So much for the Joe Biden – Kamala Harris ticket

| 11:40 pm EDT June 27, 2019
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Joe Biden came into tonight’s debate as the clear frontrunner in the polls. Kamala Harris came into tonight’s debate primed for a breakout. It led to a whole lot of renewed talk about a Biden-Harris ticket, or a Harris-Biden ticket, on social media. This kind of speculation is always premature this early on – but then the debate happened, and let’s just say that the odds of such a ticket just took a tumble.

Joe Biden spent the first half of the debate successfully playing defense against gotcha questions from the moderators, while Kamala Harris kept hitting home runs. The Biden-Harris or Harris-Biden ticket looked stronger than ever. But then the topic of race came up, and Harris forcibly nudged her way into the conversation so she could attack Biden on race. In turn, Biden responded passionately and angrily. Suffice it to say that they did not end up seeing eye to eye.

Biden didn’t win the debate, but he’s still the frontrunner. Harris is widely being named the winner of the debate by the pundits, and we’ll see if that translates to a big boost in the polls. But after tonight, it’s going to be a whole lot harder for the two of them to appear on a ticket together. In fact, the two of them looked like they had no interest in running together.

That said, the 2008 debates between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama got far uglier than this, and when Obama became President, he promptly picked Hillary to be his Secretary of State. These kinds of primary squabbles can be overcome in the end. But for now, the prospect of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris appearing on a ticket together just went off a cliff.