At Monday afternoon’s signing ceremony for the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, Vice President Kamala Harris stepped up to the microphone to speak—just as someone else was being introduced.
“Please welcome Heather Kurtenbach,” the White House’s announcer said, calling up the union activist who joined Harris and President Joe Biden at center stage for the event.
Harris wasn’t having it. “In a moment,” she said, with a nervous chuckle.
Her flame-out during the presidential primaries suggests that she was never all that popular with Democrats to begin with. Her attempts to be more pugilistic ended in humiliation. Elsewhere, Harris’ sloppy attempts to rewrite her biography to seem more hip—everything from possibly lying about listening to Snoop Dogg while she was in college to definitely lying about her history of opposing drug legalization—attest to an uncomfortable relationship between who Harris is and who she’s trying to convince you she is.
“Perhaps the worst-kept secret in Washington is that tons of Democrats are terrified of the prospect of Kamala Harris becoming the Democratic Party presidential nominee at some point in the future,” wrote liberal political blogger Matthew Yglesias in July.