Kamala Harris

An internet search tells me:

Eight U.S. presidents have died in office, four from natural causes and four by assassination.

List of Presidents Who Died in Office

William Henry Harrison (9th President) - Died on April 4, 1841, from pneumonia, shortly after his inauguration.

Zachary Taylor (12th President) - Died on July 9, 1850, from acute gastroenteritis, believed to be caused by contaminated food or water.

Abraham Lincoln (16th President) - Assassinated on April 14, 1865, by John Wilkes Booth; he died the following day.

James A. Garfield (20th President) - Assassinated on July 2, 1881, and died on September 19, 1881, from infections related to his gunshot wounds.

William McKinley (25th President) - Assassinated on September 6, 1901, and died on September 14, 1901, from gangrene caused by his gunshot wounds.

Warren G. Harding (29th President) - Died on August 2, 1923, from a heart attack, though some speculated about possible poisoning.

Franklin D. Roosevelt (32nd President) - Died on April 12, 1945, from a cerebral hemorrhage while in office.

John F. Kennedy (35th President) - Assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.

There have been 46 US presidents. Eight died in office. The last to die in office was Kennedy.

He died November 22, 1963, about 18 months before I was born. In my lifetime, no US president has died in office and while I knew it was more than two, I'm shocked it's eight. I thought it was maybe four.

Reading through the list, I knew about Garfield being shot and dying from infection days later because some stupidly high number of physicians probed the wound with unwashed hands (prior to the existence of germ theory).  Otherwise, he probably would have survived the assassination attempt. 

I knew about Roosevelt. He was elected four times and died in office. His death is the official reason they formally added a two-term limit.

Prior to that, it was unofficial policy that you only served two terms. I've always assumed they passed it as soon as he died because no one wanted anyone to have so much power again and it's just more acceptable to say "Well, the founding fathers were against anyone serving more than two terms precisely because they didn't want some doddering old fool to expire on the job." rather than "Yikes! Now that he's dead and we CAN pass something, let's do it before we get another insanely powerful overlord!"

So while I knew it was more than two, the only thing you regularly hear is that Lincoln and Kennedy were assassinated. We don't collectively "remember" the other presidential deaths in office. We pay more attention to the fact that two of the founding fathers both died on the 4th of July. 

Wikipedia says Geraldine Ferraro was the (Democratic) party's nominee for vice president in the 1984 presidential election. She ran alongside Walter Mondale. They lost.

I remember that election. It was a big deal that a woman was nominated vice president. I saw interviews of her. She got checked out by the American public. They cared who was elected vice president at that time because it had only been 21 years since Kennedy was assassinated and anyone elected vice president could end up running the country.

It mattered. In my youth, if you ran for vice president, you were checked out exactly like a presidential candidate. You had to prove you were qualified to be president. 

A few decades on, Joe Biden said "Why not a Black woman for VP?" chose Kamala Harris whom I had never heard of before and got elected. I don't recall this resulting in the country trying to vet this woman. 

Donald Trump is a Washington DC outsider and ran with seemingly random vice presidential candidates. I know of Mike Pence as his vice president and I know of JD Vance as his vice president. 

He considered multiple possible vice presidential running mates for 2024 and the internet says he chose his running mates strategically to appeal to specific voting blocks. 

There's no strong personal connection to either of them. There's no compelling case that "We both stand for the same thing."

I think people no longer really care who the vice presidential running mate is. In the minds of the American people, it's a technicality that you are required to have a running mate but they no longer grill the vice presidential candidates and vet them like they did in my youth.

They have grown complacent and think of the VP not as a spare tire in case you get a flat, but as a potential stepping stone to the presidency at a later date. It's nice to have on your resume but it doesn't guarantee you the job.

So whatever.  No one really cares what fool you use to check off that box.

People pay very little attention to who the VP is. 

When Joe Biden named Kamala Harris as his running mate, people were voting for Biden or against Trump or voting straight line democrat. Then in 2025 at the last minute, Biden decided he was too old to serve another 4 years and Harris took his place on the ballot under circumstances where there was simply no time to meaningfully name anyone else.

She got to run because it was similar to if he died in office while she was vice president. She took his place. That's the role assigned to the vice president: If the president dies or is incapacitated, the vice president steps in.

Trump has been convicted of multiple felony counts for election tampering in the two elections he ran in previously and has said this election was rigged. My belief is he won against two women and lost against a man because he was more aggressive about election tampering when running against women.

We've never had a female president. People don't really question it too much if a woman candidate loses, even against someone like Trump who has zero political offices under his belt prior to running for president.

But I seriously doubt Kamala Harris is really qualified to be president. Personal qualifications are not how she became VP and not why the Democratic party ran her for president in 2024.