Vice President Kamala Harris could find herself under an increased microscope in a way no Democratic vice presidential candidate has as the 2024 campaign unfolds.
Kamala Harris: A Make or Break Moment?
Most Democrats do not want Joe Biden, who will be 81 on Election Day 2024, to seek another term.
This means Harris likely will find herself under increased scrutiny.
Biden escaped media scrutiny as Barack Obama’s vice president because Obama was young, vigorous, and famous.
Kamala Harris, however, has a very different public perception. She will not have the backstop of running on the bottom half of the fight card for a vigorous incumbent seeking re-election.
The vice president has created the perception that she is not up to the job she has already. Fellow Democrats such as New York Mayor Eric Adams have attacked her handling of border security and migration, a responsibility which Biden placed her in charge.
She faced disrespect during her March trip to Ghana when that country’s president reaffirmed his support for China and its parliamentary speaker denounced her for lecturing to his country about LGBT rights.
Harris is running for a second term with a president who has a poor approval rating and who is aged.
“He announced that he’s running again in 2024, and I think that we can all be very clear and say with a matter of fact that if you vote for Joe Biden, you really are counting on a President Harris because the idea that he would make it until 86 years old is not something that I think is likely,” Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley told Fox News.
Harris to the Left of Biden
By all accounts, a President Harris would be to the Left of Biden. She is an avowed supporter of the idea of equality of outcome, not just equality of opportunity, aka equity.
“Equality is important, but not everybody starts out on the same base. So it sounds like it might be right — everyone gets an equal share and then they should compete and the best thing will win — but that assumes everyone starts out on the same base,” a video of Harris posted by RNC Research showed her saying.
When she was a senator, ratings put her to the Left of Sen. Bernie Sanders, the only open Socialist in the Senate.
Biden Needs to Give Harris More Responsibilities
Financial Times columnist Edward Luce recommends having Biden put Harris out in front on issues like abortion that Democrats have an advantage on.
“Biden must therefore elevate her. This ought to be simpler than conventional wisdom supposes. It means giving Harris a far higher profile to speak on issues that voters care about, such as women’s right to choose, child care, parental leave and education. It would also make sense for Harris to distance the White House from some of the more exotic variants of left identitarianism. Whether the opponent is Trump or Ron DeSantis, Republicans are betting big in their “war on woke” — and Harris is seen as woke,” Luce writes.
Emphasizing wokeness has not been a winner for Republicans against Democrats.
Luce continued:
“The more exposure she is given now the better. Harris needs to be prepared to be president. Biden picked her in 2020. Now he must invest in her.”
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John Rossomando was a senior analyst for Defense Policy and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
