As a defiant Joe Biden insists on staying in the presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris has hit the campaign trail, slamming former President Donald Trump at every opportunity. That includes a Thursday rally in North Carolina, which one writer argued looked a lot like an audition tape for the lead than a supporting character.
After three "aimless" years as vice president, Harris appeared to have "one goal" in mind at a campaign rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, John Hendrickson wrote Friday in The Atlantic.
"Prove she’s ready to square up to Donald Trump," he said, noting her "disdain" for Trump as she called out the former president 15 times in less than 20 minutes.
Hendrickson added that Harris "seems to be discreetly making her pitch to be at the top of the ticket."
Despite her history as a former prosecutor and vice president, Kamala as the candidate atop the ticket remains a bit of an unknown, he argues.
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"Harris is the rare elected official with an impressive résumé who is still something of a blank slate for voters," wrote Hendrickson. "She has a few personas, none of which has fully caught on in the public imagination."
Her personas include former prosecutor Kamala, but also "Coconut Kamala," and both have been met with resistance for different reasons.
Hendrickson notes that prosecutor Kamala was "once derided by leftists claiming that 'Kamala is a cop'" and praised by Democrats for scolding Jeff Sessions at a 2017 Senate intelligence panel hearing.
Meanwhile, he adds, there's “Coconut Kamala,” a "memeable veep who spouts odd asides such as 'You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?'"
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"Yesterday, she delivered one of her trademark phrases, musing on 'what is possible, unburdened by what has been,'" wrote Hendrickson. "Hearing it live made me wonder whether she knows that her goofiness has become an inescapable internet joke."
Whether Harris can defeat Trump in the general election remains to be seen. But her party, he said, "badly needs voters to think so."
Biden's campaign commissioned a survey to determine whether Harris could defeat Trump if she became the Democratic nominee, The New York Times reported, citing three anonymous sources. The sources did not say what the campaign intended to do with the results.
In a memo on Thursday, Biden campaign manager Jennifer O'Malley Dillon explained the "path ahead."
"In addition to what we believe is a clear pathway ahead for us, there is also no indication that anyone else would outperform the president vs. Trump," the memo asserted. "Hypothetical polling of alternative nominees will always be unreliable, and surveys do not take into account the negative media environment that any Democratic nominee will encounter. The only Democratic candidate for whom this is already baked in is President Biden."
"The movement we have seen, while real, is not a sea-change in the state of the race," Dillon added.
