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One reason why I didn't consider voting for Kamala (of many) was that if she were half-way competent she should have taken control of the Biden White House. Either become President herself, or otherwise controlled things. If the Cabinet didn't think she'd make a good president, why should I?
I give Vance to after the Midterms, when he could serve 2.5 Presidential terms legally. If he doesn't take over and Trump keeps deteriorating to the degree we saw Biden, it tells me that he's not actually a leader. That doesn't necessarily mean the 25th Amendment gets invoked right away, but there would be a clear move of the Cabinet deferring to him, him taking more direct actions, etc.
Well, according to the book excerpts, the Biden staffers and administration and Bidens were determined not to let her do anything like that, so they deliberately kept her overshadowed and in the background, or handed her thankless tasks. Plus, the VP is supposed to stand by and just be ceremonial/decorative, not try to muscle in on the presidential turf.
The sniping between her and some ex-Biden staffers is entertaining, but to be fair, no VP really gets a chance to take over unless the President is pretty much incapable, and in Biden's case there was a combination of "we have to cover this up so as not to give Trump and the Republicans any advantage" and Jill etc. were keeping the reins firmly in their own grip, with no intention whatsoever of handing over power to Kamala at all.
Our Constitution and the 25th Amendment is pretty strong evidence against this. They're the president's backup, expected to take over the role if the president becomes incapacitated.
If Harris couldn't take on Jill Biden, then how can she possibly take on Putin? Why didn't we have Jill running for president instead?
No one intends to hand you the reins, a leader TAKES the reins. Like Jill took the reins. Harris could have gotten the Cabinet on her side and just pulled a 25th, nothing Jill could have done. But the Cabinet preferred a zombie Biden and Jill in charge over Harris.
Likewise, if Trump becomes a zombie, I fully expect Vance to take over, otherwise he's not worth backing for 2028.
The VP takes over if the President is incapacitated. Now it has come out that Biden was functionally incapacitated, but nobody wanted to rock that boat. Everyone wanted to keep it hushed up, and that was part of Harris' problem: be the whistleblower and be blamed for sowing division and revealing all the dirty linen, or keep her mouth shut and hope that Joe would stick to the plan and hand over to her?
As for taking on Jill Biden, nobody wanted that fight. And yeah, maybe Jill should run herself 🤣
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That's not what a competent takeover would look like. It would be more like "Weekend At Biden's" for the remainder of the term, and an announcement that he's not going to seek reelection, and is endorsing Kamala from day one.
There's no reason to force someone on your team to go through the humiliation of being declared unfit for office, unless it absolutely cannot be avoided, but the way they handled it was an absolute blunder, preventing anyone from walking away from the situation with their dignity intact.
Yeah, and I hope I was clear in my first comment that I think Vance can do a Weekend at Trump's and that would still show competent leadership. But that's clearly not what Kamala did, she was comfortable getting shut out of the decision tree and then couldn't fight back into a position of leadership.
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IMHO the Biden admin showed how the 25th Amendment is broken. His cabinet of lazy political hacks enjoyed having no boss. Imagine if you were terrible at your job already, but you knew your boss wasn't going to even check in on you for months, if not years at a time? Also you just gave zero fucks about the organization you were in, and only cared about enriching yourself?
If they 25A'ed Biden, their gravy train would have come to a screeching halt. They might have actually been expected to do things.
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