The American political landscape experienced something of an earthquake last month when President Joe Biden announced the end of his re-election bid after new concerns about his cognitive health came to the forefront.
Though Kamala Harris swiftly stepped into the role as the Democratic Party's standard-bearer for November, recent polling finds that a substantial majority of Americans believe she knew about -- and was therefore complicit in hiding -- the true degree of decline Biden had been experiencing for quite some time, as the New York Post reports.
The news of voter perception of Harris' awareness of Biden's condition came via a Fox News survey that was released last week.
According to the poll, a staggering 73% of respondents believe Harris had knowledge of Biden's faltering abilities in recent years.
In bad news for the vice president, just 21% of those who responded to the survey said Harris did not know about the president's cognitive state, which for many was brought into stark relief during his June debate against former President Donald Trump.
Making matters worse for Harris is the fact that clear majorities of both Democrats and Republicans, 58% and 90%, respectively, asserted that she had to have known of Biden's cognitive state, with 69% of independent voters also agreeing with that assessment.
It is not just rank-and-file voters surveyed by Fox News who believe Harris hid knowledge of Biden's condition from the public, with her rival for the White House, former President Donald Trump, also leveling such allegations in recent weeks.
Even before Biden's withdrawal, Trump accused Harris of complicity in the deception, telling a Florida rally crowd, “Joe, Kamala and the entire Democrat establishment have been caught red handed in the thick of the biggest scandal and the biggest cover up.”
“It's the biggest coverup in political history,” Trump went on, characterizing the situation as a “sinister plot to defraud the American public about the cognitive abilities of the man in the Oval Office.”
NewsNation's Steve Krakauer recently suggested that questions about Harris' complicity in hiding Biden's true state could persist as the election draws nearer, writing, “If all these other figures could see the country was being led by a very unsteady president, mentally and physically, wouldn't Harris be able to see that too? In what possible scenario is President Biden's vice president not directly involved in the cover-up?”
Krakauer further wondered, “Or, perhaps even more embarrassing, was she so detached from the day-to-day activities at the highest level of the administration that she simply hadn't noticed?”
Though Harris' supporters certainly hope that discussions about her role in camouflaging Biden's decline will fade away as the head-to-head contest against Trump heats up, it could be her own past statements that come back to undermine their wish to move on.
Just this year, Harris told ABC News, “I'll tell you, the reality of it is, and I've spent a lot of time with Biden, be it in the Oval Office, in the Situation Room and other places -- he is extraordinarily smart. He has the ability to see around the corner in terms of that might be the challenges we face as a nation or globally,” attesting to her belief in his capacity to remain in office.
Whether the mainstream media will fulfill its duty to press Harris on what she knew and when she knew it in terms of Biden's evident decline, however, remains very much an open question.
