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Spot on commentary from The New Yorker
By Susan B. Glasser
August 15, 2024
On Thursday, in a crowded auditorium at Prince George’s Community College, in Maryland, President Joe Biden appeared in public with Vice-President Kamala Harris for the first time since his decision, three weeks ago, to pull the plug on his reëlection campaign and endorse her instead. There were smiles all around, a hug, loud cheers. Harris, speaking first, called Biden an “extraordinary human being.” She beamed. Biden put his hand over his heart. The crowd chanted “Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Joe!” The vibe was warm and not too awkward, considering the circumstances.
When it was Biden’s turn to speak, the President flashed that toothy grin of his, then started in on a story about his unfinished work, from 1973, on a health-care bill with Senator Frank Church, of Idaho—a riff that surely reminded more than a few listeners why Biden had so recently been pushed into retirement by his own party’s leaders. Was he really name-checking a senator who has been in the grave since 1984 before even mentioning his party’s newly anointed Presidential nominee? With fewer than ninety days until the election, the point of the anecdote was supposed to be about Harris—his heir apparent and handpicked successor. He caught himself. “Folks, she’s going to make one hell of a President,” he said.
But in truth, it was sort of an aside. Thursday’s speech—a victory lap to celebrate the Administration’s successful negotiation of major price cuts for ten widely used drugs by seniors—was just the sort of wonky stem-winder that Biden loves. Harris played little more than a cameo in his history of the deal—a loyal Veep who cast the tiebreaking vote, two years ago, on the measure in the Senate that authorized the Medicare program to conduct negotiations with pharmaceutical companies. There was no effort to rewrite Harris into the foreground. Some people in the audience, who were clearly excited to see their new candidate, left while the President was still talking. (“Crowd leaves joint Biden-Harris event early after VP hands off lectern to lame-duck prez,” the New York Post, more than a little churlishly, reported.)
This can’t be an easy moment for Biden. He and Harris played to the crowd like the pros that they are, but there was little doubt, watching the President, that he’s more comfortable in valedictory mode than playing the role of her patron; it must surely sting such a proud man to see the jubilant crowds that have greeted Harris at every stop since his exit from the race. No doubt recent reporting is correct that Biden is still angry with Nancy Pelosi and the other Democrats who sought to get him to end his campaign. The Times disclosed just before Thursday’s event that Biden, despite everything, still believes that he could have hung on and won both the nomination and the general election against Trump. On Sunday, in a brief eleven-minute interview with CBS, his first since dropping out of the race, Biden had strikingly little to say about his Vice-President. He promised to campaign with her and to do whatever would “help most,” but he had nothing to say about why Harris would make a good President, other than that she had picked a “great guy” in Tim Walz as her running mate and that together they would make “a hell of a team.”
Biden’s own legacy is on the line if Donald Trump is returned to the White House. Aside from Harris herself, nobody has more riding on her election than Biden. But the two appearances showed, with painful clarity, that he has not yet made the transition—if he ever will—to being a successful advocate for her ascension. There are many more valedictories in Biden’s future, including on Monday night at the Democratic National Convention, in Chicago. But watching him on Thursday, it’s clear that the old campaigner hasn’t quite yet accepted that his is not the name at the top of the ticket.
It may not matter. If Biden is not yet Harris’s cheerleader-in-chief, these last few wild weeks have established that there is no better surrogate for her campaign than Trump himself. Practically every time Trump has opened his mouth since Biden stepped aside, the ex-President has made the case for his own manifest unfitness for office; what better assistance could she ask for?
