Vice presidents are doomed to look weak. It is built into the job description.
She would be a fine candidate.
I am fully aware of the public mood regarding Kamala Harris. Republicans, Democrats and pundits say the same thing: She was a weak candidate back in 2019 and she was chosen for “diversity reasons” to balance the ticket.
People underestimate her.
I saw her up close twice in 2019. In September of 2019 she was a popular candidate, one of the leaders. I was part of a crowd of a thousand people at a speech in a New Hampshire apple orchard.
She also got good response at a Democratic convention where each candidate had a 20-minute slot.
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The Democratic Party was divided after the 2016 contest between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Bernie was beloved by a large subset of party activists, but Hillary and Bill Clinton had been making friends and raising money for Democrats for 40 years. She won the 2016 nomination, but lost the general election.
Kamala Harris did not fail. She was one of 23 and only one could win. I saw them all and Harris was one of the strongest. In the left shift within the Democratic Party in 2019, the sharpest battle was between supporters of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and then between Sanders and Pete Buttigieg. In this context Warren was a moderate and Buttigieg an establishment conservative. Biden was a deep also-ran, coming in fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire.
Harris' political position was out of style at that moment. She was the former District Attorney, a tough-on-crime prosecutor. She was a bit of a surprise, a law and order politician in a blue part of a blue state. As a dark-skinned woman, she looked the part of a blue-state progressive who might join the chorus of anti-police rhetoric, but she had a different message. In 2019 progressives looked elsewhere, toward a full throated progressive. That set up a contest that scared a great many Democrats: Trump vs. Sanders.
Democratic support moved to Joe Biden because the culturally conservative Black Democrats of South Carolina sent a message that Democrats heard: Don't go with Sanders. Pundits who dismiss Harris focus on her identity as a Black woman and relegate her to an act of cynical ticket-balancing. That was no doubt a consideration for Biden, but she was also a policy choice. She represents a position that reflects Biden's long-held position as the author of the 1994 crime bill.
The statistics on violent crime are down, but crime is a powerful issue. Currently it helps Republicans. The post-George-Floyd riots in Seattle and Portland branded Democrats as soft on civil unrest. Voters see images of flagrant shoplifting that isn't policed and prosecuted. They hear of flagship downtown stores closing because of theft. People see tents and shelters on blue-state city sidewalks. There is growing discontent with uncontrolled immigration at the southern border. If, for any reason, Joe Biden were to stop being president and Kamala Harris were free to be herself, and free to stake out her own ground, then she would be in an excellent position to push reset on the Democratic brand.
The person who stands behind the man with the microphone always looks weak. The body language is disastrous for them. They are second banana.
Vice presidents only take on the image of a leader when they take center stage and can act like a leader.
Harris is Plan B. She would be fine if something happened to Biden.
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13 comments:
Not only does being VP give Kamala Harris the appearance of weakness, but when she is assertive it’s seen as aggressive or bossy because she’s a woman. Last but not least, she’s a person of color. Three strikes.
She supports the Constitution and the democratic ideals that make America great and drive the Trumplicans nuts. Not only would she make a good president, but a black woman in that position would drive the far-white even more berserk than they already are. Now that’s entertainment!
I agree with on this, Peter. That said, I think VP Harris has been poorly served by the President, at least through the first two years of his Administration. She certainly imho, did not get the same consideration from the President which Biden got from President Obama during the entire 8 years of the Obama terms. If the President gets the nomination, and if he chooses VP Harris as his running mate, and IF we can get them elected, she should be a far more active presence in the Administration, and not given the most thankless jobs, like fixing the Southern Border debacle.
Let’s apply my usual test for a politician: watch them on TV with the sound turned off. When I do this with Harris, she looks sad and uncertain. That’s not exactly presidential-level charisma.
Harris consistently polls below Biden, who consistently polls below Trump recently.
And then there’s her infamous race-baiting hit against Biden during a 2016 debate: “I was that little girl.“ Harris did this by way of implicitly supporting forced school busing for racial integration, which has been a massively losing political proposition in this country ever since the first time some inept politician invented it.
There are a number of Democratic politicians who might run better than Biden in 2024. Harris is not one of them.
I think that Harris would make a wonderful president, if she got the chance. That could happen in Biden's second term if something happened to him. Regrettably I do not see her running for president and getting elected. Too bad.
Mike T. seems to be on both sides of the discussion all the time. So I would like him to name the Democrat he likes best. Who would he like that could possibly beat the Beast?
Something is amiss in this view of VP Kamela Harris:
In nearly three years in office, Harris has stood dutifully by Biden’s side. But in terms of her own political profile, she has remained a vacuum of negative space, a vessel for supporters and detractors to fill as they choose, not least because she refuses to do so herself.
Not once has she done anything to state what she brings to the administration.
One early responsibility was being named, unofficially, as the border czar. While she was successful in getting a few big donors to contribute to the effort to deal with the influx from crossings at the southern border, she has been ineffective at any effort to reduce border crossings.
Harris compounded her problems with the border with a widely panned interview with NBC’s Lester Holt in which he repeatedly asked her why she had not been to the border. “And I haven’t been to Europe,” Harris said. “And I mean, I don’t understand the point you’re making.”
She has been silent since, except for periods of unnecessary giggling.
In the recent past, previous VPs have been given responsibilities that had visible results.
Remind me what she's accomplished in 3 years as #2. And what has she done to show some semblance of leadership for any issue the US faces today. Silence is not golden, except to keep one's foot out of their mouth.
Maybe a tad biased, MT?
To Peter C:
Gretchen Whidmer? Josh Shapiro?
"Remind me what she's accomplished in 3 years as #2."
M2inFLA -
You could answer your own question simply by checking out Wikipedia. If nothing else, she's broken the record for casting the most Senate tie-breaking votes, which has been a significant help to the president - and that's her job.
Malcom,
Biased? Whatever do you mean?
I have maintained almost from the start of his Administration that the President has largely ignored her. Had she been given the same exposure President Obama gave to Joe Biden, I think opinions might be quite different.
Prominent Democrats such as Pelosi, Raskin and Warren conspicuously concur that Harris is worth at least a bucket of warm spit. Meanwhile, Biden had openly committed to picking a woman as running mate, and was pressured by Clyburn and others to make it a black woman. As every public schoolchild knows, that renders sex and race irrelevant here. For shame! Even the inquiry is offensive. Harris is History-Making based on her patent talents, and now her accomplishments in the position.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Esther Whitmer
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