THE BIDEN PRESIDENCY IS A DRAG ON THE BRAT VIBES.

A vice-president is supposed to be able to continue the administration's policies in case the president is incapable of continuing in office.  That makes the job of the current vice president harder, as she campaigns as a candidate of change whilst serving as acting president without the formalities of the 25th Amendment.

“The challenge” of having so little time left in such a short race, one adviser to the vice president told CNN, is “when you’re trying to reach undecided low-intensity voters, how do you actually communicate difference with Biden?”

Running as an extension of the president is not a strong position, Harris aides know, while asserting what she stands for is.

Neither aides in the Harris campaign nor the Biden White House would commit to another joint campaign event between now and the election.

Harris wants to create space, top aides say, but not too much space. She wants to be loyal — but she also wants to win.

You mean all that "landmark" legislation Buckwheat and the House of Stephanopolous keep rabbiting on about really isn't a selling point, and Flibbertigibbet can't say "let us continue" or offer some tweaks at the margin?  Maybe the simplest argument is the Trumpian "they didn't do a good job."

Part of leading Democrats’ focus on Biden is seeing him as the albatross embodiment for the unsettling feeling spreading among Democrats that the vice president is not — or at least, not yet — where she needs to be to win in just over four weeks. Still haunted by the 2016 election, they’re frustrated and despairing that even now, seemingly no number of Donald Trump’s offensive statements, lies, lack of plans or legal problems can shake his support.

For my part, a president who doesn't have a lot of plans for me sounds good, and irrespective of who is in the Whitehouse, a divided legislative branch is not without its appeal.

Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, there's no way for Flibbertigibbet and Knucklehead to put together a message that they could offer on a whistle-stop tour from Pennsylvania through Ohio into Michigan.

The former president and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, are trying to make Harris out to be the incumbent, talking as if she had been the one signing executive orders for the past three years. The balance is tricky for a vice president squeezed between battered voters desperate for change; Republicans responding to her every new proposal by asking why she hasn’t implemented them already; and an incumbent president whose numbers have been going up with some of the core constituencies she needs.

Biden’s and Harris’ separate appearances surveying Hurricane Helene damage on Wednesday is like much of what’s to come: “singing from the same song sheet,” as Biden put it on Friday — but rarely having them side by side.

Even that was a source of tension: Biden’s decision to go to North Carolina earlier in the week meant that Harris had to hold off on her own trip to a state that she is in an intense fight to win.

No issue for Harris is thornier than the escalating violence in the Middle East ahead of the anniversary of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks: With hundreds of thousands of votes on the line in battleground Michigan alone, a range of leaders are pushing her to explicitly distance herself from Biden, people familiar with the discussions tell CNN. But her aides know there can’t be any daylight when she’s also sitting at his right hand in the Situation Room.

As if the Jarrett regency isn't dithering enough about "restraint" and "proportionality" already.  Voters who want a tougher line on Jihad, Inc. are probably already Trump voters, reluctant or not.  And what's this talk about "battered voters desperate for change?"  All that money printing, and all that legislation passed at the margin of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, and that's not enough to make Not Trump a selling point?  Particularly because "we're not going back" ostensibly means No More Trump.

But then, it's easy enough to see that the private sector job growth since 2021 is in the free states.

But the economy remains the most frustrating for them, with voters still complaining about a recovery that keeps coming in stronger than almost any expert predicted. Biden wants the credit, while Harris wants to talk about the pain that people are feeling and how much more there is to be done without being undercut for the suffering on this administration’s watch.

That came to a head in September, when Harris responded to the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cut with a statement about how much more work needs to be done. Then her aides had to spend hours negotiating with their White House counterparts to scale back a victory lap speech Biden planned to give the next day, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Asked what kind of role she would want Biden to have in the last stretch of Harris’ campaign, given how both the situation in Israel and economic frustrations are reverberating through her home state, Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell said, “That’s a complicated question.”

The political bundles are too big, and there aren't enough Fans of Jihad among the woke wine women to carry the day.  Meanwhile, Dementia Joe himself notes that Flibbertigibbet has been instrumental in making the current policies.  “She was a major player in everything we’ve done, including the passage of legislation which we were told we could never pass. She’s been, and her staff is interlocked with mine in terms of all the things we’re doing.”  Which is to say, Donald Trump's "I'm running because they didn't do a good job" is spot on.