Happy Monday and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, I’m Peter Hamby. Tonight, a bucket of cold water (and some historical perspective) for the “dump Kamala” crew.

But first, here’s Abby Livingston with the latest drama on the Hill…

• Chip’s Act: One of the key House Republicans to watch in the coming weeks is Texan Chip Roy, who is positioning himself as one of the hardest-line conservatives heading into a Biden impeachment inquiry and government shutdown standoff. Much as he did during January’s speaker’s vote, Roy might stir up trouble for Kevin McCarthy—so much so that last week within the world of McCarthy loyalists, Roy’s name was spoken with audibly clenched teeth.

  But what makes Roy a fascinating figure within the House is that Democrats actually like the guy. Among members and staffers, alike, the regard is almost always conveyed in a sheepish manner, but much of it goes back to the fact that Roy voted to certify Biden’s election in 2021. Also: while House Dems largely accuse their Republican colleagues of pandering to the base, many believe that Roy actually believes in what he’s doing, no matter how repellent they find the policies or tactics. To be sure, there are likely Democrats who will never be at ease with some of Roy’s choices. And some of this affinity is likely based in a bit of schadenfreude as Democrats watch how Roy is often at the center of causing a ruckus for McCathy. But I’ve seen it register across the spectrum of the House Democratic caucus.

• Easy as M.T.G.: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is out with a new digital ad tying vulnerable Virginia Republican Jen Kiggans to Marjorie Taylor Greene, after Kiggans praised Greene at a recent event. The D.C.C.C. declined to disclose the amount of money behind the ad (which is often an indicator that it was intended more for media consumption than actual politicking…). But it’s indicative of how House Dems plan to attack Republicans in the upcoming cycle. Over the summer, Democrats told me they’re eager to incorporate M.T.G. into their strategy, after polling revealed that Greene is one of the best-known, and most polarizing, House Republicans. The Kiggans ad includes audio of the congresswoman praising M.T.G., and then it cuts into a reel of Greene’s greatest hits—comments on QAnon, a 9/11 conspiracy theory, and a shout out to the “gazpacho police.”

• Clutching of the pearls: The food fight (outside of impeachments and shutdowns…) of the week appears to be Republican reaction to Chuck Schumer’s decision to relax the dress code for senators casting votes, a nod to John Fetterman’s hoodie-and-shorts uniform.

  M.T.G. lashed out and Fetterman dished out a retort, jumping on her for showing photos of Hunter Biden’s “ding-a-ling” at a Congressional hearing. Beyond the nastiness of these exchanges, it’s also worth considering how much fashion standards have changed on the Hill. It wasn’t that long ago that some Senate offices required female staffers to wear nylons while in-session. But over the last ten years or so, black tennis shoes have become more acceptable for male members, as have former senator Kamala Harris’s Chuck Taylors, Kyrsten Sinema’s denim vest, and former Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s firefighter jacket.

But in modern times, at least since the upheaval of Watergate, no sitting V.P. has been booted from a ticket. Not once. Nevertheless, as Sirgiovanni found, when rough political winds are blowing against an incumbent president, the pundit class almost always seems to float the possibility of trading running mates. These pre-election yelps have come for every vice president going back to 1984—Bush the elder, Dan Quayle, Gore, Dick Cheney, Biden, and Mike Pence just a few years ago. And now, with President Biden’s approval rating hovering barely over 40 percent, Vice President Kamala Harris is getting the dumping treatment, too.

The chatter—and I can tell you it is only that—is as predictable as it is pointless. I’ll explain why. But first, the case for ditching Harris is centered on two issues: Biden’s age, and Harris’ unpopularity. Biden is 80. At some point, he might become too infirm to serve, or be forced to step down, or even go to that great Scranton diner in the sky. If he does, is Harris up to the job of replacing him in 2024 or beyond? This succession question goes to the heart of the Democratic Party’s future, which makes it perfect fodder for center-left columnists with deadlines to hit.

Eric Levitz, with whom I usually agree, wrote “The Case For Biden to Drop Kamala Harris” in New York magazine last week. He argued that Biden must take the succession question more seriously, and that he should elevate someone more popular and capable than Harris to the number-two spot if, at some point, he decides to step down from the presidency or the Democratic ticket. David Ignatius also floated the idea in The Washington Post. And Josh Barro made a similar case last week, too, claiming that Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer would be a better running mate. Biden, he wrote “has the opportunity to pick a running mate who’s more appealing to voters than Kamala Harris, more credible as a next-generation leader of the Democratic Party than Kamala Harris, and more comforting to voters who consider the possibility that his running mate might succeed to the presidency than Kamala Harris.” (As a white dude who writes about politics, this is where I should point out that a lot of the calls to replace Harris are coming from white dudes.)

