MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Michelle and Barack Obama, Kamala and Doug... and the truth about the ugly marriage rumors that everyone's whispering in Washington

The presidential election might not be the only big loss for Kamala Harris.

If reports are true, Kamala is debating whether to drop some 'dead weight' named Doug Emhoff.

Yes, America's self-branded 'wife guy' may soon be, as Kamala herself would say, 'unburdened by what has been' — namely, a marriage of 10 years.

Our erstwhile former Veep, it's been claimed, has added her troublesome husband to the list of reasons why she lost to President Trump.

'There's plenty of blame to go around as far as Kamala is concerned,' an insider told the Mail, 'and Doug has his share.'

You'll find no blame here for Kamala herself, of course. None.

Not for the word salads, nor the inability to cogently articulate a single thought, nor her apparent lack of original ideas or intellectual heft.

Alas, 'joy', it seems, is another vanishing prospect, gone with the hiccups from that slurry post-election Thanksgiving video.

Kamala's profile rose when she began dating the powerful, married politician Willie Brown in the 90s, when she was 29 and he was 60. So the prospect of a split from Doug, says the source, shouldn't surprise.

'It's not like she hasn't had men further her political career before,' the insider said. 'But what does Doug do for her now?'

That is cold. Colder than DC on Inauguration Day.

But if Kamala were to dump Doug — and there have been whispers since news broke that Emhoff has reportedly accepted a job with a Manhattan-based law firm and toured a $20,000-a-month Park Avenue rental — it may hurt rather than help her political future.

A future that, by the way, she doesn't have. But don't tell that to Kamala yet!

Watching her Sunset Boulevard-levels of delusion is something we've earned — the hard way.

So, as Doug tours luxury East Coast properties, Kamala has ignominiously returned to her still-burning state of California to plot — one imagines — her next moves: landing a book deal, exacting the mother of all grudges against Doug, and running for president in 2028.

You read that right. The greatest political face-planter since Sarah Palin reportedly thinks she's got another shot.

As Kamala's former communications chief Ashley Etienne told the Mail, her old boss said to her as recently as last week: 'You know me well enough to know that I'm not going to go away quietly.'

Doug, however, may be another matter. He may go away very quietly.

Here's the thing: After Doug publicly admitted last summer to cheating in his first marriage with the nanny (who he allegedly impregnated), it didn't seem like much of a problem for then-presidential candidate Kamala.

'Love you, Dougie.'

That was Kamala in a social media post dated August 20, 2024, weeks after the nanny story hit.

Once the Mail subsequently broke the news that Doug allegedly slapped a former girlfriend in the face so hard that she spun around, Kamala doubled down again.

'Happy birthday, my Dougie,' she wrote on Instagram days later. 'You are the best, and I love you to pieces.'

If Kamala had somehow won the election, would rumors of marital strife abound? One wonders.

Most political marriages are transactional — this we know — but Kamala's potentially swift and brutal dispatching of Doug would surely be just the latest example of the left's hypocrisy.

It's progressives, after all, who love to tell us that they're the real feminists, the true champions of women.

If that really described Kamala, she would surely have said something about the ugly allegations against her husband.

You can't tell me there haven't long been whispers in DC about this marriage.

Yet Kamala was able to market her marriage as solid, honest and loving — to sell Doug as that (gag!) 'wife guy' — because the liberal media played right along.

Who could forget MSNBC's Jen Psaki to Emhoff in their 'interview' — truly, a fawning prostration — last fall?

Psaki: 'Your role [as Second Gentleman] has reshaped the perception of masculinity… you are an incredibly supportive spouse.'

Emhoff: 'I've always been like this… To me, it's the right thing to do, support women. It is mutual with Kamala and I… we have each other's back'.

For how much longer, we shall see.

Speaking of: Barack Obama cut a lonely figure in DC these past few days, attending the Inauguration and the funeral for President Jimmy Carter alone.

Michelle said she had 'scheduling conflicts'. Skipping the Trump inauguration seems somewhat understandable: she apparently loathes him.

But the funeral of a president who went on to devote his life to building houses for the poor and teaching Sunday school? Who himself had a loving, faithful marriage for 77 years?

No wonder rumors of a marital rift are flying.

And again: You can't tell me there haven't been whispers for years.

The alleged word in Washington is 'separate bedrooms'. Quite the apt description for megamillionaires with lavish residences in four different states.

As recently as 2022, Michelle Obama admitted, in an interview, that she hated Barack for a good, solid decade.

'People think I'm being catty by saying this,' Michelle revealed. 'It's, like, there were 10 years where I couldn't stand my husband.'

That's a sentiment most women wouldn't share with their closest confidante. But Michelle Obama shared it with the world – and has since been vacationing with billionaires sans Barack.

It all raises a lot of questions. And not least for a Democratic party and a left-leaning media that loves to mock the Trump marriage, but it's hands off when it comes to the Obamas, or the Harris-Emhoffs, or even Lady MacBiden, who many think has a lot to answer for after urging her clearly senile husband to run again.

When it comes to political marriages, we need only recall America's most famous — between JFK and Jackie, falsely sold as 'Camelot': a grand love story that turned out to be a fairy tale.