By Charles Lipson for RealClearWire
Kamala Harris is the living embodiment of the Peter Principle, where people keep getting promoted until they reach jobs for which they are clearly unqualified. More and more Americans think that describes our current vice president.
Harris is very unpopular with independent candidates, who are essential to electoral success (less than one in three voters view her favorably), and she is losing popularity among Democratic Party leaders. They see her incompetence, listen to her word salads and watch the polls with dismay. The latest evidence of Harris’ fading position is a scathingly critical article in The New York Times, of all places, filled with anonymous disapproval from senior Democrats, many of whom once supported her. Now they are worried.
Even if he is drawn to the party ticket in 2024, his fear is that it will be impossible to drop him. To win, Democrats need enthusiastic support from African Americans, who are likely to be humiliated if Harris is ousted. Replacing her with another African American would have avoided that problem. But there are no obvious alternatives. If Harris is replaced, it could be a white or Hispanic candidate.
Such a shift would roil a party deeply invested in racial and ethnic identity politics, where losing groups are seen as victimized victims, winners as “privileged” oppressors. Those divisions are most acute when they focus on America’s historical trauma of race, and they turn inward on the party.
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In general, voters don’t care much about a vice presidential candidate, even if they aren’t crazy about the choices, as we learned in 1988 when George HW Bush chose Dan Quayle and two decades later with John McCain’s surprise choice of Sarah Palin. But 2024 will be different if Biden runs again. He is already the oldest man to ever sit in the Oval Office and is showing his age. While gaffes have plagued Biden throughout his career, they have grown worse in recent years. There is a reason why he refused to hold a press conference.
Voters are not blind to this crisis inside the White House. It’s a reasonable conclusion that a second term in the Oval Office won’t get the job done for an 86-year-old man. His vice president is forced to step in. Polls show voters aren’t thrilled with the prospect of Kamala Harris doing it.
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What is the evidence that voters are upset with Harris? The best evidence comes from the last two campaigns and recent public opinion polls. When Harris ran for president in 2000, he had to drop out before the first primary votes were cast. Despite a glamorous roll-out that included national magazine covers and glowing endorsements, his polling in the Democratic primary was less than 1%. That failure was stunning because her resume checked all the boxes Democrats love: She was a progressive, a woman, a racial minority (black and Asian) and a senator from a deep-blue state who could raise big money from wealthy California donors. But checking all those boxes wasn’t enough after primary voters took a closer look.
The 2022 midterms again exposed Harris’ shortcomings. Often, the White House dispatches a veep to criss-cross the country, appearing with candidates eager to be seen with such a prominent national figure. Not at this time. Although the candidates wanted her help raising money, they wanted it behind closed doors. No joint public appearances, please.
Harris was also politically maligned with the informal title of “Gadi Sar”. Joe Biden gave him that thankless job. It was his decisions, not hers, that opened the border to record numbers of illegal immigrants, deadly drugs and Mexican cartels. But Vice President Harris and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have become the public faces of that failed policy. He compounded the problem by flatly denying it. Over time, they declared our southern border closed and secure. No one believes them, and for good reason. Not only have illegal border crossings reached record highs, the administration has no solutions.
These cumulative problems have eroded Harris’s popularity. It was more than 50% when she and Biden took office. Now, more than half of adults surveyed view her unfavorably, with nearly 40% viewing her “very unfavorably.” The flip side of the ledger is not good. Only 14% say they have “very favorable” views; Another 22% were “somewhat favorable.” These bleak numbers are worse than Biden’s and make him one of the least popular vice presidents in recent history. They explain why, if Biden runs again, only 39% want her as his running mate.
Harris’s popularity is not limited to one or two groups. A recent Quinnipiac poll shows him substantially underwater with all demographic groups Except for one. Among blacks, 62% of registered voters view Harris favorably; Only 17% are unfavorable.
This racial divide is at the heart of the Democrats’ predicament.
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Will this dilemma disappear if Biden decides not to run? Not necessarily. In an open contest for the nomination, Kamala defeated Sen. Amy Klobuchar could lose against another prominent Democrat, such as Gov. Gavin Newsom, or Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. If Harris loses after a sharp attack and primary voting splits along racial lines, the result could spell trouble for Democrats in the general election.
Those odds are dwarfed if Harris actually wins the nomination and faces a stronger Republican candidate than Donald Trump.
If Biden runs again, he’s probably stuck with Harris. Democrats have painted themselves into this corner. For decades they have mobilized voters with identity politics. They have highlighted group differences and amplified their grievances. As Joe Biden once told a black audience, he “wants to put you all back in chains.” Now, that rabid theory threatens to bite its owner.
Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.
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