More Dish From That Kamala Harris Book

VP Edition ...

The Atlantic recently released some excerpts from former Vice President Kamala Harris’s memoir, 107 Days, which comes out on Tuesday. In them, Harris discusses her Next Top Running Mate competition and how she settled (in perhaps every sense of the word) on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Former Transportation Secretary and recurring Fox News guest Pete Buttigieg was apparently her ideal choice, but like so many college drama kids with a doomed crush, she realized she couldn’t have him because he was gay.

Buttigieg “would have been an ideal partner — if I were a straight white man,” Harris writes. “We were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man. Part of me wanted to say, Screw it, let’s just do it. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk. And I think Pete also knew that — to our mutual sadness.”

---

---

Why Aren't Black Voters Down With The Buttigieg?

There are many reasons Harris shouldn’t have picked Buttigieg as her running mate. The most obvious is that they were both part of the Biden administration, which was unpopular if you go by polling or any other forms of public sentiment. Harris already struggled to distance herself from Biden’s policies, and a Harris/Buttigieg ticket would simply look like more of the same to voters.

Buttigieg also wouldn’t particularly balance the ticket. There’s no evidence he would have helped Harris with the critical demographics she underperformed — specifically, Black voters, younger voters, and Hispanic voters, where she cratered. You can argue this is all related to his sexuality, but even if I agreed, I don’t see the value in saying that out loud. It conveys a condescending arrogance that alienates so many voters. It sounds as if Harris is saying, “Look, I love the gays, but you working-class rural voters in the Rust Belt are drooling bigots and I don’t have enough time in this campaign to re-educate you.” It also sets a depressing standard for future elections. Let’s say another woman of color is the nominee — does that automatically exclude any other minorities from the VP slot?

I also question the reasoning that Buttigieg would have been a “risky” choice. He’d already run for president, performing better than Harris herself in 2020, and was a Senate-confirmed Cabinet member. That means there were fewer chances for surprises about his history. There were several news cycles where Republicans hit Tim Walz on issues from his past. That’s the true risk from a candidate who’s never been vetted on the national stage. (Buttigieg had also performed well during the Democratic primary debates, which would’ve come in handy.)

Buttigieg claimed he was “surprised” by Harris’s admission and argues that you should “give Americans more credit.”

“My experience in politics has been that the way that you earn trust with voters is based mostly on what they think you’re going to do for their lives, not on categories,” he said, which will likely turn up in a 2028 campaign ad.

Why Some Liberals Think It's Weird For Kamala Harris To Consider Josh Shapiro For VP

Next up is Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who Harris quickly surmised was too ambitious for the role John Nance Garner famously described as “not worth a bucket of warm piss.”

According to the Washington Post, which you shouldn’t read, Shapiro “mused that he would want to be in the room for every decision,” and Harris insisted that “a vice president is not a co-president.” (Liz Cheney could have told her otherwise.)

Harris “had a nagging concern that [Shapiro] would be unable to settle for a role as number two and that it would wear on our partnership.” That’s reasonable, I guess. Although, Harris’s more ardent supporters insisted she was Biden’s trusted partner and not just an occasional guest star, like on The West Wing. Harris’s reaction to Shapiro would suggest otherwise. Sure, Harris was in a precarious position, having never won an actual primary race. Shapiro was also extremely popular in an important swing state where Harris was untested. Like Buttigieg, there were many solid reasons for not picking Shapiro, but I wouldn’t consider his “lean and hungry look” one of them. Frankly, given the hell in which we currently exist, a co-presidency was probably a deal worth making if it kept Trump out of the White House.

Harris claims in her memoir that during a meeting with Shapiro, he asked an aide about artwork he could use for the official vice president’s residence. That seems weird for a job interview. Why would your boss care how you decorate your office? It seems like something you’d only bothering clearing if you had an extensive collection of erotic portraits. “Don’t worry. They’re freaky but classy.”

Shapiro’s spokesperson told Axios reporter Alex Thompson, “It’s simply ridiculous to suggest that Governor Shapiro was focused on anything other than defeating Donald Trump and protecting Pennsylvania from the chaos we are living through now.” So, that’s probably a “no” on the erotic portraits.

OK, Now I'm Definitely Reading Kamala Harris's New Book

So, if Buttigieg was too “risky” and Shapiro too ambitious, that means Walz was the winner of the Goldilocks “good enough” sweepstakes. He had no overwhelming desire to become president, nor did he have any particular goals for his vice presidency. He’d just show up wherever Harris told him to go and maybe bring doughnuts (that he could correctly order). The one drawback with this “triumph of the middling” is that Walz face planted when he needed to deliver most for the campaign. His debate with JD Vance wasn’t as bad as Joe Biden’s disastrous debate, because no one questioned his health or ability to enter into contracts. However, Harris might have questioned the choices that put him on that stage, where Vance thoroughly inspected Walz’s wallet for him.

“When Tim fell for [Vance’s congenial act] and started nodding and smiling at JD’s fake bipartisanship, I moaned to Doug, ‘What is happening?’” Harris writes.

“I told the television screen: ‘You’re not there to make friends with the guy who is attacking your running mate.’”

Harris continues, “Then he fumbled his answer when the moderator, predictably, questioned why he had claimed to be in Hong Kong during the democracy protests in Tiananmen Square.”

Walz didn’t simply respond that he’d gotten his dates mixed up — a clear contrast to Vance’s admitted lies about Haitian migrants in Ohio. Instead, Walz “talked about biking in Nebraska”.

“The following weekend, Saturday Night Live did a sketch in which actors posed as Doug and me, sitting on our couch, watching the debate,” Harris writes. “While I did not in fact spit out wine, it was otherwise uncanny in its portrait of our evening.”

(The actors “posing” as Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff were Maya Rudolph and Andy Samberg. That’s also Dana Carvey pulling off his presidential candidate trifecta. Watch below and, well, wow.)

I was originally excited when Harris picked Walz as her running mate, but I confess that I shared her reaction (both real and SNL version) to Walz’s choke-athon performance at the VP debate. That’s when I had some serious second thoughts, as I imagine she did. After all, Buttigieg and Shapiro would’ve pantsed that smug Vance. Unfortunately, when I posted that observation on social media, someone made a gross gay joke about Pete, but I don’t think fools like that were ever going to vote for Harris anyway.