The reason these panicked pieces about Harris are being written, of course, is that Biden is unpopular heading into 2024. He is the actual president, not Harris, whose approval ratings are closely tied to those of the boss. Still, the Dump Harris flames were fanned even more last week when Nancy Pelosi seemed to give a lukewarm endorsement of Harris in an interview with Anderson Cooper, who asked if Harris was the best running mate for Biden. “He thinks so, and that’s what matters,” Pelosi said, going on to note (accurately) that vice presidents traditionally “don’t do that much.”

The former Speaker praised Harris’s political acumen—it’s not easy to become vice president!—but her initially tepid phrasing got people talking, including Fox News, which headlined: “Pelosi refuses to say whether Kamala Harris is Biden’s best running mate.” I’d argue, having watched her do interviews for about 15 years, that her comments weren’t actually a dig at Harris. Pelosi sometimes gets peevish when asked about horse race politics, and as a party loyalist above all else, she never speaks for a president’s thinking, whether it’s Biden or Barack Obama before him. It would be rather dumb of Pelosi to take a swipe at Harris—and Pelosi is not dumb. But her remarks weren’t helpful, either.

Based on all the texts I received last week from non-political friends asking if Harris might be replaced on the ticket, the topic is clearly getting some traction outside the Washington bubble, at least among news-addicted Democrats who have spent the summer worrying about Biden’s chances in a rematch against Trump. I’ll tell you what I told them: Harris is not going anywhere.

It’s no secret in Washington that Harris had a difficult first two years. I’ve written about her difficulties. To wit: Harris was unsure of herself and her role, especially on the thorny issue of slowing the waves of migration from Mexico and central America. She burned through staffers, and has delivered a cascade of VEEP-style rhetorical moments that have become the stuff of meme legend. Harris has also become a convenient villain for the right—to the point where today the people with strongest opinions about Harris are actually Republicans, not Democrats or independents, according to a recent poll from CBS News and YouGov. The same poll found that most people, regardless of party affiliation, really have no opinion at all about Harris’s work as vice president. Most of the Democrats I’ve talked to agree that while Harris started out rocky, she’s been more steady this year, especially with a messaging portfolio focused on abortion rights, voting rights, and youth engagement.

Harris is currently on a “Fight For Our Freedoms” college tour focused on those very issues, and her team has been eagerly sharing clips of big crowds greeting her on campuses, especially at HBCUs. (Side note: I’m not confident that Gretchen Whitmer would be packing the rafters at Hampton University). Those images speak to a big reason Biden won’t be ditching Harris: Democrats need Black voters and young voters to show up next year to keep the White House. Both groups like Harris. Her approval rating among Black voters is at 71 percent, and higher among Black women. Sure, those numbers could be higher, but they’d definitely be lower for a new running mate with no national profile, replacing the country’s first female vice president of color.

One Biden adviser I spoke with pointed out something else: It’s often under-discussed in the press, perhaps because she struggled with young progressives during her failed presidential bid, but Gen Z and millennials actually like Harris these days! Her approval rating among voters under 20 is stronger right now (55 percent) than Biden’s (49 percent). As Harris embarked on her college tour, Victor Shi, a Gen Z surrogate for Biden, wrote for MSNBC that young people support Harris “at considerably higher rates than those in older age groups.” He cited that CBS News poll, showing that 62 percent of people between 18 and 29 years old say they’re either “enthusiastic or satisfied” with Harris—nearly 30 points higher than among those over the age of 65.

There’s one more big rejoinder to the Dump Kamala takes: Democrats like her. Columnists might not agree, but a big majority of Dems—84 percent—say they’re either satisfied or enthusiastic about Harris as Biden’s running mate. Why would Biden blow that up for someone new, untested, unvetted? Remember, in elections, running mates are typically just hype people. They get some initial attention, and then go about doing the work of rallying the party base. They let the nominee set the message and steer the ship. Right now, barring any major screw-ups, Harris is doing precisely the thing she should be doing—nourishing the core constituencies Biden needs to get re-elected. A case can be made that Sarah Palin cost John McCain votes in 2008, but generally speaking, people don’t vote for or against a nominee because of the running mate.

Biden and Harris have work to do before next November. Their poll numbers are ugly, especially on the economy. Biden’s age makes his choice of running mate all the more consequential—but that was already true in 2020. The idea of swapping her out for another Democrat is completely without modern precedent, fraught with risk, and runs counter to every political impulse that Biden has. It’s fanfic for political hobbyists. Even if the idea comes up in a meeting down the line, somewhere in Delaware or Washington, there’s almost no chance it will become reality.

A decade ago, Obama’s less-than-beloved former chief of staff, Bill Daley, confirmed that some Obama advisers had discussed dropping Vice President Biden from the ticket ahead of the the 2012 election, a nugget that had been reported in Double Down, the tell-all book about that race by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. Daley told CBS News that Obama was never approached with the idea, but he said some Democrats around the White House had looked into it. They had even polled the proposal.

But, Daley said, “the research that was done confirmed the fact that it was not an issue voters cared about or thought should be done.” That line rings true today. For incumbents, voters render a verdict on the president, not the vice president. And if Democrats do have an opinion one way or the other on Harris, it’s that they want to keep her on the ticket.