How Do You Solve a Problem Like Kamala Harris?
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It is a very weird time in America right now. People are talking out loud about the idea of a plan B, a way to get the Democratic nominee, the current incumbent president of the United States, Joe Biden, to drop from the ticket and allow another president.

candidate to run or at least launch a primary or at least allow the superdelegates, the Democratic superdelegates to pick another option. Because according to a recent ABC News poll, 86 percent of Americans think he's too old to lead. And the crazy thing about these stories is that the natural plan B, his vice president, Kamala Harris, is rarely, if ever, mentioned. She's the vice president. She's 59 years old. She has an impressive resume. She was a

you know, Attorney General of California. She was a senator in California. And for some reason, it's likely because her approval numbers are below Joe Biden's and his approval numbers are not great himself. This all came after the

special counsel's report, Robert Herr, he came out and basically cleared Joe Biden of mishandling classified documents. He said he basically did it because he's an quote unquote sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory. So basically he said that he couldn't prosecute him because Joe Biden just seemed too old and not nefarious enough to truly try to hide and steal classified documents. So here we are. People are writing about Plan B.

What's going to happen? Can Joe Biden take the Democrats across the line? It's really unclear. And I know Democrats always say Trump is 77, Trump is 77. Fair enough. But this is the conversation being had right now in Democratic circles, especially when there is such a fear that Trump is an existential threat, as they say he is. So many would say, well, then change the top of your ticket, right? Right.

to make sure that that doesn't happen. I'm going to dig into that with Charlie Spearing. He's a conservative writer who wrote a deeply reported book called Amateur Hour on Kamala Harris in the White House. There aren't a lot of books out there about Kamala Harris. Actually, I don't think there are any at all at this point. I think he's the first person to write it. And this was printed by Simon & Schuster, a reputable publishing house.

So I'm going to get into that with Charlie Spearing. But first, I just want you to know a few things that I'm paying attention to this week in the political world. George Santos's empty congressional seat. I know all the drama is always about George Santos. There is a special election to fill the seat. And it's seen as sort of a bellwether of what's to come in the 2024 race, especially for the House. Will Democrats win back control of the House?

And people are really looking closely at this wealthy suburban enclave in New York because the Republicans were able to win back the house by winning over the suburbs of New York and California, where these are swing districts. These people voted for Biden and then decided they wanted Republicans to represent them two years later. The issue right now is that a lot of the migrants that were coming to the southern border, southern

like Greg Abbott of Texas, he took those migrants and he shipped them up north to New York City. The suburbs, the people in the suburbs are panicked about the fact that there is a migrant crisis in their backyard. And...

it's this election will be a real tale of whether fears of migration will have a strong impact on the election because the Republican Mozzie Pillop is really leaning into the migration issue. And the Democrat Tom Swazi, who used to represent that seat, he doesn't want to have anything to do with Biden right now. Um,

He's really on the defensive when it comes to migration. Mozzie Pillip doesn't want much to do with Trump either. They both know that they are moderates and they're in a swing district and they're better off playing the middle. But it'll be interesting to see how much of a wedge issue migration will be. And, you know, if...

If Democrats can't win this seat back and they've spent millions and millions and millions of dollars on it, it's not going to be a great sign for 2024. And they were very optimistic about winning the House back, especially since the Republicans have such a small majority. Speaking of small majorities.

OK, remember the monumental screw up last week when the Republicans thought that they could impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and they didn't have the votes? The Speaker of the House actually put a resolution on the floor and did not have the votes. He lost by three votes, one of them, of course, being an empty seat that George Santos used to fill. It was just a historic mess up.

It also just shows the incompetence of the new speaker, Mike Johnson. Well, Steve Scalise, who is the number two and he's been around forever, he's good at whipping. He's coming back from cancer treatment and he's seen as someone who will be able to whip and make sure that

on Tuesday that they will actually be able to impeach the Department of Homeland Security secretary. It's a historic moment because a cabinet secretary hasn't been impeached since the 1800s. And part of impeachment is proving that the person engaged in high crimes and misdemeanor, they are basically arguing that he is neglecting the southern border. It's going nowhere in the Senate. But I just figured you might want to pay attention to it. It might be another shit show.

And now back to the main show. Charlie, there haven't been that many books written on the vice president. Your book is called Amateur Hour, Kamala Harris in the White House. So we know it has a specific take on the vice president and her time in office. It's been almost, you know, it's been about three, almost four years now. And was curious as to why you...

you wanted to dig into Kamala. Obviously, the vice president is a ceremonial role. At least it seems that way. But what was your interest in writing about her specifically?

