New polling shows that most Americans do not want Kamala Harris as president. Thus far, she has proven herself more readily the butt of jokes. An NBC poll from June found that 49% of voters have a negative view of the vice president compared with only 32% who have a positive opinion. Her approval rating has been stuck around 40% since October 2021.
A new CBS/YouGov poll shows things have not changed much. Harris has a 59% disapproval rating and a 41% approval rating. Another line in the poll found that 42% thought that Harris makes them think less of the Biden administration compared with 18% who thought she had a positive impact.
Only 30% of Democrats are enthusiastic about having her as vice president. That’s down from 2020 when 58% of Democrats were enthusiastic about having the first female minority on the ticket.
Kamala Harris Does Not Inspire Confidence
Commentators have been less than enthusiastic about Harris, noting her weakness reminds voters of Biden’s.
“Polls show that Americans have even less confidence in Harris than they do of Biden and that’s saying a lot,” columnist Joe Battenfeld wrote in The Boston Herald. “Voters are not completely clueless. They see Biden stumbling around on stage and fumbling his words and realize that the president’s chances of making it through a second term at age 86 are not good.
Battenfeld continued: “But every time Biden does something weird like grope an actress, forget what state he’s in, belt out a head-shaking ‘God Save the Queen,’ or call someone a ‘dog-faced pony soldier,’ voters are hit on the head with a brick: the vision of Kamala Harris in the Oval Office.”
Republicans Make Harris the Butt of Jokes
Republicans have focused their fire on the vice president hoping to highlight Joe Biden’s age combined with her perceived incompetence. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who spearheaded Bill Clinton’s impeachment, warned that impeaching Joe Biden was a bad idea because of Harris becoming president if they succeeded.
“The only short-term consequence of a successful impeachment is [Vice President] Kamala Harris [becoming president], and Kamala would be such a total disaster for the country that Biden’s corruption is probably preferable to her incompetence,” Gingrich said.
Newsom Adds Scrutiny
California Gov. Gavin Newsom added further scrutiny after telling NBC News’s Chuck Todd last week that he has no plans to challenge Joe Biden. Newsom went a step farther and suggested that Harris was his natural heir apparent.
“I think the vice president is naturally the one lined up,” Newsom said. He added of the possibility he would challenge Harris in such a situation: “Of course not — by definition. Won’t happen.”
Harris Thinks Republicans Attack Her Because They’re ‘Scared’
Kamala Harris is eager to convince voters that she could be president during an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday.
“There’s nothing new about that. I mean, listen, I am ― in my career, I was a career prosecutor. I was the first woman elected district attorney of San Francisco, a major city in this country and reelected. I was the first woman attorney general of the second largest Department of Justice in the United States and reelected. I was a United States senator. I represented one in eight Americans, and I’m now vice president of the United States. They feel the need to attack because they’re scared that we will win based on the merit of the work that Joe Biden and I, and our administration, has done,” she said.
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.
