Why is Kamala Harris Unpopular – (No, Not Racism) – It could be argued that the GOP spends too much time worrying about Vice President Kamala Harris.
Many of the candidates currently seeking the Republican presidential nomination next year are essentially making it clear that they’re really running as much against a hypothetical President Harris as they are against the still very real President Biden.
That fact hasn’t been lost on anyone who covers politics.
On Sunday, Boston Globe columnist Renée Graham even suggested, “The reenergized vice president is living rent-free in the minds of angry conservatives,” and noted that Republicans “gleefully” share every political poll that shows Harris to have the worst ratings of any vice president in modern history.
Active Campaign Strategy?
Of course, with all due respect to Graham, the Republicans are actively campaigning to defeat the Biden-Harris ticket next year, so it could be argued that the strategy to tout the poll numbers for the VEEP is simply par for the course.
The Republicans arguably need to be obsessed with Kamala Harris so that the American voters become obsessed with Harris as well.
It would simply be unwise not to do so.
In fact, it has been reported many times that President Joe Biden’s age – he’ll be 82 on Election Day 2024 and 86 when he leaves office at the end of a second possible term – is a serious concern to many Americans.
There is simply a good chance Biden won’t be able to serve throughout a full term, and Kamala Harris, like all vice presidents, is a heartbeat away.
For those reasons, it would be unwise to ignore such facts.
Yet, there has been much discussion too about why Vice President Harris is so unpopular.
It would be easy to suggest that her notorious “word salad” and penchant for laughing when asked hard questions are the biggest factors.
But her supporters have another reason.
It is About Race and Gender
On Sunday, during CNN’s “State of the Union,” CNN commentator Alice Stewart suggested that Harris – as the “heir apparent” – was given the important tasks of election reform and the border crisis to tackle. She failed on both counts.
But political commentator Ashley Allison saw it another way and argued it was about race and gender.
Allison said that the reason that Harris is unpopular comes down to the fact that she is a “Black woman” and a “history maker,” while downplaying the job she has done.
“Most people don’t know what vice presidents do. And now she is a history maker. She is a woman, she is a Black woman, and it’s the easy thing to do to say she’s the attack dog, go after her,” Allison explained.
Kamala Harris: People Just Don’t Like Her
It would be wrong to cast this as an issue of race. Numerous polls show that even Democrats have a negative view of Vice President Harris.
As The Washington Examiner reported in response to Allison’s comments, “[Harris] hit record-low approval for a vice president in June. Independents in CNN’s most recent poll disapprove of her job performance, 57% to 42%. Even Democrats aren’t crazy about her. When they had the opportunity to make her the presidential nominee in the 2020 race following a strong campaign launch, Harris flamed out of the race before voting even began due to a lack of support among Democrats.”
Again, given her poor poll numbers, Republicans are wise to be obsessed with Harris.
When actress Sally Field won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1985 for “Places in the Heart,” she accepted the award and gleefully exclaimed, “I can’t deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you like me.”
By contrast Harris – and her supporters in the media – can’t accept the fact that Americans don’t like Harris. Right now, they don’t like her.
That is unlikely to change.
Author Experience and Expertise
A Senior Editor for 19FortyFive, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu.