Yeah, Tara, it's not something that we would typically write about a vice president. I mean, you know, we didn't really write books about Al Gore because it was never really there was never really a fear or a possibility. You know, there's always the possibility, but there was never the fear that, you know, Bill Clinton would somehow win.

be unable to serve and then Al Gore would have to take his place. So in this case, I took a look at the election coming up in 2024 and me and my editors kind of chatted about it and just being like, you know, who is Kamala Harris? Most people don't really know who she is. They know that she ran an unsuccessful campaign for president that kind of ended very, very miserably, how she was suddenly resurrected and put on the, you know, the second most important, uh,

in the executive branch, right, to, you know, a heartbeat away from the presidency, as they like to say. And then realizing that going into this election, you know, this is something that people like Nikki Haley talk about all the time. Who are you voting for in November? Are you voting for, you know, President Joe Biden's reelection? Or are you voting for, you know, Democrats

what could very well, she could very well be the 47th president of the United States. And it's important for people both on the right and the left to know more about her.

Right. I mean, she has become a Republican boogeyman from the jump. I do remember, though, even when her campaign had first launched, though, I remember people close to Trump were actually worried about her political talents because she did come out very strong. The first rally was big. There was a lot of enthusiasm around her. And then, you know, once you got to see her on the debate stage, she started to slip up more and more. And I think

You know, her popularity obviously dropped and she did not make it very far in the Democratic primary. And now we're at a place where her approval rating is even lower than Biden's, according to FiveThirtyEight. Her approval rating is about thirty seven point five on average and Biden's is thirty eight point nine. And so this has been something that Republicans have been using as sort of, you know, a using it as a cudgel. Yeah.

Yeah. They've been using it as a political talking point. Yeah. No. Yeah. They've been using Kamala Harris as a, as a political boogeyman. You know, she is, um, she is in some ways like the way they describe her. It reminds me of how Hillary Clinton was described. Right. Um,

the memes of her laugh, the way she, you know, carries herself or comports herself, they've become like a very big indicator of her ability to lead. Because truly, I mean, like I did some travel with Vice President Pence, but they don't really do a ton. It's very ceremonial. They go to other countries for the president when he doesn't want to travel. They take the shitty jobs like handling migration, right? And you don't really see them day to day. They

They go out on the road and campaign, but they can never draw the kind of crowd that a president can draw. Like I've gone and traveled to Pence. Like I've been in rooms. We both did. Yeah. Yeah. It's like 30 people in a gym and like Trump can get a full rally. And it's like. And Pence would just go around the country wearing jeans and go like kick through some cow pastors in Iowa and make some very intense speeches about how much he appreciated Donald Trump. Yeah.

Especially like one of the biggest roles of the vice president is to sort of defend the president. Like you're first to be called on whenever the president's under attack, you're the one that comes out and defends. She didn't really do a very good job at that in the beginning in her first couple of years. And the Wall Street Journal report today is very on brand. They asked her to go to a Sunday show to defend president Biden after the whole special counsel report. And, you know, instead she was, she turned,

She decided, no, I'm not going to wait for Sunday. I'm just going to go out and make a speech now in response to a reporter question. So it's right on brand with who she is. She's very protective of her political future. She hasn't put everything on the line for team Biden. Team Biden sees that they've had, they've run into this before. They wanted her to do, I read in the book, they wanted her to do an event on baby formula at the Dulles airport. And she said, no, I don't want, I don't.

I don't want to do that. I don't want to be the face of this crisis. So they ended up having to send Jill Biden and Jill Biden instead. Now, Connolly eventually did one of those events after a while, but she, you know, only on her terms. And I feel like that's kind of what she's doing at this point to protect her brand. And in the hopes, you know, you can see the ambition is there. The ambition is there that she wants to run for president herself or be president herself one day. As anyone who is the vice president, like...

I mean, maybe except for Dick Cheney, most people that are vice presidents assume that they get their next in line, right? Why else would you take it?

Exactly. And the vice presidency is just by doing this book. It was such a fascinating study in the recent the recent vice presidents, how different each one was, how different Pence was compared to Harris and and Harris right now, really on the cusp of being the 47th president United States without running a successful election by herself. You know, if Biden wins, runs and wins, then there's a very real chance she'll become the next president.

