Have you ever wondered why vice presidents rarely win election to president? It's happened only four times; John Adams in 1796, Thomas Jefferson in 1800, Martin Van Buren in 1836, and George H. W. Bush in 1988. Richard Nixon won eight years after he left office as Eisenhower's vice president and Biden won four years after Obama left office. Nine other vice presidents succeeded to the presidency following the death of the president in office.

It seems that vice presidents have a very hard time escaping the shadow of their running mates. Bush succeeded the popular, successful president Ronald Reagan. But presidential popularity doesn't automatically lead to his vice president's ascension to the presidency. Bill Clinton was also popular, but Al Gore failed to get elected.

The fact is that a vice president enters any race for the presidency carrying the president's baggage. And in many cases, that baggage is tied securely around the neck of the vice president.

Kamala Harris, the appointed Democratic nominee, has bigger troubles. Joe Biden, a man known for harboring grudges, isn't demonstrating the requisite enthusiasm about her candidacy. In fact, he rarely allows an occasion to go by where he can twist the knife a few degrees.

So why isn't Harris running from Biden as fast as she can? She had two glorious chances to do so recently: the Harris-friendly interview on "The View" and Stephen Colbert's show a few hours later.

Colbert asks: "Under a Harris administration, what would the major changes be and what would stay the same?"

Harris: "Sure. Well, I mean, I'm obviously not Joe Biden. So that would be one change. But also I think it's important to say with 28 days to go, I'm not Donald Trump." pic.twitter.com/hShW96CFGY

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) October 9, 2024

Boiling Frogs:

She’s vice president to a man whose job approval has been below 42 percent nearly every day of the past year. If there’s any topic on which she should have had a whiz-bang response ready to go, it’s “You’re going to be Joe Biden 2.0, aren’t you?”

As her answer unfurled, the most she could do to separate herself from the president was to say that she’d put a Republican in her Cabinet.

But fine. We’re all human, we all whiff on easy pitches sometimes. Fortunately for Harris, she had another nationally televised interview lined up a few hours later—and even more fortunately, she was asked the “What would you do differently?” question again.

She got a do-over. And she whiffed. Again.

Perhaps Harris is overly grateful for Biden plucking her from near obscurity to be his vice president and then closing off debate on his successor by anointing her as his heir. He didn't have to do that. There were plenty of ideas about how to go about choosing a new candidate.

Whatever the reason for her reluctance to clearly break with Biden, it's dragging her down and will lead to her defeat unless she can get clear of Biden's enormous political baggage.

Note that in her recent interviews, she has the most trouble answering questions about the border and prices. Her first instinct is to change the subject. It makes her look shifty. And now being unable to break free from Biden's death grip means she's going down with the ship.

Let’s say she had flagged border security as a point of disagreement between them. That would have opened a can of worms: Which border policies in particular would she have changed? Did she advise the president against them at the time? Why didn’t he listen to her?

Even if she had lined up some crafty dodges for those questions (“I can’t comment on my private conversations with Joe”), the fact that she had identified an area of conflict between them would be catnip for future interviewers to explore with her. “You said previously that you oppose Biden’s border policy with respect to A, B, and C. But why don’t you also oppose it with respect to X, Y, and Z?”

It's the Kobayashi Maru scenario. She's damned if she does and damned if she doesn't. Separating herself from Biden on any issue will force the media to ask her where else she differs on the issues from Biden. That's a can of worms that Harris almost certainly doesn't want to open.