OUT OF VOGUE: Kamala unhappy over seated White House greeting?
Even more petty was Harris’ complaint about getting the celebrity treatment at Vogue. The most prominent fashion magazine in the world gave Kamala Harris the glamour treatment, but the cover annoyed Harris so much that she had her press secretary complain directly to Anna Wintour, according to Martin and Burns:
Wintour defended the chosen photo of Harris in Converse sneakers and skinny pants as “relatable” in a conversation with incoming Harris press secretary Symone Sanders*, according to excerpts of the upcoming book “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future.”
“Harris was wounded. She felt belittled by the magazine, asking aides: Would Vogue depict another world leader this way?” the book states, according to the excerpts, which were obtained by Politico.
Harris had apparently favored a photo of her in a more formal powder blue suit, which ended up as a limited edition alternative to the sneakers-and-skinny-pants pic, which leaked ahead of the release of the February 2021 issue.
Biden’s team apparently couldn’t believe Harris wanted to start a feud with Wintour as her debut in office:
Incoming chief of staff TINA FLOURNOY** was caught “off-guard by the anger in Harris’ circle” and contacted a senior Biden campaign official. Given the country’s myriad crises and the recent January 6th riot at the Capitol, “[t]he Biden adviser told Flournoy that this was not the time to be going to war with Vogue over a comparatively trivial aesthetic issue. Tina, the adviser said, these are first-world problems,” according to the excerpt.
It was an early indication that members of the Biden-Harris teams were on different pages with different priorities. The dynamic didn’t improve from there.
Assuming that these accounts from Martin and Burns are accurate, it’s pretty clear why Biden’s team is leaking these stories. They’re stuck with an addled president and a bumbling VP whose focus [is] so far off the ball that she may as well not even be in the same stadium. The shot selection for the cover of Vogue isn’t a “first world problem” as much as it is an “entitled elite” problem. For an administration that wanted to sell a “Scranton Joe” narrative, the Vogue cover might have already been more of a headache than it was worth even without the feud.
How bad is Harris? For the first time ever, I’m feeling sympathetic to Anna Wintour, who for once comes across as the good witch in a story.
* Sanders has since bailed out on Harris, and gone to work as a weekend MSNBC host.
** “Harris’ team is experiencing low morale, porous lines of communication and diminished trust among aides and senior officials. Much of the frustration internally is directed at Tina Flournoy, Harris’ chief of staff, a veteran of Democratic politics who began working for her earlier this year.”
UPDATE: Question asked and answered:
Analysis: True. Flashback: James Clyburn wants Joe Biden to pick an African American woman for vice president. “The big picture: Clyburn is widely credited with saving Biden’s campaign following his endorsement in the South Carolina Democratic primaries. ‘I’ll never tell you who I’m going to advise him,’ Clyburn said in the interview, ‘but I would advise him that we need to have a woman on the ticket, and I prefer an African American woman.’”
Clyburn’s obsession with identity politics also influenced Biden’s SCOTUS choice: ‘Don’t you dare leave this stage without doing it:’ Biden was forced to publicly vow to appoint a black woman to SCOTUS by Rep. Jim Clyburn in return for his endorsement during 2020 South Carolina primary.
(Updated and bumped.)