And perhaps that's where a lot of the criticism comes against her. I mean, you know, part of me was like, okay, is this racism? Is this sexism? Why are they so tough on someone who really doesn't have a significant role? And yeah, sure, she has a lot of word salad moments. Sure, she, you know, clarifies

clearly it's so preoccupied with her political future that she's unwilling to touch hot button issues, right? But, you know, you've got to think to yourself, like, what's the obsession with this woman? Do you know what I mean? You know, I think it really does come down to the fact, like you said, that people feel like it's not just a joint ticket. It's like...

You know, it's not your traditional president, vice president ticket. They feel like they're really voting for Vice President Kamala as to be the president. And so they're looking at her more deeply. And, you know, and I've heard complaints from her team. And it gets really exhausting when you hear complaints about being, you know,

It's like, you're a politician, you're in power. This is just part of the gig. Even just her response to Lester Holping. Like, I haven't been to, you know, when he asked her about, had she been to Mexico yet since she was in charge of the border? They called her the border czar, but her people were like, no, no, no, it's not the border czar. She's not the border czar. She's dealing with the root causes of migration. It's just like, even that language was like, oh, you don't want to actually clean up the mess. And like, part of being the president is,

is being willing to clean up the mess. Right. You have to take the risks. You have to jump in there and be willing to tackle big problems. And because you don't have the same pressure that the president does, you're free to be a little more animated. So there's a part of it, especially after the border deal, Biden's team found her less effective and less willing to take on some of these issues. So they just started to ask her to do less.

And it became very clear after a couple of years in that, that the two teams weren't sort of communicating very well and they weren't really working together very well. They seem to be almost competing to sort of preserve each other's legacy.

Right. And then there was a lot of complaints from the Kamala Harris team that she had to take Biden's staff, that they had to essentially absorb these the staffers that they picked out, like Tina Flournoy, who was in the Clinton administration. Right. But the truth is, and maybe this is I'm sure you have more reporting on this, but I had done some reporting on this.

She really had a problem with staff turnover her entire career. So it's not like she had a loyal band of loyalists that she was trying to bring into the White House with her. She didn't have other options, right? Right. In the Senate, she also had a reputation for high overturn. And, you know, she's still bleeding staffies even as she heads into the next election.

But going through the book and going through her primary campaign, you saw a lot of these same problems. She was unwilling to really take command of her own campaign and really lead it in a way that inspired staffers. In fact, it was the exact opposite. It was so chaotic and so disjointed, competing factions within the office and no real sense of leadership whatsoever.

I think going into that campaign, and I didn't necessarily follow her minute to minute during that election. I focused more on Pete Buttigieg when I was reporting the 2020 campaign. But going back and looking at her campaign, there was a lot of the signs were there. And it's very shocking to see that so many people just ignored her entire presidential campaign that started out really strong, as you noted, and just ended in complete disaster after Thanksgiving. Right.

of 2020 before the voting even started in Iowa. I mean, obviously, this is the other thing that a vice president does. They offer an electoral advantage, right? Like, that's why you're picked. So in the case of Mike

Mike Pence, he offered up evangelical support to Donald Trump when there was concern about him being married three times and, you know, playboy, et cetera, et cetera. I didn't have the, you know, perhaps pro-life credentials. They didn't trust him at all on that issue. It's kind of shocking to see the exact opposite in this campaign.

Right, exactly. So Kamala Harris, she was seen as someone who could seal the deal in terms of bringing in, making sure African-American women were out, African-Americans in general, students. I mean, it was exciting. She is the first African-American woman vice president. They wanted to make history with this campaign. And, you know, I remember it was a very exciting time. And then it just seemed that

After that, it was like Kamala is a problem, right? It was basically like, how do we solve a problem like Kamala? That's exactly. It's like one of the biggest parlor games in Washington. You go to any party. I'm sure you've experienced this as well. But behind the scenes, Democrats are terrified. It's one of the number one parlor games among political consultants is how do you fix Kamala Harris? And everyone has their own advice. But Kamala hasn't figured it out herself yet. She's just still playing defense.

And I think you mentioned when he made the vice presidential pick of Kamala Harris, he really wanted to pick Gretchen Wilson, I found out. Whitmer, you mean? Whitmer, yeah, Gretchen Whitmer. From Michigan, chief of governor there, very popular, Rust Belt. Yeah, to fix the damn roads on the infrastructure, he liked that message.