Consider just the past few days. On Sunday, Trump actually claimed in a social-media post that Harris’s campaign had faked a crowd of fifteen thousand people who had showed up for a recent rally at a Detroit airport hangar. “Nobody was there,” he insisted. She “CHEATED,” and the crowd, a figment of artificial intelligence or something, “DIDN’T EXIST.” Very stable genius, right? The fact checkers dutifully weighed in with witness accounts and video proof that Trump was out of his mind. Sometimes you have to wonder whether there is a secret agent for the Democrats covertly advising Trump when he posts this stuff. On Monday night, in a two-hour conversation on X with its owner, Elon Musk, Trump went off on so many tangents that it was almost a relief when he mentioned his apparent plan for self-exile to Venezuela if he lost to Harris—though it did sound a bit ominous when he warned that, should that happen, “it’ll be a far safer place to meet than our country.”
By Wednesday, in a speech in North Carolina, Trump—once again—made a mockery of Republican leaders who have been publicly pleading with him to abandon personal attacks on the Vice-President in favor of a more substantive policy-focussed case for himself. (As if.) The speech, Trump’s first in a battleground state in more than a week, even as Harris has built up new polling leads, was billed as an “economic” manifesto for a second Trump term. Or, as the former President himself explained,
In a press conference on Thursday afternoon, Trump mocked Harris as a “communist” who is going to ruin the entire world if she is elected. “Beyond the number of one hundred per cent” of new jobs in the Biden years has gone to migrants, he said. He talked about the horrors of wind power and the evils of electric trucks. He talked and he talked and he talked. He complained about crooked judges and crooked prosecutors and the fake news media. After nearly an hour, the press conference had not yet addressed a single question. “I think I’m entitled to personal attacks,” Trump said, when he finally did take a reporter’s query about his flailing campaign strategy. Well, O.K., then.
When Trump began attacking Harris in earnest, a couple of weeks ago, she condemned his remarks about her racial background as “the same old show.” I say, Let the show play on for at least a few more months. Every time Trump talks, he’s making the case for her. ♦
Kamala Harris’s Best Campaign Surrogate Is Donald Trump
The ex-President’s tired old show is a great advertisement for his new rival.By Susan B. Glasser
August 15, 2024
On Thursday, in a crowded auditorium at Prince George’s Community College, in Maryland, President Joe Biden appeared in public with Vice-President Kamala Harris for the first time since his decision, three weeks ago, to pull the plug on his reëlection campaign and endorse her instead. There were smiles all around, a hug, loud cheers. Harris, speaking first, called Biden an “extraordinary human being.” She beamed. Biden put his hand over his heart. The crowd chanted “Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Joe!” The vibe was warm and not too awkward, considering the circumstances.
When it was Biden’s turn to speak, the President flashed that toothy grin of his, then started in on a story about his unfinished work, from 1973, on a health-care bill with Senator Frank Church, of Idaho—a riff that surely reminded more than a few listeners why Biden had so recently been pushed into retirement by his own party’s leaders. Was he really name-checking a senator who has been in the grave since 1984 before even mentioning his party’s newly anointed Presidential nominee? With fewer than ninety days until the election, the point of the anecdote was supposed to be about Harris—his heir apparent and handpicked successor. He caught himself. “Folks, she’s going to make one hell of a President,” he said.
But in truth, it was sort of an aside. Thursday’s speech—a victory lap to celebrate the Administration’s successful negotiation of major price cuts for ten widely used drugs by seniors—was just the sort of wonky stem-winder that Biden loves. Harris played little more than a cameo in his history of the deal—a loyal Veep who cast the tiebreaking vote, two years ago, on the measure in the Senate that authorized the Medicare program to conduct negotiations with pharmaceutical companies. There was no effort to rewrite Harris into the foreground. Some people in the audience, who were clearly excited to see their new candidate, left while the President was still talking. (“Crowd leaves joint Biden-Harris event early after VP hands off lectern to lame-duck prez,” the New York Post, more than a little churlishly, reported.)
