Biden’s gaffes complicate Harris’ final stretch, worrying Democratic insiders

WASHINGTON – US Vice-President Kamala Harris’ strategists may have thought they were avoiding problems by keeping President Joe Biden holed up in the White House. But now they may need to take away his Zoom password too.

In the final days before a coin-toss election, where any small shift theoretically could be decisive, Mr Biden has twice caused headaches for his vice-president with ill-timed gaffes. His latest, during a video call with Latino supporters on the night of Oct 29, forced Ms Harris to spend part of the last Wednesday of her campaign distancing herself.

Mr Biden was denouncing racist comments made by a speaker at a recent Donald Trump rally when he appeared to call supporters of Trump “garbage”. He later explained that he meant that “the hateful rhetoric” from the Trump surrogate was “garbage”, not his supporters generally.

But Republicans, expressing umbrage, quickly pounced on what they hoped would be a galvanising moment for their base and instantly began fund raising off it.

The unscripted remark came at a particularly inopportune moment for Ms Harris, barely a half-hour before she took the stage at the Ellipse just outside the White House for a high-profile rally where she unveiled her closing argument before tens of thousands of supporters.

Even as she assailed Trump as a “petty tyrant”, her speech was filled with talk of unity and working across the aisle if she wins, a message undercut by the perception that her own president was denigrating Americans who vote for her opponent.

On the morning of Oct 30, Ms Harris disavowed any such sentiment. Speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force Two outside Washington, she noted that Mr Biden had “clarified his comments”. But she added: “Let me be clear: I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”

She also said that she and Mr Biden had spoken on the night of Oct 29, but that they had not discussed his remarks.

Ms Harris has already been trying to stand apart from Mr Biden and present herself as an agent of change. She did not include him in her Oct 29 night rally, even though she held it at what amounts to his own backyard. Instead, he sat inside the White House, unwelcome and unneeded, while Democrats who once cheered him applauded her instead just a few hundred metres away.

“I don’t think these comments by the President are going to matter much at all come Election Day, but it’s incredibly frustrating to watch as the Harris campaign has to spend precious time and energy clarifying what the President was trying to say,” said Mr Jim Manley, a long-time top adviser to Senate Democratic leaders.

“We are way past the need to be concerned about the President’s feelings,” Mr Manley added. “After all, he dealt her a pretty bad hand when he only finally agreed to drop out with months to go. If the Harris campaign feels the need to distance themselves, they should feel free to do so.”

Other Democrats tried to play down the significance of the latest mistake for Ms Harris’ strategists. “I got a feeling they are focused on more consequential things,” said Mr Cornell Belcher, who was a pollster for president Barack Obama. “This is a lot of nothing.”

Trump’s complaints may ring hollow to many, since he has practised the politics of division for years, regularly disparaging his opponents as “vermin” and the “enemy from within” and even threatening to use the military to round up liberal opponents. Democrats dismissed what they deemed Trump’s crocodile tears over Mr Biden’s remark.

“These comments are not remotely in the same ballpark as what Trump’s team has been saying all year,” said Ms Margie Omero, another Democratic pollster. “Never mind ballpark – not even in the same galaxy. Polls consistently show people of both parties are sick of our country’s divisions, and only Harris is reaching out to voters across the political spectrum.”

But Ms Harris is not reaching out much to Mr Biden lately. While she has hit the trail with Mr Obama and other Democratic luminaries, she has not appeared in nearly two months at a formal campaign event with the President who first named her to his ticket in 2020. Democrats have made clear that he is not especially wanted on the campaign trail. While she plays arenas packed with thousands of supporters, he has held few campaign events, often in rooms with just a few hundred people.

Mr Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist, said it was smart for Ms Harris to create distance with Mr Biden. “You want a new page,” he said. “She loves him, she respects him, but you’ve got to make your own way without the shadow of him. There’s one thing she and Donald Trump have to do, which is be the change agent. And you can’t be the change agent if he’s there.”

Keeping Mr Biden in the White House did not keep him from tripping up. During his video call with Latino supporters on Oct 29, he was assailing comments made at Trump’s rally on Oct 27 at Madison Square Garden. Mr Tony Hinchcliffe, a comedian supporting Trump, called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”, comments that enraged many Hispanic leaders and put the former president on the defensive.

“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters – his, his demonisation of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American,” Mr Biden said in the video call. The White House later released a transcript rendering Mr Biden’s comment with an apostrophe, meaning “his supporter’s” demonisation.

With six days until the election, Ms Harris tried to move on after addressing the matter, heading to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. She again struck themes of unity. “The vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us,” she said in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Mr Biden remained back at the White House, hosting an early Halloween event for local students and children of military service members, and trying to avoid handing any more unintended tricks to his vice-president. NYTIMES