Politico tries to put a good face on it: the new strategy is a way to help alleged vice president Kamala Harris “turn the corner on how she’s perceived in the press and across the country.” Yeah, sure, that’s it. But everyone can see what’s really going on: Biden’s handlers are now keeping The Cackler busy on issues that are so far from being on the front burner that few, if any, reporters will even be around to tell the world about the latest incomprehensible or head-bangingly obvious thing she has said or the newest way that she has demonstrated that she is completely out of her depth.
“In early April,” Politico announced, “a month after a trip to Poland and in between making dozens of calls to senators to push the confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Vice President Kamala Harris took a day trip to, of all places, Greenville, Mississippi.” Yes, Greenville, Miss. Not the Southern border. Not Ukraine. Not anywhere else where she could get herself in any new trouble.
Instead, Harris found herself in “a rural town of 30,000 along the Mississippi River,” which Politico conceded was “not your stereotypical stop for a national Democrat, let alone one serving as the second most powerful politician in the country.” But Harris had gone there anyway, out of the kindness of her heart, or so Politico would have us believe, because she wanted to “talk about small businesses and community lending programs.” Sure she did.
That was the story, anyway, and Bill Bynum, whom Politico identified as “a member of an agency review team during the transition,” was sticking to it. “She wanted,” he explained, “to understand the needs in places like the Delta and then in the Alabama Black Belt and in the Deep South.” Bynum claimed that he and Harris had discussed “how the administration could play a role in increasing investments in underserved communities,” and that he had told her: “Well, Madam Vice President, if you really want to see what’s going on, you come to the Mississippi Delta.” It was all part, Politico asserted, of “an under noticed strategy for the VP’s office, one in which she’s homed [sic] her focus on the ways in which administration policy is intersecting with overlooked communities.”
If there is any strategy here at all, it is really to render the vice president herself “under noticed.” The more time she spends in Greenville, Miss. and Sunset, La., which Politico names as one of her other stops, the less opportunity she has to remind the watching world that she really isn’t very bright. The more time she spends busying herself with working on “increasing investments in underserved communities,” the less time she can devote to inquiring about racist trees, expatiating upon the passage of time, or informing us that prices have gone up.
And so in a certain sense, the new “strategy” really may be the genius move that Politico would like us to accept it as being. Harris isn’t inactive: the White House can point to all sorts of things she’s getting involved in. If Peter Doocy or anyone else has the effrontery to point out that nothing she is doing is all that important, Jen Psaki or Karine Jean-Pierre can upbraid the questioner for not according due importance to ceremonial visits by the vice president to “underserved communities.” Surely such questioning must be racist, and for the White House, that would be an added bonus.
Politico even tacitly admits that Harris isn’t doing anything that really matters. It quotes Biden adviser Cedric Richmond saying: “It’s not necessarily that we’re going to win Mississippi or Louisiana, but it makes a difference in people knowing that they’re seen and they’re heard. And what we hope is that the communities around the country that look like those communities will see that we see them even if we don’t make it to their particular community.” Excellent. So her visits aren’t going to make any political difference or any other kind of difference either, but they do keep her busy in a relatively risk-free environment.
So what could possibly be the downside? The downside could be that as Dementia Joe continues to falter, she could end up being president of the United States before too long, and she won’t be able to while away her tenure in Greenville, Miss., demonstrating how much the Leftist intelligentsia cares about “underserved communities” (real answer: they don’t. Not one bit). Then Harris’ inadequacies and failures will be magnified far, far more than they have been up to now. And there will be no way to hide them.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 23 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is The Critical Qur’an. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
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