Kamala Harris Knows She's Trapped
The vice president needs to win over the voters who approve of Biden, but not of her performance.
By Peter Nicholas
For all the warmth between Biden and Barack Obama, the operatives running Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign nevertheless considered dumping the then-VP in favor of Hillary Clinton. As a matter of strategy, vice presidents like to tether themselves to the sitting president. Plotting an independent path would quickly alienate a West Wing staff alert to perceived acts of disloyalty. “You cannot appear to be running away from the president,” Roy Neel, who was chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore and later deputy chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, told me. “The president and the president’s people will just cut you off at the knees. In a heartbeat you can be cut out of meetings, you can be cut out of photo ops and trips, and suddenly when you want additional staff, they’re saying no. It can happen, and it can happen very quickly.”
Still, something isn’t working quite right in their first year. Harris’s approval rating is 45 percent, seven points lower than Biden’s, according to Real Clear Politics’ polling average. A senior White House official said it’s not surprising that Harris’s ratings don’t match Biden’s. “Vice presidents aren’t as known!” this person, who, like others quoted for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid, said. “People don’t see them on a daily basis and don’t think they’re running the government.” But a Los Angeles Times analysis shows that Harris is less popular than Biden, Dick Cheney, and Gore at comparable points in their vice presidencies.
The simplest explanation for the Biden-Harris approval gap is sexism and racism. Men view Harris unfavorably by an 18-point margin, and she is a convenient proxy for conservative pundits who have demeaned her through sexist tropes. In April, the Newsmax host Grant Stinchfield aired clips of Harris laughing and likened her to the “Wicked Witch of the West.” Jesse Kelly, a guest on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show last month, said she “started out her political career as [former California Assembly Speaker] Willie Brown’s bratwurst bun,” a reference to reports that the two had once dated.
I asked Harris if she faces a double standard as a woman of color. She dodged. “Let me tell you,” she said, laughing. “When I meet with [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel, or the king of Jordan, or the prime minister of Japan or South Korea, I’m the vice president of the United States. I represent my country. I represent my president.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/08/kamala-harris-interview/619657/
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