The fun part of using your unpopular VP to say the tough things in public is then being chained to running them for president later on and acting like they can tread water with lead shoes.
All other criticism of Dems aside doesn't this strike me as a predictable and therefore avoidable self own in the future?
The dems aren't a monolith. They'll come together and close ranks against the left, but they have their own camps. Biden and his camp hate her. Her selection was a totally empty gesture at representational politics. The Biden people don't give a fuck about her career because they will never get a job with her, so they stick her with all this shit. She's never going to be president anyway and no one thinks she will, except maybe her. Even the people who convince her to run so they can make money off her campaign probably don't think she'll win.
Biden has done worse than Kamala could ever aspire to, though not for lack of trying, so I think they feel secure in knowing their base has been trained into a short attention span.