After years in the post, reports suggest that Vice President Kamala Harris is still very much the focus of the White House’s attention, with Democratic strategists still wondering how they can make the American people tolerate her.
Writing in USA Today in May, Francesca Chambers described how two days after President Joe Biden officially announced his 2024 reelection campaign, Democratic strategists warned that they were running out of time to “reframe the narrative.”
In other words, strategists fear that if the people don’t start warming to Kamala, it could seriously hurt the president in the next presidential election.
According to the report, four participants in a White House meeting discussed how to improve Harris’ image, arguing that she should make more public appearances and give her an opportunity to be herself.
That, however, maybe the problem.
When Kamala Harris is herself, she’s laughing too much, making little sense – something the president is also prone to – and advocating for hugely divisive political and social ideas.
Here’s What the Polls Show
A catastrophic NBC News poll released back in June shows that any efforts the White House may have made over the last few years to make Harris more likeable simply haven’t paid off.
Worse, they may have backfired. And since June, they have not gotten any better.
According to the survey, some 49% of voters have a negative view of the vice president, and out of those voters, a majority – 39% overall – have a “very negative” view. At the same time, just 32% of Americans say that they view Harris in a positive light, and just 11% overall have a “very positive” view of the vice president.
That’s bad news for the Democrats and could be one of several motivating factors behind the Democrats’ apparent keenness to ensure Donald Trump is the Republican nominee.
If the Democrats don’t have an inspiring or popular ticket, their only hope of winning in 2024 is the Republicans having a man convicted of dozens of crimes running as their candidate – whether or not those charges are politically motivates.
The Democrats have more than one reason to attempt to right this ship. Not only does Harris’ unpopularity pose a threat to Biden’s 2024 campaign, but it presents a succession problem for the Democrats.
As Elizabeth Nolan Brown wrote in Reason in February, the Democrats have shot themselves in the foot by making an “unremarkable candidate an avatar of the party’s future.”
If Kamala Harris is the future of the Democrats, and if they can only win when the Republicans opt for a candidate that the country can’t rally behind, then what exactly is the future of the Democratic Party?
Obsessing over Woke talking points while hoping the public don’t notice how extreme they’ve become?
Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive’s Breaking News Editor. He is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
