Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during an event at Discovery World in Milwaukee on May 16.Morry Gash/The Associated Press
The Daily Show recently aired an interview with U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris’s “holistic thought advisor,” Dahlia Rose Hibiscus.
Of course, the position doesn’t exist, and Ms. Hibiscus is a fictional character. The point of the skit was to bring attention to the often nonsensical utterances of Ms. Harris. Her flaky meanderings have become a thing, and have fuelled growing concerns in the U.S. about her one day serving higher office.
And for her, the only office higher than the one she currently occupies is the presidency.
It wouldn’t have taken too much digging for the folks at The Daily Show to come up with examples of some of Ms. Harris’s most egregious word salads. To wit: “… That’s on top of everything else that we know and don’t know yet based on what we’ve just been able to see, and because we’ve seen it or not doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” she said in one speech.
In another, she offered: “We have the ability to see what can be, unburdened by what has been and then to make the possible actually happen.”
Elsewhere, she exhorted: “I think it’s very important … to see the moment in time in which we exist and are present, and to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past, but the future.”
Kamala Harris playing larger role in Biden’s re-election campaign
Ms. Harris has been receiving more attention of late because it is a presidential election year, one in which the age of her running mate has become a hot issue. Joe Biden will be 82 years old by the time he is sworn in for a second term, should he win. If he does, Ms. Harris may have to take over before his term is done.
President Harris. Those words are starting to sink in with many Americans – and they have made them extremely nervous.
To say that Ms. Harris has been a disaster in her position might be an overstatement, but not much of one. Her polling numbers are frightening. A YouGov poll from earlier this month found that 55.2 per cent of Americans had an unfavourable opinion of Ms. Harris, compared with 41.6 per cent favourable. And an NBC voter intention survey last summer found that she had a net -17 rating – the lowest NBC has ever measured for a sitting VP.
Why is she so unpopular?
First, there is the obvious: she is a woman and she is Black. If sexism and racism didn’t exist in America, then these would not be factors. But they do, and Ms. Harris’s polling numbers are unquestionably a reflection of that reality. Still, that doesn’t explain everything. After all, Mr. Biden chose her as his running mate at least in part because she is a woman and because she is Black.
Republicans have feasted on Ms. Harris’s inability to form any kind of bond with the American public. She is a terrible public speaker, which doesn’t help; she is also neither warm nor engaging. She has the cold, no-nonsense demeanour of the former prosecutor that she was.
She hasn’t really accomplished much in her position either. In part, it’s because she doesn’t understand Washington. The most successful vice-presidents of the past all knew how the city worked because they had been an integral part of it for so long: Walter Mondale, George H.W. Bush, Al Gore and especially Mr. Biden himself, among them. The fact that Ms. Harris is an outsider has hurt her ability to get things done.
She’s also been hampered by files that are simply lose-lose for the Democrats. Ms. Harris has looked particularly inept around the crisis at the U.S.’s southern border, which has turned into a winning issue for the Republicans. She has, however, done better on the topic of abortion rights, something that is likely to be a central talking point for her on the campaign trail.
American news sites have been filling up with stories about the “Kamala Harris problem” for the Democrats. They are often littered with quotes from unnamed party operatives who indicate that discussions have taken place about getting Ms. Harris to step down from the ticket. But these same stories all end up suggesting this is unlikely to happen. So Biden-Harris it is surely to be.
And Republicans couldn’t be happier.
They are already campaigning around the slogan: A vote for President Biden is a vote for President Harris. They want Americans to start thinking hard about this possibility. Whether that prospect is enough to frighten voters into marking an X beside Donald Trump’s name is something else entirely.
But if Mr. Trump does win, he may have Kamala Harris to thank.