A recent article in the New York Times Magazine lamented the fact that VP Kamala Harris still can’t seem to shatter the image of herself as an ineffectual, inconsequential leader.
This year, an NBC News poll found that 49 percent of voters have an unfavorable view of Harris, the lowest net-negative rating for a vice president since the poll began in 1989.
The piece confirmed that Harris has “a public perception problem, a self-fulfilling spiral of bad press and bad polls, compounded by the realities of racism and sexism.”
How about a spiral of lack of skill, terrible gaffes, senseless speech, and overall ineffective leadership?
The attention to Harris’s poor reputation comes amidst a debate as to whether Joe Biden should, or will, keep Harris as his VP pick for the 2024 ballot.
Harris’s supporters vehemently object to the public’s perception.
Laphonza Butler, a former adviser of the vice president and the president of Emily’s List until Gov. Gavin Newsom of California appointed her to the U.S. Senate after the death of Dianne Feinstein, said the Harris naysayers in her party need to “cut the ********.” “It’s disrespectful,” Butler told me in an interview before her Senate appointment. “And the thing that makes it more disrespectful is that we’re talking about a historic V.P. who has been a high-quality partner and asset to the country at a time when everything is at stake. Right now is the time to respect what she’s done and what she brings.”
I’m not quite sure what Kamala Harris has done or brings.
Kamala Harris Dodges Questions
As the report notes, Harris is “an elected official who clearly is skeptical of the press — a career prosecutor who is more comfortable asking pressing questions than giving straightforward answers.”
With all due respect, Ms. Harris, you are no longer a prosecutor. You are the Vice President of the United States and you must field the questions the public, and the press, lob at you. It is your job.
This is not something the Vice President does well, if at all, nor is it something she feels she should have to.
In an interview for the piece, the reporter for the Times asks Harris directly what she brings to the ticket.
“When someone asks, ‘What does Vice President Kamala Harris bring to the ticket?’ what is that clear answer?” I asked. Her team made clear it would be my final question.”
Harris answers the question with another question.
“Were you in this room of 2,000 people?” Harris asked the reporter who replied with a nod.
“Did you see them cheering and standing?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what I say.”
She stood up and walked out of the room.
This is exactly the kind of hubris that characterizes the entire Biden Administration, and more broadly, the elite class in Washington. They think they deserve positions merely because of who they are, where they come from, or what they look like, not because of any proof of performance or skills and characteristics that would make them effective in their role.
Kamala Harris: Why Does She Fail?
No color of skin or XX chromosomes can make up for a lack of competency.
There are plenty of women who have shattered the glass ceiling in politics so to speak. Is it difficult? Yes. But I no longer attribute the challenge to men being misogynist pigs as maybe I once may have. Do those types of men still exist? Of course they do. The last decade has proven such.
But I am not convinced they constitute a majority of men nor do I believe such misogyny is responsible for every inequity between men and women in the workplace. I believe such imbalances have more to do with the fact that women have a different set of competing interests when it comes to work and family. Like it or not, women and only women are responsible for growing another human inside their womb and providing the unique emotional bond and safety that comes from breastfeeding. Although, the left is loath to recognize such biological facts and the constraints that come along with it. No amount of activism will change this.
A colleague of mine and I giggle over the fact that we unabashedly “love the enemy,” usually when we are surrounded by the enemy in an industry – politics and policy – that has them teeming at every conference, meeting, and gathering.
I’d be willing to bet my life that the men would say the same thing.
Not once have I ever felt inferior, condescended, or denigrated in either my graduate experience or my current roles, but then again, I do not enter a room with an air of superiority. I’m certainly no wallflower, but I don’t feel like I need to act like a man for attention nor do I withhold an alternate perspective when I know it will differ from maybe 90% of the room, often men.
It’s high time we recognize the different attributes, skills, and talents that are unique to both men and women and stop pretending we don’t need some of them or that one sex can manage to take on the roles of both. Whether it’s in the boardroom, the bedroom, or Washington D.C., we need to call a truce and end the battle of the sexes, or any other immutable characteristic humans cannot change.
Maybe when we start doing that, we can stop the endless drivel about why a woman, like Kamala Harris, isn’t succeeding in her job and just admit she’s not the right woman for the job.
Jennifer Galardi is the politics and culture editor and opinion writer for 19FortyFive.com. She has a Master’s in Public Policy from Pepperdine University and produces and hosts the podcast Connection with conversations that address health, culture, politics, and policy. In a previous life, she wrote for publications in the health, fitness, and nutrition space. In addition, her pieces have been published in the Epoch Times and Pepperdine Policy Review. You can follow her on Instagram and Twitter.
