VP Nightmare - Harris Gets Worst News Ever After Biden Debate Disaster

Allies of Vice President Kamala Harris are reportedly upset and frustrated that she was not considered as a potential leader of the Democratic ticket following President Joe Biden’s widely criticized debate performance last week.

Citing Harris insiders, Politico reported that some of her allies were irked as the post-debate discussion among party members regarding a potential replacement for Biden included names like California Governor Gavin Newsom and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, but not Harris. This snub came despite Harris being expected to defend Biden amid heavy criticism over his weak showing against a more assertive former President Donald Trump.

Names like Newsom and Whitmer “trended online as potential replacements for Biden on the Democratic ticket, while Harris — by several measures the most obvious and best-positioned candidate — was left to publicly defend Biden at the single worst moment of their four-year-old political partnership,” Politico reported.

This left some of Harris’ supporters frustrated that her name was not mentioned alongside other ambitious Democrats. Politico added that they are unable to do much about it since Harris is effectively required to defend Biden.

“There’s nothing that she could do externally that would be wise,” Democratic strategist Michael Trujillo told the outlet. “Her best strategy is to internally just be an amazing VP.”

But, as Politico noted, Harris did not attempt to put Biden’s poor performance in a better light:

She had to perform the role of good soldier almost immediately after the debate, with postmortem interviews having been pre-scheduled with CNN and MSNBC.

As Harris watched Biden’s lackluster performance, she and her team realized her response would be even more closely scrutinized, according to three aides granted anonymity to describe private discussions — and she quickly made clear to her staff that they shouldn’t try to sugarcoat how badly her running mate had performed.

Harris told her advisers her role was simple, the aides said: project confidence as quickly and clearly as possible as a leader of the party while preserving credibility by acknowledging how weak the debate had been.

“She wanted to have an acknowledgment of what everybody was seeing,” a senior aide to Harris told the outlet.

“The president said himself that it was not his best performance,” Harris herself noted at a campaign rally the following afternoon before going on to accuse Trump of lying throughout the debate.

This week, however, Biden appeared to try and bolster his vice president following his rough post-debate week amid escalating calls for him to step down and allow Harris to take over.

During an Independence Day celebration at the White House, Biden took Harris’ hand on the Truman Balcony and raised it, signaling unity.

This show of unity comes amid poor polling for Biden following his disastrous debate performance against Trump in the first of two scheduled debates.

A New York Times/Siena College poll published on Wednesday shows Trump leading Biden by a 49 percent to 43 percent margin among registered voters likely to vote in the upcoming November 5 election.

This represents Trump’s largest lead in a Times/Siena poll since 2015, during his campaign for the 2016 presidential election. Among all registered voters, Trump’s lead extends to nine points. Additionally, a Wall Street Journal poll found that Trump, 78, holds a six-point lead over Biden.

Under mounting pressure from his party to step aside, Biden told reporters in front of the White House that he intends to remain in the November contest.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said this week.