But top advisors and even former President Barack Obama said, look, we don't want to make the same mistake that Hillary did in 2016 when she picked, you know, the most vanilla senator possible with Virginia Senator Tim Kaine. We need somebody who's

who can inspire, who can sort of bring back the Obama coalition and really pull everything together. So I think there's a little reluctance there among the Bidens. They certainly didn't forget her attacks during the campaign. And so there's a little reluctance among the family. I just want to remind our listeners,

you know, Kamala Harris essentially insinuated that Biden was a racist when she said that she faced segregation as a child. Thanks to federal busing rules, she was finally allowed to attend the school with other kids. And if Biden had his way, she would have never ended up in the better schools and, you know, made the case that if it was up to Joe Biden, she would no longer be, she wouldn't even be a senator of the United States.

Right. I do wonder, though, if people just project Biden's shortcomings onto her and if Biden's team is OK with that, too. Do you know what I mean?

When you hear the dinner party chat, like, oh, Kamala, she's such a mess. Oh, my God, what are we going to do with her? It's not just D.C. chatter of like, oh, my God, like, can he swap her out? Of course not. You know, you hear it outside of D.C. too. But I wonder if like Biden was younger and more popular and his approval ratings were higher if he

Kamala would just be like, okay, she's a, you know, transformative figure in Washington, D.C. and she's not a boogeyman or she's not this feared person. I don't know. What do you think?

Yeah, I think the Biden team, there was a lot of reluctance to sort of defend her in the beginning. And they her team and her supporters noticed that they noticed that team Biden was way more willing to go out and sort of play defense for figures like Pete Buttigieg and didn't have that same sort of cohesion on defending her and her team.

And you kind of saw a little bit of that. And yeah, it's absolutely true. If Biden was younger and stronger, then people wouldn't be having these same conversations about Kamala Harris. Look, Al Gore used to be the vice president. I keep bringing back to him because he was also seen as kind of a stiff, kind of a loser, not as gregarious and happy as Clinton. But nobody really cared about him because he was there. He never, you know,

posed a real chance of being president until after Clinton had left the administration.

Right. And then what happened was after like a year or two of treating Kamala terribly, basically leaving her out on a limb, you know, the Biden Biden world led by Anita Dunn, who was, you know, the messaging guru, image guru. They've taken, you know, a lot more interest in Kamala Harris and making sure that, you know, her image has improved. But I don't see it really improving in the polls. Have you seen a bump for Kamala since they started working on her?

No, no bump, but you definitely see a little more willingness in the press. There's been a few positive headlines that have been sort of written about her. She is doing much better now that the campaign's in full swing. Now they have her pretty well scripted. I don't know if you saw the...

her appearance on The View and her appearance with Katie Couric, she stayed very cautiously towards the main talking points. There was no riffing. There was no word salads. So she is a little better. She's also playing in her safe spaces. It's easy for her to talk about the issue of abortion. It's something I read in the book. She's been doing her entire political career, you know, when you're a senator or when you're a leader on the issue in California.

in, you know, blue California, then you only have one position on the issue. And during the campaign, she fought to be the number one defender of abortion rights. So that was very much, that's very much her safe space. She's been doing that for a long time there. So they're happy letting her play in the sandbox as we've, as so many people have noted, Biden doesn't like talking about abortion, but Kamala Harris is very comfortable with it. He's Catholic and it's like,

You know, he's a man. He has so many different changing positions on the issue from safe, legal and rare and no federal tax dollars to now just sort of trying to align himself with this idea that there should be no restrictions at all. I think his political idea, he wouldn't mind specifying his support for some kind of restrictions.

You know, Kamala started at a 48% approval rating, okay? Right out of the gate. She's gone down, as we said, to about 37.5 right now. So she's dropped about 10 points, more than 10, since she started in office. Biden, on the flip side, has been... He started at...

53%. And he is now at 38. So he obviously had a much steeper drop. But it's, it's, I feel like those numbers indicate that people were giving her a chance.

Do you feel like they did? Yeah, I think so. And especially when you start off with that historic moment that we talked about earlier, you really have everybody rooting for you to succeed. And it just happened very quickly that she was kind of the more she spent time trying to play this role. And even people on the left started seeing it and just facepalming whenever she would get on camera and talk about issues.

You know, it's more than just the word salads, but yeah, so many times she would find herself twisting herself up and not trying not to say anything and really revealing herself as kind of a normal politician, not really an inspirational figure. And once people realized that more cynical Kamala Harris that was just really trying to just hit all the right buttons and right boxes and say the right thing and not screw up, she's terrified of screwing up.

And you see that when she speaks, because she's always circling around with dependent clauses to try to hit the right note. But it doesn't always work. And I think, you know, the right has had a lot of fun laughing at the word salads, but even people on the left are really discouraged by her failure to really sort of emerge as a transformational figure.

