The Biden campaign realizes it has a Kamala Harris problem. Everyone knows she has a toxic track record. Democrats know this, but they also know that the American electorate has a short memory.
Rebranding Harris will not be an easy task, but they are trying anyway.
“…Harris’ term has largely been marked by stilted performances at public events, at odds with the uninhibited interrogator she was known as in the Senate. They’ve fueled whispers about whether she’ll be a drag on the reelection ticket as the 2024 race heats up,” Politico reports. “Now her political future, and quite possibly the success of the Democratic ticket in 2024, hinges on a simple question: Is it possible for Kamala Harris to make a second impression?”
Last month, Harris went on the attack against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s black history curriculum, characterizing it as pro-slavery. She also has been on the attack on abortion rights and gun control.
“It’s always been true that there’s a delta between how people in D.C. view her versus when she’s out doing her thing in the country with the American people. I think D.C. is starting to catch up,” White House chief of staff Jeff Zients told Politico. “I would argue she’s been great throughout, but as she’s really mastered the demands of the job and been through so much already, that experience enables her to perform at an even higher level.”
Harris Remains Unpopular
Harris’s disapproval rating stands at 51.7 percent according to FiveThirtyEight. Reports from her former staffers describe her as a “soul destroying” boss and as a “bully.”
“It’s clear that you’re not working with somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work,” an unnamed staffer told the New York Post. “With Kamala you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence. So you’re constantly sort of propping up a bully, and it’s not really clear why.”
Harris’s 2020 presidential campaign went off the rails due to her own incompetent leadership style.
Her problem is that she thinks she is smarter than she is and then she says things that make Americans think she is less than intelligent. When she cackles at her own bad jokes and word salads that have no apparent meaning and gets mocked for saying the U.S. is in an alliance with North Korea, it raises legitimate questions.
Democratic strategists might not want to see it, but Kamala Harris is damaged goods.
Harris Resonates With the Left
Harris might resonate with the Democratic Party’s hardcore left-of-center base; however, she is just as polarizing on the left as Donald Trump is on the right because most people have their minds made up about her.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley sees blood in the water and has used the idea of a “President Harris” as a punchline.
“Many Americans have apprehensions about [Joe Biden’s] age. In fact, a June NBC News poll found 68% of registered voters have concerns about either Biden’s physical or mental health, greatly overshadowing what has been a first term filled with solid results for the president,” Democratic strategist Douglas Schoen wrote. “Meanwhile, Harris has been one of, if not the least popular Vice President in modern history, and lacks any legitimate policy or legislative accomplishments since entering the nation’s second highest office.
Schoen continued, “The Vice President’s nationwide barnstorming has not led to a bump in her ratings, as FiveThirtyEight’s average has had Harris’ job approval steady at just 40% over the better part of the last year … However, with the current focus on Biden’s reelection, to best aid the campaign the Vice President must lean into key base issues like abortion rights, gun safety, and surging right-wing extremism in order to drive Black and women voter turnout in November 2024.”
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst 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.
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