To add on to my previous post, the extreme hostility we see toward Kamala Harris (on this forum, but also elsewhere online) is interesting to me. It's unclear how specifically she's "unqualified" or how she's demonstrated "incompetence" when she has a job with no power and no responsibilities and (as mentioned previously) her background is similar to that of other vice presidents. The obvious difference here is the idea that she got her job just based on the identity boxes she checks off.
The people who feel this way have obvious justification in that they can point to what the Biden campaign actually said. I don't recall these sorts of criticisms of Kamala Harris being leveled in the same way when she ran for president, because then she was running against a bunch of candidates who weren't black women whom she would have to defeat. It may have been strategically useful for the Biden campaign to say that it was going to choose a black woman as its running mate, but doing so preemptively destroyed the credibility of anyone who might be chosen.
Sometimes you see the suggestion that Biden should have chosen a different black woman instead of Kamala Harris and that would have been better. I find that hard to believe. My recollection is that the other candidates who were regularly mentioned were Val Demings, Stacey Abrams, and Susan Rice. None of those three have ever won a statewide election and only Demings has ever been elected to a higher position than state legislator. Does anyone really believe that any of them would be seen as less of a token selection?
Suppose that the Biden campaign had chosen Kamala Harris without announcing that it would select a black woman and after suggesting that a variety of Democrats of different backgrounds would be considered. This wouldn't change the issues that Kamala Harris has had as vice president in terms of being disconnected from her base and lacking strong allies in Washington, but I think that there would be less hostility toward her in general because she wouldn't be seen in the same way as having been advanced without merit.
Almost every VP is chosen because he checks some boxes which are irrelevant to his ability to govern.
Pence was chosen because as an ultra-conservative Christian would assuage Evangelicals.
Biden was chosen because he was an old white guy who would balance Obama.
No one thought that Pence is less competent than Trump. As for Biden he had been a Senator for decades and pretty clearly made up for Obama’s inexperience and inability to deal with people who don’t worship the ground he walks on.
Harris is not a good VP, but I think for Biden she serves the purposes he wanted her to serve, so she’s a good nr. 2. By selecting her he shut up the people for who identity politics is everything. While no one really likes her, her background as DA ensured he didn’t alienate potential voters who was worried about crime, she’s also the right level of uncharismatic, not enough to truly alienate people but enough that the media doesn’t care to cover her. I would replace her if I was Biden*, but I get the benefit in keeping her around, she doesn’t cost any vote, and while she would be a bad president, she would not be a disaster in the position.
* to avoid the morons in the Democratic Party decides to make her the candidate in 2028.
The problem is that the 5 previous Democratic VPs were all nominated for President.
