At the end of last year, Vice President Kamala Harris sat down with a group of her top aides. The group presented Harris with a strategy for the upcoming year.
The strategy “recommended that Harris get on the road as much as possible and posited that Americans weren’t seeing and hearing from their leaders enough and that they’d be wise to fix that,” POLITICO reported. “The plan also called for Harris to lean into issues they felt suited her skill set.” At the top of the list? Abortion rights.
Change of Momentum?
The end of year sit down came at a critical juncture. Harris’s first two years in office, for the most part, did not go well.
The vice president was perceived as having accomplished very little.
I mean, she was in the news more for staff turmoil than for substantive accomplishment.
But the group of aids believes that in the back half of 2022, Harris had begun to turn things around. “The entire office believed the previous six months had been Harris’ best stretch as vice president, a clear break from the shifting portfolio items and bad headlines that marked her first two years,” POLITICO reported.
And the group of aides understood that 2023 was going to be crucial, that Harris was going to be under intense scrutiny as the VP for the oldest president ever, heading into an election year.
Kamala Harris wanted to leverage the momentum she felt she had gained on the back half of 2022 into a successful 2023.
Now, the make or break moment for Harris is upon us.
“As the Biden campaign begins to rev up, the microscope on Harris is intensifying. Republicans have made clear she will be used as a cudgel to go after the president, making the case that his age effectively makes her the head of the ticket.”
So, accordingly, “how she performs over the next few months will determine whether those attacks stick. It also will go a long way in sealing the confidence within Biden world about having her in a more public role.”
Can Kamala Harris Persuade the Public?
I have my doubts. I’ve been critical of Harris for a long time, so maybe, given that I’m not particularly receptive to her charm, I’m not the best gauge of whether or not Harris can win over the American public. I’m not the only one, however. An NBC News poll recently found Harris to have the lowest net negative rating of any VP ever polled. The poll had Harris at -17. To put that in perspective, Mike Pence polled at -4.
Still, Harris’s staff is confident she can turn things around and reinspire the American public. “It’s a time to get the objective viewer to take a second look. She needs a pivot to that second look,” said Jamal Simmons, a former Team Harris communications director. “Most of the bad news about Kamala Harris is old news.”
Fair enough, but I still have my doubts. From the way she used to prosecute in California (going hard on truancy but leniently on tech monopoly) to her stance on Ukraine (all in) to her reported treatment of staff (poor), I have my doubts about Kamala Harris – especially given that the eighty-year-old President Biden seems unlikely to last another six years in one of our government’s most stressful occupation.
Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor and opinion writer at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
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