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What would you say is like one of those moments where people were smacking their head saying, I mean, besides the migration, like what was another kind of,

seminal moment where you were like, oh, this is going to be terrible for her for a long time? Well, one that triggered a lot of people on the left was when she went on Colbert. And as she was going in, there was a bunch of protesters in the late night show with Stephen Colbert. There was a bunch of protesters protesting the Biden administration's decision on, I think it was something energy related. They were climate activists. And

And Colbert asked her about that. And she replied, I think the time is to be doing what we are doing. And that time is every day. And that triggered a lot of people on the left, including some people on, I think, MSNBC's TikTok guy, Manny, I think is his name. And The Daily Show put together a reel comparing her to Veep.

Oh, wow. To the same like vapid, ambitious character, Selina Meyer from Deep. But a woman. That's another part of it. Yeah. Another former senator, historical first female white vice president, you know.

Not good for us ladies. Yeah. So you had a lot of people sort of swapping back and forth and even just people, even journalists on the left had had enough and were kind of like, what happened to her? She had so, and I talked to journalists on the left during the process of the book and they said, you know, she had something going on in the Senate, but once she hit the campaign trail and had to like meet with

real voters instead of, you know, just hotshot donors and political movers and shakers in California. Once she actually had to like get on the ground and try to do real politics, I think that's where she retail politics. I think that's when people realize that she just didn't have what it takes.

Well, here's the question. Did she actually ever run for her Senate seat or did or was she appointed by wasn't she appointed by Gavin Newsom? No, it's actually very interesting because Newsom was the lieutenant governor and Kamala was attorney general of California when the California Senate governor's seat was going to be open. Newsom wanted to run. Kamala wanted to run. They were both eyeing this race very seriously, you know, and

So California Democrats were really bracing for a pretty ugly clash between the two of them. But then suddenly Barbara Boxer, Senator Barbara Boxer, resigned from California, sort of opening up that seat. And Newsom made it clear right away that he didn't want to run for Senate again.

And Kamala Harris saw that as a quick and easy way to sort of get on that train. Like maybe it would be easier to go to the Senate and then run for president like President Obama did. Or, you know, so many senators see that path, see the Senate as a path to the presidency, right? Right. Or President Biden. So I think that that was, and she, even though she ran a pretty, a pretty solid primary, it was against another embarrassing candidate,

Democratic candidate who really didn't have the support of the donors. And so her primary campaign was pretty simple. And of course, once you win the primary, it's all done in California. You just sail in. You know, what's going on in the White House right now? Jill Biden, does she really still hate her? I mean, is there I've heard that Jill Biden is still angry about the busing comment. Is it still tense or have they kind of made up and are things better?

Well, Jill has sort of been, she's always good at playing the part of the dutiful first lady. I think there is a story like when Kamala and Doug came out after they were selected, she brought out cookies for them. And so they get along on the surface, but there's really no evidence of any sort of deep kind of sisterhood that you would kind of expect from

And part of it's because Kamala wants to be treated like the president. And, you know, Jill Biden is not ready to do that. And I think that, you know, in many similar ways, you know,

Jill Biden actually gets along with with Doug Emhoff quite well. They got along with each other on the campaign trail. He's a really nice guy. I got to say, I've done events with him and he's just like so easy to get along with. Like knew my work at Puck just kind of like just like a very he's charming. He's actually really good at retail politics, I would say.

Yeah, people call him the happiest guy in Washington. But even though he's kind of tried to be supportive, but he's even kind of grumbled behind the scenes about how Kamala is being treated. There's been a little bit of that. But on the surface, he slipped into Washington pretty easily. Gets along with Jill.

Kamala, on the other hand, is really thin-skinned. We've seen that if any reporter who's covered Kamala knows that she and her team are the first to complain and the first to get nasty with if there's anything

single tiny piece that they don't like. They will go after you if you describe the wrong farmer's market or the wrong candle in a story. And the Vogue cover, I don't know if you remember that when she first became vice president, how she very publicly scolded Vogue on how she hated that cover of her

And wearing her kicks and Madam Vice President. And she was very unhappy with that. And that was another example of how she wanted to be respected as, as a, as a historic first leader, not a, not somebody that was just wearing casual clothes. Oh, I see. I could see that being appealing to young voters and like just having a,

a human side, right? Right. Is Kamala the cool person that wears the Converse shoes and is sort of free and easy? I mean, that's what they're trying to do with Joe. They're putting like the aviators, the sneakers, the track jackets, you know, the bomber. They're trying to make him seem like he's cool. Like, why not? Yeah.

