SAUNDERS: Kamala Harris is no Joe Biden. Or is she?

CHICAGO — As delegates and the media descend on the Windy City for the Democratic National Convention, Kamala Harris not only has to energize the base, she also has to convince the rest of America that she can mend a moribund economy, and keep order as parts of the country seem hell-bent on chaos.

That is, Harris has to convince voters she can do better than her boss, Joe Biden, has done.

That’s a tall order for a vice president who has been as unavailable in 2024 as Biden was during the 2020 campaign. At least Biden had COVID as an excuse for working from his basement.

I have sympathy. Probably the most important thing a vice president can do is not upstage the president.

Considering how low-energy Biden has been in his term of office, Harris had to make sure that she didn’t look as if she was trying to elbow the old man off the path. As a woman who didn’t have decades of Washington experience — she was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016 — she didn’t move into the veep’s residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory and enter the office with a weighty portfolio on foreign affairs that she could use to establish her national security chops.

Then came the Biden-Trump debate.

Followed by Biden’s announcement that he would not run for re-election.

And suddenly Harris is supposed to be someone else. She’s supposed to go from wallflower to firebrand — and convince Americans that she should be in charge after she spent three years being barely visible.

So a month after it became clear she would head the Democratic ticket, Harris still has not given a real press interview. (That didn’t stop “Time” Magazine from putting her on the cover, but that’s another issue.)

If the economy were better, Harris could concentrate on abortion and “social justice” issues.

But Americans are anxious about their own and their children’s future. So Team Kamala is talking up “an opportunity economy.” The campaign released a plan to make housing more affordable — by promising first-time home buyers $25,000 to purchase a starter home.

(If you saw how student loans drove up college tuition, you can guess what this scheme could do to the real estate market.)

Don’t get me started on what she’d do to grocery prices.

No wonder Harris is not talking to the press. Even The Washington Post editorialized that her economic package “squandered the moment on populist gimmicks.”

You see in this campaign the desire to placate rather than dazzle.

Hence the pick for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as running mate. He’s so nonthreatening.

Back to the housing scheme, the problem is, Harris is not known as an economic thought leader. She’s a lawyer.

Her passion belongs to social issues and abortion politics. Maybe it all changes this week and Harris knocks it out of the park with an impassioned argument for the leftist causes she holds dear.

But Harris has a problem. She’s from California. She doesn’t really know how to argue with conservatives. She’s never really had to.

So what I’m seeing is a campaign that has two messages:

First, Harris is not Trump.

Second, Harris is not Biden — or is she?

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.