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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   42372 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 2025

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Something a little entertaining, after the current storm of words and views and blame being passed around and people joking and rejoicing about the Kirk assassination.

A few days before, I wouldn't have thought of this as light-hearted fun, but goodness me, reality is very surprising.

Kamala Harris has a new book out and guess what, she's not happy with the Biden(s) administration, and former Biden administration munchkins are not happy with her not being happy.

When Fox News attacked me on everything from my laugh, to my tone of voice, to whom I’d dated in my 20s, or claimed I was a “DEI hire,” the White House rarely pushed back with my actual résumé: two terms elected D.A., top cop in the second-largest department of justice in the United States, senator representing one in eight Americans.

Lorraine Voles, my chief of staff, constantly had to advocate for my role at events: “She’s not going to stand there like a potted plant. Give her two minutes of remarks. Have her introduce the president.”

They had a huge comms team; they had Karine Jean-Pierre briefing in the pressroom every day. But getting anything positive said about my work or any defense against untrue attacks was almost impossible.

Ordinarily, this would have been a great chance to chew over the election once more, and indeed the election before it. If Kamala had doubts about Biden running for a second time, why didn't she say more about that? She does give a sort of explanation about that - it would have been perceived as disloyal. "Yeah, but" is the rejoinder there. Was it about loyalty, or was it about personal ambition? Get on the wrong side of the Bidens, and kiss goodbye to any chance of running for president herself?

“It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.” We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision.

Many people want to spin up a narrative of some big conspiracy at the White House to hide Joe Biden’s infirmity. Here is the truth as I lived it. Joe Biden was a smart guy with long experience and deep conviction, able to discharge the duties of president. On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best. But at 81, Joe got tired. That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles. I don’t think it’s any surprise that the debate debacle happened right after two back-to-back trips to Europe and a flight to the West Coast for a Hollywood fundraiser. I don’t believe it was incapacity. If I believed that, I would have said so. As loyal as I am to President Biden, I am more loyal to my country.

I was well aware of my delicate status. Lore has it that every outgoing chief of staff always tells the incoming president’s chief of staff Rule No. 1: Watch the VP. Because I’d gone after him over busing in the 2019 primary debate, I came into the White House with what we lawyers call a “rebuttable presumption.” I had to prove my loyalty, time and time again.

She claims White House staffers were out to get her:

Worse, I often learned that the president’s staff was adding fuel to negative narratives that sprang up around me. One narrative that took a stubborn hold was that I had a “chaotic” office and unusually high staff turnover during my first year.

Some of those staffers do come back with "yeah, she was chaotic and useless as VP".

One former Biden administration member sounded off on Harris in comments made to Axios, arguing that the former vice president’s own deficiencies were the problem.

“Vice President Harris was simply not good at the job,” they said. “She had basically zero substantive role in any of the administration’s key work streams, and instead would just dive bomb in for stilted photo ops that exposed how out of depth she was.”

“[President Biden was] not the reason she struggled in office or tanked her 2019 [presidential] campaign,” they continued. “Or lost the 2024 campaign, for that matter. The independent variable there is the vice president, not Biden or his aides.”

So the question is, whither Harris now? She seems to have ruled out running for governor of California, so does that mean she is getting ready to put herself forward again in 2028? But will that work - given the split as above between her camp and the Biden camp - and does Joe have enough remaining support in the party to put the kibosh on her, or is he completely gone and she's trying to put distance between herself and the Biden White House ("it wasn't my fault! they didn't support me! I was afraid to speak up! Jill was the tyrant queen!") in order to scrub the memory of the failed campaign?

With Newsom positioning himself strongly as a potential candidate (see the copying Trump's social media style and him being more aggressive on lefty policy, moving back to the centre) does she have a chance, or will it be Hillary Clinton Part Deux: Three Times A Loser?

Arguing over "whither the Democratic Party with regard to Harris?" is way more small potatoes than in the wake of the assassination. Just something to let us all take our minds off heated topics for a bit.

I don’t think it’s any surprise that the debate debacle happened right after two back-to-back trips to Europe and a flight to the West Coast for a Hollywood fundraiser

Crazy that this explanation is being resuscitated. The first trip was on june 6th for d-day, to france. The second one on june 12th, to italy for g7. He returned to the US on the 15th of june. The debate was on june 27th, 12 days later. Nobody has 12 days of jet lag.

Yeah i distinctly remember that he got a week of debate prep and everyone was bewildered how his staff didn’t notice his impairment

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