If anything we've learned with women, it's better to be a little bit more casual than to be too buttoned up in terms of politicians. Like, people hated Hillary for being too polished in her pantsuit. And then, you know, she takes shots in, like, Cartagena and everyone's like, oh, she's cool. You know? Yeah.

But you know as well as I do, the more that you have this sort of attempt to lighten a candidate up and make them look cool, the more inauthentic it looks. And just in this world of politics we exist in now, it's so much different. People can easily sort of smell out any sort of feigned attempt that isn't really authentic.

So anytime that, that there are these moments, if it's seen as inauthentic, it just, you just go downhill real fast. Got it. All right. So perhaps Jill and, and, and Kamala have patched things up, but, um,

Tell me more about this, like, feud with Gavin Newsom because, you know, Gavin is seen as a person who would be first in line to jump in if Joe Biden decides not to run again or something happens to Joe Biden. He's obviously running a shadow campaign, stopping in South Carolina, going to the debates. And I saw him in California at one of the debates. I think he went to the one in Milwaukee. You know, he's all over the place. He's their top surrogate, but...

It's a great way to get yourself out there battling Ron DeSantis. How does Kamala feel about this? I mean, it's...

His shadow campaign presumes that as vice president, if Joe Biden were to step down, that he would not endorse his vice president, that she would not be there to take the ticket. A lot of people, obviously, you and I both talked to say Kamala's going to have to work for it. She's absolutely going to get primary. No one will respectfully step down from a primary the way they have with Joe Biden. I mean, Joe Biden's been really lucky. I mean, he had Dean Phillips primary and Marianne Williamson. But like the Democratic establishment, I've heard no one ever

everyone would take a chance because that's how weak they believe she is. So I'm just curious, like, how does this dynamic play out with Gavin Newsom and him being one of the top surrogates for the Biden campaign?

Yeah, well, their relationship goes all the way back to the Willie Brown days. Newsom was running for mayor when she ran her first campaign for district attorney. And so they've been kind of, you know, California people I talked to describe them as kind of frenemies. Like they're always trying to one up each other on, you know, because you're only competing for the affection of the left.

and the donors and of course the celebrities and you just want to be the flashiest person. But you also want to be the strongest person among the organized left.

So there's one incident I bring up in the book about how Gavin Newsom really took the side of people who lost their houses right after the housing crisis, right as Kamala Harris was kind of trying to negotiate a deal with the banks at the sort of at the behest of the Obama administration. They really wanted to get the issue done with and by the time that he ran for reelection.

So he liked to sort of poke her on different aspects of various issues. The mortgage crisis, one of them. She did ultimately settle the case for billions more. But, you know, was it because of Newsom or was it, you know, a little bit of both? So there's that. And then also, yeah, her team is furious by what Newsom is doing. They see exactly what he's doing. And so there's no lost hope.

niceties there. You saw Newsom quickly finally have to say on camera that he would not try to run against Joe or Kamala. He eventually had to come out and say that. But that was more talking about 2024. Yeah.

I think Newsom's really looking forward to 2028 at this point. And that's why he's in South Carolina meeting and greeting everybody. Because in South Carolina, and if that's the first in the nation primary, I really think Kamala Harris has a good starting point in that state. Right, because of the African-American voters there. People are always asking me about the idea of swapping out

Kamala Harris, right? I mean, you always hear these stories ahead of an election. Presidents are like, should I swap out my vice president for some sort of electoral advantage? Trump apparently wanted to swipe out Pence for Nikki Haley. And now look at where we are. But yes, it's a thing. It always comes up. But I mean, how real was it? Is there a real, was there a real effort? Is there a real effort to swap out Kamala Harris? I mean, to me, I would think the base would go nuts.

Absolutely. You can't do that to the nation's historic first black woman vice president. And I think that staffers were at least Biden's top campaign team, like Axelrod and Obama's people felt pretty comfortable doing that to Biden when they were like polling whether or not Hillary Clinton would help Obama perform better on the ticket.

But I don't think Biden's team ever, ever seriously considered it. Biden was also famously very angry and upset when he found out that Obama's people were doing that, considering replacing him on the ticket. And so I don't think he wanted to put Kamala through the same thing. And also, yeah, you can't do that to the nation's historic first. So that's why those kind of conversations never really came out, even though there's a lot of people that like

gosh, I wish there was somebody that we could replace. And then, you know, that's the ultimate question, right? If Biden doesn't make it to November, how do you replace Kamala Harris on that ticket? And that's why you have so many people talking about the myth of the Michelle Obama myth that somehow she will descend from the clouds and take over all of her problems and run for president herself. Drop in like a parachute and

into the Chicago convention, getting all the superdelegates excited and saying, with Beyonce, right? And then Biden and, and Harris would hold hands and bow together saying, we hold this, we hand this over to you, Michelle Obama, the most popular Democrat in the world. Um, yeah. Yeah.

