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Did you know that Karine Jean-Pierre was a Black LGBTQ Woman? Of course you didn't.
The above link is to KJP's "interview" with the New Yorker. It's exceptionally horrible. I don't usually get too wrapped up in "bad interviews" because journalists routinely use them to get the other party tied up in knots with impossible to answer questions.
The thing about this interview is that Isaac Chotiner isn't even really asking questions. He's mostly politely asking KJP "what do you mean?" and she keeps answering it worse and worse. I'm having a hard time thinking of a worse written interview.
The culture war angles are too obvious. DEI, rejection of reality, identity politics. They're all here. What stuck me those most was the word salad. Trump is always ridiculed for his own word salad but the left, yet, this is the White House press secretary struggling to build cohesive thoughts.
I've held an unprovable theory for many years now that people who routinely hold demonstrably untrue ideas in their head do some sort of literal brain damage to themselves. A sort cognitive self-harm wherein an emotional appeal is so strong that it dulls the synapses. Again, unprovable, but this interview makes me hold that faith just a little more.
Reading the interview, the interviewer was on a warpath. KJP seems to have stepped outside the party line with her book and now she needs to be brought to heel or pushed aside. Lines like this from the interviewer:
Wow, what a shitball of a question.
This comes after KJP maintains that the Democrats had no idea if they had a better candidate than Biden. Which has to be considered at least somewhat true. So points to her for that.
Outside of that, it's rather obvious KJP is carrying water for Biden. But to what end? Is he not out of politics? The earnest defense of his honor, whilst admirable, is a political dead end. Suicide, even. She's a fish out of water and the interviewer is hammering on that fact again and again. To a point where it obvious, which KJP picks up on at the end of the interview:
I think these final lines sum up the interview quite well. A politically daft operator and a democrat establishment shill embarrassing one another. Sure, KJP was floundering throughout the interview, and I'm sure the book seemed incoherent to those who feel which way the winds blowing politically, but getting caught off guard by a political hitman in a hostile interview can happen to anyone.
To steelman KJP: Running with Biden through the election and then benching him and getting Kamala in as VP was probably the best choice given they did not have a better candidate than Kamala. My guess is that the people behind the scenes got greedy, pushed Biden aside and went with Kamala to their detriment. To that extent, KJP defending the honor of Biden is just as much a political dead end as the interviewers defense of the current democrat establishment. Two political losers fighting over lost scraps.
Biden is clearly relitigating his legacy. Which is why Hunter came out not too long ago or we get comments when Jake Tapper releases a book.
But it is interesting that the two people who seem most willing to public go down with the Biden ship are black women.
It makes some sense with KJP since she'll never get another major role in the party.
But Kamala seems to be making noises like she'll run for something again and she's still providing cover for his health issues. She was also a late addition that wasn't particularly loved in Bidenworld apparently so one wonders what she gains.
This is not actually a defense of KJP and her ilk.
What most likely happened was that Kamala was already on the ticket and so could use the money raised. The other issue is that many of the other Democratic candidates that did seem viable saw the situation was a mess and knew they could run in four years (when Trump might have nuked his popularity again) with a full campaign. Once Biden spitefully endorsed Kamala it was especially not worth it.
But that's not the reason it's not a defense of KJP. Another factor was people like Jean Pierre who deliberately tried to poison the well on any sort of contested primary by making it about the denial of a black woman her legitimate role. That was another reason candidates couldn't jump on.
If that had happened, KJP would be complaining again as a black, queer woman.
The Biden element in the party, if there is one, may still have some influence. Or more that if Jill et al. feel spiteful about what happened, they can make sure she crashes and burns. So trying to placate the Biden partisans is worth it.
Especially if there is the hint that maybe Obama wasn't as enthused about Kamala as she might have liked, which even as early in her book as I am, I am getting. And she definitely has it in for Gavin Newsom, so once again, building alliances to counter her rivals is important:
Incredible gigachad move. Makes me move him up a notch (to notch 1).
No, move him back down. Newsom did put out an endorsement that same day, and was in fact one of the first to do so, so I wouldn't give him too much credit there. So the inclusion of this text in the book is actually a smear against a potential rival and a mischaracterization. Not that I'm going to cry any rivers about it
Yeah, if he did endorse her, then this is Kamala getting her retaliation in first. She really is planning to run herself, or at least queer the pitch for Newsom. I am now fascinated to know what behind-the-scenes dust-up in California Democratic politics is behind this rivalry. Maybe she was thinking of running for governor herself previously but Newsom out-manoeuvred her there (he did manage to get Biden to throw support behind him during the recall election, which might have been when Kamala got squished, if indeed she was thinking that was her chance; it looks pretty clear they were only willing to let no-hopers* go forward so Newsom would not be seriously challenged).
*E.g. "Kevin Paffrath, YouTuber Real estate broker UFOlogist Opioid Vendor Landlord". UFOlogist? Well, it is California!
Okay, that was 2021, she was VP. Can a sitting VP resign and run for a different office, or is that a no-no? Was she maybe bummed out that, if she had known there would be a recall in 2021, she would have waited for that instead?
State level politics regularly has utter clowns get into surprisingly important backbencher positions that get to jump into the limelight for stuff like that(Texas had an ancient aliens theorist as a criminal justice committee head a couple of congresses ago, because the coalition politics required a democrat and he was the seniormost one without serious delusional higher ambitions. These kinds of stories just happen all the time in state level politics everywhere).
I'm also not sure that Kamala's ego can be discounted from political factors. She's made some poor political decisions in the past and 'it's my turn now' is a known failure mode for prominent democrats.
I was wondering why the heck she was making remarks about possibly running again. Someone with sense would realise that VP was as high as she is going to get, and that the only reason she got the job is Jim Clyburn and the black caucus demanding quid pro quo for supporting Biden, that it was owed to them to give a black woman the job.
But she may be vain enough to believe all the cope about "greatest candidate ever, sexism and racism and MAGA to blame" and think that the party and the nation are breathlessly waiting for her to announce she'll run again. Hence the dig at Newsom.
What the heck she thinks she's doing re: Buttigieg I honestly have no idea. This far into her book, she's all "oh my great pal Pete" but then she gives an interview about "couldn't possibly pick him for anything, way too gay". That's just begging him to refuse to take her calls in future: "Sorry, Kamala, wouldn't want to get my gay cooties all over your shiny campaign". If she's trying to distance herself, however clumsily, from the LGBT2SQIA+ stuff now that wokeness is on the wane, then okay "Pete too gay" but it's a terrible way to go about it.
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It's on a ten-point scale, so notch 1 isn't high praise.
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Oh, I think that for California power politics, Newsom has her taped and she knows she can't beat him. That's why I was surprised that she didn't decide to run for governor while he runs for president, but then again maybe the inside baseball there is that his machine is too entrenched to let her have an easy victory there. I am surprised she is willing to take him on, but I guess she's hoping to invoke the power of the narrative around "Which do you, the party of representation and inclusion, want to pick as your public face: a Black and Asian woman or yet another (moderately) rich white guy?"
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