One of Kamala Harris‘s own top campaign advisors knew the candidate had stumbled badly when she failed to summon something she would have done differently than the unpopular President Joe Biden in an appearance on ‘the View.’
Appearing on the popular daytime show just a month before the elections during her truncated campaign, Harris was unsteady in several of her media appearances.
On the view, her advisor Stephanie Cutter was floored when Harris got asked if there was anything she would have done differently than Biden.
‘There is not a thing that comes to mind,’ Harris responded, looking upward, then offering that she had been ‘a part of most of the decisions that have had impact.’
‘What the hell was that?’ Cutter said she thought at the time. ‘That’s not what we practiced.’
Her response was chronicled in the new book Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, by reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes.
It also tells of other key moments, like a ‘cringe’ video clip where Harris had to feign surprise at picking up the endorsement of Barack and Michelle Obama.
Failing to identify a single issue where she parted with Biden yoked her even more to the president, who had bowed out after his debate disaster but was also unpopular in opinion polls going back years.
It denied her the opportunity to hold up a policy difference that might define her as something different beyond being a younger alternative.
‘It provided the money shot’ for negative ads that would tie link Harris and Biden. ‘And it was her own bad moment.’
No daylight: VP Kamala Harris said there is ‘not a thing that comes to mind’ when asked on ABC’s ‘The View’ if there was anything she would have done differently than President Joe Biden
‘When she gave us the gift of the View interview, we were able to anchor her to the Biden administration in her own words, which is something we were trying to do anyway,’ a Trump advisor told the authors.
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Others articulated the same sentiment in real-time.
‘Kamala Harris is more of the same. She admits it herself,’ then-SEn. JD Vance posted on X.
Donald Trump, Jr. was even more forceful, as DailyMail.com reported at the time.
‘And just like that, Kamala’s entire bull**** campaign about being a ‘change agent’ collapses. You can’t call yourself a change agent when you not only agree with every single disaster Joe Biden is responsible for, but you brag about being involved in all those decisions!,’ he wrote on X.
Harris had just weeks to try to assemble a campaign and decide on a message, while running on Biden’s record in her race against Donald Trump
Aides had given Harris a list of items that made her ‘proud of her work with Biden.’
It came as party leaders were in a bind, feeling the need to build up Biden for having relinquish power, even while racing to build up Harris’s bio for her run on her own after a brief and unsuccessful primary campaign in 2020.
Many of Biden’s top aides remained on the campaign, as Harris brought in some of her own people, partly to accommodate the lack of time to set up a new one.
Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House hits bookshelves on Tuesday
Cutter helped produce the last two Democratic conventions, advised President Obama’s 2012 campaign, and was a longtime advisor to Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.
Harris urged self care in a rare appearance in her home state of California Thursday, where she is considering a potential run for governor.
‘We can’t go out there and do battle if we don’t take care of ourselves and each other,’ she said at a conference of Black women, speaking to some of the anguish among Democrats under President Trump.
‘I’ll see you out there. I’m not going anywhere,’ she told the crowd, the LA Times reported.
‘Our commitment to lifting each other up, lifting up our community, lifting up our country has not changed,’ Harris said. ‘Now what has changed since 2016: We are in the midst of seeing progress being rolled back. Policies that we birthed being rolled back.’
