Earlier this week, it was confirmed that Kamala Harris would be going to California on Wednesday to campaign for Governor Gavin Newsom as he faces a recall election there. Her trip had been postponed after the terror attack on Kabul airport left 13 U.S. service members dead. The scheduling of the trip was a clear sign that the White House considers Afghanistan old news, even though there is an unknown number of American citizens being held hostage there.
Well, if that wasn’t bad enough, Joe Biden will also be going to California to campaign for Newsom.
Biden will go to California next week to support Gov. Newsom in his campaign against a recall, @PressSec tells @MarioDParker on Air Force One. Details of the trip are coming later today, she says.
— Josh Wingrove (@josh_wingrove) September 7, 2021
The visits of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are meant to help drive up voter turnout of Democrats in the state. With the exception of one outlier, all recent polls suggest that Newsom is safe from being recalled—though polls range from single- to double-digit leads for “No, Do Not Remove.” Still, there’s something odd about bringing in Kamala and Joe Biden—especially now, when the optics of them going to California after leaving Americans behind in Afghanistan are terrible.
It’s quite clear that Afghanistan, and the Americans left behind there, are no longer factors in the decision-making of White House advisors—if not Joe Biden and Kamala Harris themselves. It’s hard to believe that Joe Biden, who has been so worried about the optics of his actions that he actually didn’t want to conduct rescue operations out of fear of a Black Hawk Down-style tragedy and grounded private planes from evacuating Americans in Afghanistan because it made him look bad, somehow thinks campaigning in California is appropriate at this juncture.
I guess, in the end, everything Joe Biden has done recently has been about politics, not doing the right thing.