This can’t be an easy moment for Biden. He and Harris played to the crowd like the pros that they are, but there was little doubt, watching the President, that he’s more comfortable in valedictory mode than playing the role of her patron; it must surely sting such a proud man to see the jubilant crowds that have greeted Harris at every stop since his exit from the race. No doubt recent reporting is correct that Biden is still angry with Nancy Pelosi and the other Democrats who sought to get him to end his campaign. The Times disclosed just before Thursday’s event that Biden, despite everything, still believes that he could have hung on and won both the nomination and the general election against Trump. On Sunday, in a brief eleven-minute interview with CBS, his first since dropping out of the race, Biden had strikingly little to say about his Vice-President. He promised to campaign with her and to do whatever would “help most,” but he had nothing to say about why Harris would make a good President, other than that she had picked a “great guy” in Tim Walz as her running mate and that together they would make “a hell of a team.”
Biden’s own legacy is on the line if Donald Trump is returned to the White House. Aside from Harris herself, nobody has more riding on her election than Biden. But the two appearances showed, with painful clarity, that he has not yet made the transition—if he ever will—to being a successful advocate for her ascension. There are many more valedictories in Biden’s future, including on Monday night at the Democratic National Convention, in Chicago. But watching him on Thursday, it’s clear that the old campaigner hasn’t quite yet accepted that his is not the name at the top of the ticket.
It may not matter. If Biden is not yet Harris’s cheerleader-in-chief, these last few wild weeks have established that there is no better surrogate for her campaign than Trump himself. Practically every time Trump has opened his mouth since Biden stepped aside, the ex-President has made the case for his own manifest unfitness for office; what better assistance could she ask for?
Consider just the past few days. On Sunday, Trump actually claimed in a social-media post that Harris’s campaign had faked a crowd of fifteen thousand people who had showed up for a recent rally at a Detroit airport hangar. “Nobody was there,” he insisted. She “CHEATED,” and the crowd, a figment of artificial intelligence or something, “DIDN’T EXIST.” Very stable genius, right? The fact checkers dutifully weighed in with witness accounts and video proof that Trump was out of his mind. Sometimes you have to wonder whether there is a secret agent for the Democrats covertly advising Trump when he posts this stuff. On Monday night, in a two-hour conversation on X with its owner, Elon Musk, Trump went off on so many tangents that it was almost a relief when he mentioned his apparent plan for self-exile to Venezuela if he lost to Harris—though it did sound a bit ominous when he warned that, should that happen, “it’ll be a far safer place to meet than our country.”
By Wednesday, in a speech in North Carolina, Trump—once again—made a mockery of Republican leaders who have been publicly pleading with him to abandon personal attacks on the Vice-President in favor of a more substantive policy-focussed case for himself. (As if.) The speech, Trump’s first in a battleground state in more than a week, even as Harris has built up new polling leads, was billed as an “economic” manifesto for a second Trump term. Or, as the former President himself explained,
Very intellectual stuff, at least compared with much of the rest of the speech, which touched upon such matters as Harris’s laugh and the artist who painted her portrait for this week’s cover of Time magazine. As for substance, Trump offered not policy proposals so much as magic potions and miracle cures—a Day One Presidential executive order to his Cabinet to immediately bring prices down, new tariffs, overnight elimination of government regulations. In the reality-based world, new reports that same day showed inflation falling and crime statistics plummeting in most major U.S. cities.
In a press conference on Thursday afternoon, Trump mocked Harris as a “communist” who is going to ruin the entire world if she is elected. “Beyond the number of one hundred per cent” of new jobs in the Biden years has gone to migrants, he said. He talked about the horrors of wind power and the evils of electric trucks. He talked and he talked and he talked. He complained about crooked judges and crooked prosecutors and the fake news media. After nearly an hour, the press conference had not yet addressed a single question. “I think I’m entitled to personal attacks,” Trump said, when he finally did take a reporter’s query about his flailing campaign strategy. Well, O.K., then.
When Trump began attacking Harris in earnest, a couple of weeks ago, she condemned his remarks about her racial background as “the same old show.” I say, Let the show play on for at least a few more months. Every time Trump talks, he’s making the case for her. ♦
