Wednesday Garage Sale Kamala Open Comments

It seems that pics with Biden’s insurance policy, for a fundraiser, have had the price slashed from $15,000 each to $5,000.

Nobody wants a picture with Kamala.

DNC is slashing prices for a photo w/ Kamala Harris. Tickets for a photo with the VP at the Women’s Leadership Forum started at $15,000, but it failed to sell enough tickets & is being postponed. VP’s June fundraiser in Cali is charging $5,000 for a photo

And then there’s discussion of the next election:

I wonder how his calculations about running again would have been affected by having a popular VP who’s widely viewed as a future leader of the party. Realistically it’s impossible for a vice president to have high approval when the president himself doesn’t, but you can imagine an alternate universe in which Biden has a young charismatic veep who comes off polished and ready for primetime in his or her public appearances. In that situation, party chieftains might already be leaning on Sleepy Joe to pass the baton and be the “bridge” to the next generation of Democratic leaders, as he once described himself.

As it is, with Harris below 40 percent favorability, how eager can they be to see him step aside? Even an elderly, badly politically wounded Joe Biden might be a stronger play in 2024 than she is. Biden may see himself as having a duty to run in those circumstances, even if he privately doesn’t feel up to it. Tara Palmeri reports that his staff is getting ready for a reelection announcement in the spring but they’re not sure if he intends to follow through or if the preparations are a just-in-case thing. Either way, everyone’s hoping for a decision soon — a steep ask of a politician who’s infamous for dithering.

The prospect of the incoming congressional Republican majority going after the Bidens hammer-and-tongs is also reportedly weighing on him:

Biden is intently focused on his family, who have become an “unhelpful, distraction” to the White House, as the senior official put it, and a huge consideration for the president. People close to Biden have told me that he is genuinely wondering whether he wants to put himself and his family through the excessive scrutiny that would accompany re-election. Hunter Biden is now under federal investigation, and the White House has been preparing for the reality that Republicans, once they retake the House, could mount a scorched-earth inquisition with the aim of scrutinizing his alleged nefarious political activity and trying to tie it to the president. A Washington Post article reported that senior officials are already strategizing how the White House counsel’s office can be restructured to deal with the “onslaught of investigative requests.” That could mean a war room responding to daily subpoenas. Whatever privacy Biden’s family has preserved over the years, through its many heartbreaking tragedies, could be exposed to the mainstream media through congressional hearings…

Biden also won’t have the luxury of running a campaign from his basement, thanks to Covid restrictions, this time around. He’ll likely have to get his hands dirty, too. “Is he going to play by the rules as he wishes they were, the rules of the past when there was civility? Or is he going to play by the rules that Trump has made, which is a blood bath,” the senior White House official asked rhetorically. “And does he even want to?”

But can they carry her across the finish line?

If Biden ends up retiring and Harris gets a primary challenger (or several) to succeed him, the order of the primaries could matter greatly in deciding who ends up being the nominee. For instance, one recent poll found her approval among African-Americans at 73 percent, and South Carolina kingmaker James Clyburn recently told the WSJ that Biden and Harris are “one and two on the ticket, but that’s one and two in my heart as well.”

If the first states to vote in 2024 have large black populations, Harris could sweep them and in so doing build enough early momentum to assure her nomination. And so the DNC can put a thumb on the scale for her — or against her — depending on how they schedule the 2024 primaries. FiveThirtyEight recently tried to game out how they might do so, weighing factors like a state’s diversity, its union membership, its swing-state status, and whether it holds a primary or a caucus.

Because obviously, tricks and manipulations are her friends while truth and a good message are not.