of the reactions:

During his Friday afternoon show, Philadelphia-based conservative talk show host Rich Zeoli pointed out that if Harris loses in November, Biden and his family could claim the unique distinction of being the only candidate capable of beating Donald Trump.

And it would also relegate Harris to the list of women who lost to Trump. (Hillary Clinton could surely use some company there.)

If Biden, or his family, were seeking a way to get back at the Democrats who replaced him, undermining the woman they put forward might be the ideal approach.

And somewhere, the Kamala Harris campaign is cringing at the thought.