President Joe Biden is reportedly growing frustrated with Vice President Kamala Harris for not “rising to the occasion” or helping him with presidential responsibilities.
Sources told Reuters that Biden is frustrated with Harris. In fact, one former Biden administration official said Biden’s desire to run for re-election may be connected to the perception that neither Harris nor any other Democrat could beat Donald Trump in a general election.
The frustrations, the former official said, are rooted in Harris’ lack of “consistently rising to the occasion.”
Moreover, another former Biden official knocked Harris for not helping Biden more often, explaining the vice president has a profound “fear of messing up” that has stagnated her tenure.
“A point of tension in their relationship is that I don’t think that the president sees her as somebody who takes anything off of his plate,” the former White House official said of the relationship between Biden and Harris.
Despite Biden’s frequent public praises of his vice president, there have been an increasing number of whispers that his relationship with Harris may not be the best. Author Chris Whipple, for instance, wrote in his new book about Biden’s White House that Biden once described Harris as a “work in progress.”
In one specific instance, Whipple detailed how Biden “was annoyed” when second gentleman Doug Emhoff complained about Harris’ work assignments.
“Biden was annoyed,” Whipple wrote. “He hadn’t asked Harris to do anything he hadn’t done as vice president — and she’d begged him for the voting rights assignment.”
Will Harris be replaced?
While an increasing number of Democrats are suggesting that Harris should be replaced as Biden’s running mate, senior Biden adviser Cedric Richmond said that will never happen.
To anyone who suggests Harris will be removed, Richmond told Reuters, “I would adamantly say that the answer is: Hell no!”
One of the former officials who spoke with Reuters about problems in the relationship between Biden and Harris also explained why replacing Harris may not be politically advantageous.
“You cannot replace your first black woman vice president and think that black people and women are going to just vote for you,” the former official said. “He needs her.”
But according to RealClearPolitics, Harris’ average job approval rating is a dismal 38.8%. Her unfavorable rating, meanwhile, is 51.8%, which means she is 13 points under water. One may conclude, then, that replacing Harris with a moderate Democrat may not hurt Biden at all.
Biden has not yet announced his re-election campaign.
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