Politicians change positions based on ever-evolving incentive structures. Former deputy chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) ally Tulsi Gabbard is a Trump campaign surrogate, and former Vice President Dick Cheney, the architect of the second Iraq War, has endorsed the same candidate as the members of the anti-war, anarchist rock band Rage Against the Machine.

2024 PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE LIVE UPDATES: TRUMP AND HARRIS FACE OFF IN ABC SHOWDOWN

Biden is a historically unpopular president. His unpopularity, not his senility, forced powerful Democrats such as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and former President Barack Obama to take matters into their own hands, ignoring the will of Democratic voters and replacing Biden with Harris at the top of the ticket. It is in Harris’s best interest to run away screaming from Biden’s disastrous record, but the president and his team appear to view things differently.

On Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre made sure to clarify that Harris still works closely with the president and is an integral part of the Biden agenda.

“We want to make sure that people understand, the American people understand that this continues to be a partnership, this is a partnership,” Jean-Pierre told the White House press corps. “The president respects her leadership, respects her bold policy ideas … and I think it’s important for the American people to understand that, to be very clear, and that’s one thing we want to be very clear about from here.”

From the decision to hastily pull out of Afghanistan without first evacuating civilian assets to casting the tiebreaking vote on the economically calamitous Inflation Reduction Act, Harris has been at the forefront of bad Biden policy for the duration of her vice presidency, a fact that her boss apparently feels no obligation to deny. In his mind, he picked a failed presidential candidate with no real record of achievement out of relative obscurity and elevated her to the second highest office in the land. Why would a proud man such as Biden, armed with the borderline-psychopathic ambition necessary to become the leader of the free world, allow a subordinate to throw his legacy under the bus?

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Harris is attempting to have her cake and eat it too. Anonymous staffers walk back her radical policies as she winks and nods at the rabid Democratic base, and the lapdog corporate press run cover for her as she refuses to answer questions from even the most friendly of journalists. Unfortunately for Harris, Biden and company, perhaps unexpectedly, aren’t playing ball.

At Tuesday night’s presidential debate, former President Donald Trump will attempt to highlight Harris’s record. The 45th president will, or should, remind the public that she has claimed she was the “last person in the room” when the Afghanistan decision was made and had a hand in every inflation-causing decision to come out of the most economically illiterate administration since Franklin D. Roosevelt. Team Harris’s “win first, ask questions later” strategy was unlikely to survive a live, televised debate, and her boss’s pride is doing her absolutely no favors.

Brady Leonard (@bradyleonard) is a musician, political strategist, and host of The No Gimmicks Podcast.