I don't know. Sounds like a fairy tale. But and also add in the fact that Michelle Obama hates politics. Part of me thinks that there's a part of Joe Biden that feels like Kamala Harris is being treated too well because he recalls what it was like to be treated as vice president. And, you know, like you said, you

Though Obama's considered swapping him out. And he was an electoral pick. He was the, like, Rust Belt, safe, Scranton Joe, old white man so that people wouldn't get too scared about the first black president, you know, with the middle name Hussein. You know? They're like, just pick that old guy, Scranton Joe, and...

Who's been covering foreign policy for years. But when he finally got into the White House and had an opinion about foreign policy, the decision to do a surge in Afghanistan, most notably, they just completely rid him off and shut him aside. And that really hurt him because he thought he would be kind of a buddy, have a great buddy relationship with Obama. And even though he eventually kind of got there, it took a long time. And there was a lot of tough stuff behind the scenes.

Mm hmm. So do you think that there's a bit of resentment between Biden and Kamala because of the way she's treated? Like, do you think he thinks she's treated with kid gloves?

No, I think Biden believes that she's still new at this and that she's a work in progress. And I think he's willing to give her a little bit of leverage there. But I think Kamala is very upset with how she's been treated, not necessarily by Biden, but by Biden's team. I mean, you know as well as I do, Biden's team is just super hard, perfectly knit together, very tight, no leaks.

And she feels like they mistreat her. Unless it's about how angry Biden is. That's right. Fuck her. Fuck this person. I'm like, okay, I get it. You're trying to show that he's furious. I'm so glad you're seeing that too. Because there was another one today that was like, Biden lost his temper. Blue is tough. Oh my God. The stories about how angry Biden is. Is that just a way to make him seem competent? Is that what you think it is? Or engaged? Or fighting? Yeah.

Yeah, they want to prove that he's behind the scenes fighting for the American people and losing his temper, creating this image that can compete with Trump instead of the image that Republicans are selling, like just a guy in the back room eating his pudding. I was just going to say pudding. Yeah, it's so true. But it's interesting the people that are leaking it too, like Axios, like is that everyday Americans reading Axios? You know,

or Politico, but I guess it, when it goes in Axios or Politico, it gets picked up in other places. But, you know, fuck his rant about her, his rant about migration, his rant, it's like, it all came down the past few days. I was like, oh my God, they must just be like on the phone calling reporters left and right, just trying to leak

stories about the fury of Biden and his rage and his temper and how he's fighting for you. His righteous fury, Biden's righteous fury instead of Biden, the who's being taken care of. Yeah. Yeah, no, I got it. I got it. But it was a bit overkill for those who pay as close attention to it as you and I do. But I don't know.

I think after this special counsel report, it's going to get even harder on Kamala Harris. I don't think anything is getting any easier for her because she is so closely attached to Biden. I mean, in some ways, like if she wasn't his vice president, maybe she would have had a shot. Yeah, I think so. I think so. And definitely you see that the campaign's bringing her in a little closer now.

So it's clear that they need her more. I don't know if you saw that tweet where she, you know, very glowing, speaking about Kamala in very glowing terms that you had never seen in the first couple of years. And of course, they're going to be doing more of that as the campaign approaches and, you know, get to the convention season. I think you'll see a lot more cozy headlines and fun stories about the Bidens, even though they've never really had...

There's one sort of thing that was noted. I think it was someone in The Atlantic that noted that they've never invited the first gentleman, the first...

or they never invited the vice president and the first gentleman over to the personal residence of the White House for dinner. And I think that's one kind of frequent thing for a vice president is if you have sort of a personal relationship outside of the professional relationship. And right now there's just no real evidence of that.

You know, there is another thing. They do talk up, though, about the fact they lunch together frequently because Biden didn't always get a chance to lunch with Obama. I know these weird little facts as political reporters always remember, right? Well, that was huge because Biden stopped having lunch with her for about three or four months. And then they were supposed to have these weekly lunches, but they were just kind of stopped and dwindled down. The relationship was so bad at one point. So, yeah.

