Kamala Harris is pushing herself as the ‘change candidate’ – but it’s clear she’s just Biden 2.0

So much for Kamala Harris “turning the page” and “charting a new way forward.”

Twice in a few hours this week, she tied herself to Joe Biden in disastrous media appearances that sank her campaign’s entire pitch.

The “change candidate” is just more of the same.

The irony is that she could not have been in friendlier territory, cooed over by the ladies of “The View” and cosseted by Stephen Colbert as part of a series of low-risk media encounters designed to reanimate her stalled campaign and counter the view that she was hiding from scrutiny.

The lethal blow was delivered by none other than Sunny Hostin, the ultra-liberal “View” co-host  who asked the most devastating question of the campaign — “Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?”

A pained look came over Harris’ face as if she were wrestling with some internal demon.

“There is not a thing that comes to mind,” she said in stilted fashion.

Spare any ‘change’?

A few hours later, Harris had a chance to clean up her gaffe when Colbert pitched her the same softball: “Polling shows that a lot of people really want this to be a change election . . .  You are a member of the present administration. Under a Harris administration, what would the major changes be, and what would stay the same?” he asked.

But Harris still hadn’t figured out the central question of her candidacy — why is she running at all?

“Well, I’m obviously not Joe Biden,” she said before descending into the vacuous gibberish that has become her trademark, delivered with a haughty nasal tone.

It is painful to hear and even worse to transcribe, but here goes: “With, you know, 28 days to go, I’m not Donald Trump. And so when we think about the significance of what this next generation of leadership looks like, were I to be elected president, it is about, frankly, I, I, I LOVE the American people, and I BELIEVE in our country. I, I, I LOVE that it is our character and nature to be an AMBITIOUS people. You know, we have ASPIRATIONS, we have DREAMS. We have incredible work ethic.”

There was more, but you get the picture.

The true awfulness has to be seen because she punctuates what is now called her “word salad” with fake passion and hand-on-heart sincerity and disconcerting hand-waving that bears no relation to what she is saying.

You can almost see the polls sink with every utterance.

She must hope that if she vomits out enough words, people will lose track of what she said.

But the message was crystal clear.

She offers nothing new.

Every toxic legacy of the Harris-Biden administration is co-owned by her — the illegal-migrant invasion, the botched Afghanistan withdrawal and the terrorist threat both disasters have unleashed on this country, rampant crime and inflation, sky-high grocery prices and a world on fire.

Anyone who has suffered imposter syndrome recognizes the symptoms in Harris and can empathize.

Her up-talk and vocal tremors give her away. Insecurity leeches from every pore.

But she’s not running to become HR director.

She wants to be leader of the free world.

The more we see of her, the more preposterous that prospect seems.

There is a reason her campaign has kept her hidden away from press conferences and robust interviews.

Things must be pretty bad to risk putting her out there this week for a sudden crush of media appear­ances.

Biden’s bruised ego

But how to explain why she did not have a clever answer already prepared to distance herself from the Biden legacy?

It’s Joe.

He won’t allow it.

It must have dawned on the president that, far from having clean hands, his VP may have played a sneaky role in his political demise.

The New York Times reported on Sept. 24 that one of Harris’ best friends, billionaire widow Laurene Powell Jobs, was instrumental behind the scenes, circulating polling data to fellow donors after the president’s disastrous June debate showing that he couldn’t win the election.
Several donors told the Times that Jobs’ research, disseminated by her aide David Simas, a former ­Obama staffer, “was influential in encouraging them to mobilize against Mr. Biden.”

Ever since, the president has engaged in passive-aggressive behavior that seems designed to upstage Harris.

This week, after Harris foolishly tried to pick a fight with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — who was busy preparing for a once-in-a-lifetime hurricane to hit the state — Biden smoothly sang the Florida governor’s praises.

Biden said DeSantis “has been cooperative” and is “doing a great job,” and that the president had given him Biden’s personal phone number in case he needed anything.

This was in direct contradiction of Harris’ accusation that the governor was “playing political games” and refusing to take her calls.

DeSantis had already humiliated Harris by saying he wasn’t aware that she had called, that he was talking to the president and the FEMA director, anyway, and that in her entire vice presidency she had never shown interest in any of the other hurricanes he had managed so why was she trying to use him as a campaign prop when he was busy?

Then along came Biden for the knockout blow — and he timed his comments to steal the limelight from Harris in the same hour as she was appearing on “The View” snarking at DeSantis.

Biden also upstaged Harris last week, making a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room moments after she had begun speaking in Detroit, forcing TV networks to switch to his ­remarks.

“We were actually about to go live to Vice President Kamala Harris who’s speaking right now in ­Detroit,” CNN anchor Boris Sanchez griped on air.

“And apparently she’s talking about this port strike ending, she’s trying to appeal to union workers, and yet you have the president of the United States come out, clearly overshadowing her.”

In his briefing, Biden declared that he and Harris were one.

They were “singing from the same song sheet.”

Dueling speeches

He made clear that he won’t tolerate any effort by Harris to distance herself from him.

As he left the briefing room that afternoon, a reporter asked if he wanted to “reconsider dropping out” of the presidential race.

Biden turned around in the doorway with a wicked grin and quipped, “I’m back in!”

He has been privately complaining to allies about being erased from the “national conversation” and “how quickly the party that he has served for more than five decades appears to have moved on from him,” according to an NBC News report last week.

He was miffed that Harris had stopped mentioning him in her campaign speeches, and was “particularly stung” when she distanced herself from him during her debate against Donald Trump, by saying, “Clearly, I am not Joe Biden.”

The political gift is not lost on Trump, whose campaign sent out a press release thanking Biden for “upstag[ing]” Harris and “ensuring the eyes of the world were on him, not Kamala.”

“More Biden is good for us,” a Trump campaign official said.