One of the most striking things about the now-joint candidacy of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is the way they’re being shielded from the press. We’ve long known that Biden, who is suffering a severe cognitive decline, can’t be allowed to roam free. However, most people assumed that Kamala would become his mouthpiece to the media. That assumption, so far, has been wrong, and Kamala’s dismal performance when faced with a single tough question from an obsequious Stephen Colbert probably explains why.

To set the stage for Kamala’s embarrassing Colbert moment, you have to remember how brutally she attacked Joe Biden back in June 2019. Without using the word “racist,” she nevertheless made it clear to everyone watching that Biden, because he opposed busing and palled around with segregationists, was, in fact, a racist who virtually destroyed the little girl that was Kamala:

The media adored Kamala’s attack (which she’d obviously prepared well in advance) and wasn’t bothered that her shtick about “that little girl was me” was inaccurate, if not downright dishonest.

Kamala was right, of course, that Biden is racist. From the start -- and this is something he has in common with all Democrats – he’s been obsessed with race. From his first day in the Senate, Biden hung out with racists, and his anecdotes show he remembers that time fondly. Biden can’t stop talking about Indian accents; he called integrated schools jungles; he said it was a “storybook” that Obama was clean and articulate; he thinks all blacks think alike, and he insisted that people are black only if they vote for him.

Nevertheless, the nakedly-ambitious Kamala readily agreed when Biden (whom she also said probably digitally raped a Senate employee in the 1990s) asked her to join him on the presidential ticket. This is a problem for Democrats, who have to address this inconsistency because her “I was that little girl” speech was her breakout moment in the primaries.

It fell to Stephen Colbert, as part of a fawning interview with Kamala, to ask her the question:

Because in those debates, you landed haymakers on Joe Biden. I mean, his teeth were like Chiclets all over the stage. And now, I believe you that you’re fully supportive of him. How does that transition happen? How do you go from being such a passionate opponent, on such bedrock principles for you, and now you guys seem to be pals?

Colbert framed the question to elicit a substantive answer. He assumed that Kamala, as well as the whole Democrat team running Biden’s campaign, knew the question was coming and had prepared a good response. For example, Kamala might have said that, during her meetings with Biden, she’s learned how he’s grown over the decades. He can sometimes say awkward, or even hurtful things, but his record shows that he’s an ally, and yadda, yadda, yadda.

That’s what Kamala could have done. But that’s not what Kamala did. Instead, in between manic cackles (clearly stolen from Hillary), Kamala just repeated over and over, “It was a debate. It was a debate.”

Kamala Harris basically accused Joe Biden of being a racist during the debates and her only defense is “it was a debate”.

So did you never think he was racist and knowingly falsely accused him of being one or are you now just ok with being on a ticket with a racist? pic.twitter.com/0axLvxtf9Z

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) August 15, 2020

That’s not even a good non-answer. It’s a mindless and moronic mental reflex. It’s like a dead frog’s leg kicking if an electric charge runs through its body.

Kamala also gave the game away about the Democrat primary debates. These were not real battles so that the voters could get the true measure of the candidates. Instead, they were staged spectacles, closer to the WWE than to an actual airing of political differences and mental acumen. The goal, always, was to get voters to choose the hardest left candidate who did not actually look hard left, and who stood a chance of winning (so, not Amy Klobuchar).

It continues to be shocking that Biden and Harris are the best that the Democrats can offer America. Neither can function without a handler at his or her side. Biden, never bright, is now getting senile, and Harris, equally never bright, is the person that we all know (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) is the actual presidential candidate.

Image: Kamala Harris, Gage Skidmore on Flickr; CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped)