There are so many ways to delegitimize a woman in politics:

a

sue her for the sound of her laugh, for she shed a tear on the campaign trail, for her choice of clothes, for being grumpy with her staff or eating her salad with a comb.

But no

gambling tactics

is more exhausting than trying to exploit a rift between two major political figures who happen to be women.

In January, during a Boston Public Radio interview, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was asked whether President Biden should keep Vice President Kamala Harris as his running mate in 2024. Warren apparently didn’t want to step on the president’s toes and politely evaded the question.

I really want to defer to what makes Biden comfortable on his team, she said. I’ve known Kamala for a long time. I like kamala. I knew her from when she was attorney general and I was still teaching and we worked on the housing crisis together, so we went way back in time. But they have to be a team, and I feel like they are.

It seems like a reasonable, if somewhat clumsy, response from a politician trying to avoid being put on the spot by predicting what another politician will do.

However, according to later news reports, the slack words from Warren Harris, her aides, and some top Democrats fell on the heels. Pretty insulting, said someone close to Harris who was quoted anonymously by CNN.

They say Warren should have responded with a resounding endorsement that championed Harris’s indispensability to Biden, to the future of the Democratic Party and to America.

But of course no vice president is indispensable. Lack of indispensability is practically a requirement for the role. The vice president’s job is to stay alive and assume the presidency when something terrible happens to her boss. That is it. That’s why FDR Vice President John Nance Garner famously joked that the office isn’t worth a bucket of hot piss.

We know that vice presidential candidates, for the most part, do very little to influence voters. (The exception, some researchers say, is that they can offer a small home state advantage.) And we also know that no presidential candidate chooses a veep based on what a great successor he or she thinks he or she will be.

Sarah Palin and Mike Pence were sops from the conservative Christian wing of the GOP, which John McCain in 2008 and Donald Trump in 2016 found insufficiently pious. Biden in 2008 was a poor substitute for those who thought Barack Obama had no foreign affairs experience. The lackluster Tim Kaine was a sop in 2016 for voters whose heads would have exploded had Hillary Clinton elected a person of color or another woman. Dick Cheney, George

W

Bush’s running mate in 2000 was a joke for the armies of Sauron! (Kind of.)

AVOIDING TITLES HERE WITH PURPOSE

Putting Harris on the 2020 Democratic ticket was the fulfillment of Biden’s campaign promise that he would choose a woman as his running mate. The fact that she was relatively young and a woman of color was a bonus. Her age may have helped neutralize concerns about Biden’s advanced age.

Is there any reason to believe that Biden, already agitated in his sights, would dump Harris in 2024?

Of course not. Hey can’t. Hey, shouldn’t. Hey not.

Warren was sure of that.

Two days after her Boston Public Radio faux pass, Warren clarified her comments in a statement to the station: I fully support the re-election of the president and vice president together, and never intended to suggest otherwise. They are a terrible team with a strong track record of providing work for working families.

Warren, CNN reported, tried to call Harris twice to apologize, but was put through to Harris’s chief of staff,

Lorraine Voles

, who called back. Some conservative news outlets, the New York Post, the Washington Times and Fox News, have portrayed this as a resultant rift between former rivals (both women ran for the 2019 Democratic presidential nomination; both aspired to be Biden’s running mate).

Maybe in a normal political environment no one would care. But Warren’s failure to eagerly embrace Harris coincided with a flurry of Democratic whining about 2024. Could Harris, who is the subject of intense slander and whose approval ratings are lackluster, be a drag on the 2024 ticket?

Multiple Democratic leaders argue that if people don’t start feeling more positive about the next person in the line of succession, CNN reported Sunday, they might turn away from the ticket altogether.

It’s hard to imagine people sitting out in an election or voting for a Ron DeSantis or a Donald Trump instead of a

joe

Biden because they find

Kamala

Harris grates gratingly.

But political journalism abhors a vacuum, and speculation about the fate of a vice president occurs around this time in every four-year cycle. So of course there’s been a wave of negative stories lately about Harris saying that the Democrats are disappointed in her, that she hasn’t done anything to distinguish herself as Vice President, that she hasn’t, like the New York Times phrased it last month, rose to the challenge of proving himself as the future leader of the party, let alone the country.

To use a favorite Biden phrase: That’s a bunch of malarkey.

Vice presidents, by definition, are incapable of demonstrating their leadership skills, lest they be accused of undermining the boss. Yes, Harris’ ratings are low, but I attribute this to the country’s continued racism and sexism, not to mention far higher expectations for Harris than would ever be placed on the shoulders of a man in her position .

Biden should announce that he is running for re-election and that Harris will be his running mate. Then the Democrats can get to work explaining why they deserve a second term instead of berating Harris.

And to wrap up a sexist story that didn’t deserve oxygen in the first place, Harris would have to stop ignoring Warren and accept her apology. That’s what a leader would do.

@AbcarianLAT