Facing Florida‘s second Category 5 hurricane in under two weeks, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) did what he has done multiple times before. The governor picked up the phone to collaborate with the president, and for the third time in a row, the Republican and the Democrat set aside their penchant for partisanship and executed some of the more competent handling of major hurricanes in the Sunshine State’s history.
For some reason, Vice President Kamala Harris managed to find a problem with this.
In three years as vice president, Harris has never once reached out to DeSantis over a Florida hurricane, just as she never befriended colleagues across the aisle while she was the most left-wing member of the Senate. Instead, while DeSantis was quietly coordinating with the actual sitting president over a looming disaster capable of killing thousands, Harris decided to insert herself into the news cycle by attacking DeSantis for not calling her.
After NBC cited totally legitimate unnamed sources claiming that DeSantis had not responded to calls made by Harris to his office, the presidential nominee called DeSantis “utterly irresponsible” and “selfish” for “playing political games.” The problem, of course, is that even if there is a game, Harris is the only one playing.
Biden has repeatedly and effusively praised the “very gracious” and “cooperative” DeSantis for “doing a great job,” denying that DeSantis needed to call Harris back when asked by the White House press pool.
DeSantis lauded Biden in kind, confirming that he has maintained “close contact” and “worked well with the president.” But the vice president?
“She has never offered any support,” DeSantis said of Harris’s 3 1/2-year silence. “I don’t have time for those games. I don’t care about her campaign. Obviously, I’m not a supporter of hers, but she’s not — she has no role in this process, and so I’m working with the people I need to be working with.”
Harris, who spent 39 days as the Democratic Party’s de facto leader refusing to sit for a single interview, is now spending her final weeks before Election Day trying to start a one-sided feud and calling into the Weather Channel to pretend she’s in charge of the White House’s hurricane response. Yet 12 hours later, the White House press office reminded the public that, as DeSantis said, “she has no role in this process.” DeSantis spoke on Thursday morning with Biden and the Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator, while Harris remained AWOL from the actual West Wing.
Anyone and everyone who followed Harris’s ascent from state attorney general to a heartbeat away from the presidency in just four years and 17 days has long known that she’s a paper tiger who crumbles under the actual demands of governing. Unlike Biden, who cemented his political legacy as a deal-maker by handshakes, and occasional arm-twisting, across the aisle in the Senate, Harris made few legislative contributions and even fewer friends in Congress. When the Los Angeles Times tried to find allies across the aisle during her failed 2020 bid for the presidency, the best the paper could find was Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who confirmed she is a “very pleasant person.”
“But I’d be hard-pressed to think of —” Cornyn continued. “Has she achieved any legislation since she’s been in the Senate?”
And unlike Biden, who used those Senate relationships to make himself crucial to former President Barack Obama by whipping votes for his boss, Harris has been a nonentity on the Hill. Republican senators have spent four years backchanneling through lifelong Biden aides like Steve Ricchetti and Mike Donilon or Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), also of Biden’s native Delaware, to make deals with the White House quietly. Harris’s most consequential role in four years as president of the Senate has been to swing by for five minutes to cast tiebreaking votes and then jet off to fundraisers and photo ops while the rest of the party got back to the unglamorous work of governing.
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Harris, of course, has tried to have it both ways, adopting the campaign slogan “A New Way Forward” but admitting there is nothing she would have done differently during the historically unpopular Biden-Harris administration. She wants to position herself as both a radical break from the burdens of Biden’s approval and also the current and crucial power behind the throne.
Alas, just because the media wish it otherwise, it doesn’t change the fact that Harris is not actually president yet. She might get to play dress-up as such during campaign events and pretend so in the press, but when push comes to shove, she proved herself once again a petty and unmasterful political operator who has been relegated back to the children’s table. The most damning indictment is that this was not done by DeSantis but rather the man who made her the presidential nominee.