But yeah, I'm sure they will continue. So you really believe she's an amateur? She has the same kind of resume as Barack Obama. I mean, she really does. In some ways, even more impressive resume because she was an attorney general before she was a senator. And he was a state senator, right, from Illinois. And before that, a community organizer lawyer. I mean, do you really think she is less...

qualified for the job that our prior president or the last step, or even Trump, who is like a real estate agent. You know what I mean? Like, do you think she's truly not qualified? Because when I see the headline amateur hour, that's what I gather.

Yeah, I think when you come out and you talk about someone running in the executive branch, you need to have somebody who, yes, they have a good resume. But as we've seen time and time again, there's so many senators who feel like they can be the next Obama. And look at the amount of senators that ran in 2020 who just...

who sailed out to Iowa and did their best to win something and prove that they were worthy. And I think that when you're running for the executive branch, it's different than running for senator. It's different than running for attorney general. It's not just about showing competence. It's about your ability to demonstrate a message that resonates with the American people and motivates them to come out and vote for you. Obama had that, and he had a lot of help from the media at the time,

Harris had a lot of help from the media when she kicked off her campaign, but as I talked about earlier, she really kind of

really kind of hit a massive slump and was unable to pull her campaign out of a nosedive, even her donors in California realized that she wasn't really resonating. And even those wealthy donors were eyeing Pete Buttigieg, kind of squabbling, who got to hold the next Pete Buttigieg fundraiser. So I think that when we're talking about executive politics, that's how you separate the successful ones from the

You mean the ability to carry out a campaign, hold on to staff, have staff messaging? Come up with a reason why you're running for president. You need to have the discipline and then you need to have the leadership. It's not just all poll-tested message, campaign funding. It's something bigger than that. And I think that we've seen a lot of people succeed or fail on the executive campaigns where someone's got to win.

Yeah, I guess you're right. I mean, based on the campaign, although I would say, you know, Donald Trump's campaign was chaotic. And I mean, but he I guess he had a message, whatever you think about a message that resonated above arrest control of the Republican Party away from the donor class, which is just an immense step.

Right. He activated the populist base. And now she can't really get ahead of the White House's message. So it's really hard for her to restore whatever kind of whatever she's learned along the way or whatever political talents she's picked up. She's kind of in an impossible situation unless the White House comes up with some better messaging. Because even the White House, I would say, they don't really have a great message in terms of what they're offering. It's hard to tell. What are you asking for? What are you offering for the next four years? I know it's

Democracy, which I think a lot of people don't really quite understand the importance of that or what it means. It's very abstract and something people take advantage of. And, you know, obviously, personal rights, abortion, right? And I guess continuity of like a calm four years in which there's no chaos like the Trump administration. But other than that, I guess...

economic boon, which people haven't exactly felt yet. It's hard to it's like it's hard to nail it. But I've heard like the State of the Union will get a real idea of what Joe Biden is offering up because right now it's not so clear.

Yeah, it's really unclear at this point what the next term will be. And state of the unions usually really struggle to demonstrate things that we can actually get done and work together on. And it's usually just happy feelings and no real reality, as we've typically experienced, just sort of minimal issues that they can work on.

But yeah, Biden is very much running a campaign based on fear. And Kamala Harris has really picked up her messaging on this. When she goes out to voters, she tells them to be very afraid of the chaos. You know, chaos is sort of the number one buzzword. We saw Jeb Bush do this a lot when he was running that. Donald Trump's a chaos candidate. He's going to lead us into chaos. And you see Nikki Haley. I mean, Nikki Haley. He is a chaos candidate. I mean, there's no doubt about it. He just sounded like...

Russia, take Ukraine. Oh, hey, we're not... It's like, that is chaos. There's no doubt about it. He is a disruptor. And people are saying, if you want to disrupt the way things are, then a vote for Donald Trump is disruption. And we will do, you know, we'll be the option that is...

And that's why Democrats are really running like an anti-fear, like a fear campaign, a campaign based on fear. Like beware of Trump and his chaos. Vote for what's safe. Vote for what you know. Vote for Joe. And vote for democracy. And I think that's sort of ultimately the way this narrative is going to play out. Yeah. Well, we shall see who wins. Because somebody's got to win. That's right, Tara. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. Yeah.

All right. Thanks so much for coming on the show, Charlie. He has a new book out, Amateur Hour. It's a Simon & Schuster book, Kamala Harris in the White House by Charlie Spearing.

That was another episode of Somebody's Gotta Win. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. I want to thank my producers, Devin Biroldi and Connor Nevins. If you like this show, please share it with your friends, follow and rate it. If you like my reporting, please go to puck.news and sign up for my newsletter, the best and the brightest. You can use the discount code Tara20. I'll see you on Thursday.