When last we left you with Kamala Harris, Joe Biden’s second in charge was busy getting booed during an NCAA men’s basketball tournament game and giving a pep talk to the Howard University Bison men’s team that hit maximum cringe levels at various points after their near-30-point first-round loss to top-seeded Kansas.
And now, with the border crisis she was tasked by Biden to handle two years ago getting even worse, and with nothing much to show as a significant accomplishment over two years into the job, Harris is now being primed and prepped for her latest assignment – maybe her toughest one yet, which is to convince young voters and voters of color to reelect the Biden-Harris team in 2024:
Vice President Kamala Harris is preparing to campaign extensively when President Biden launches his much-anticipated re-election bid, despite concerns in the Democratic Party that her performance in office, criticized by some as uneven, has made her a liability.
Ms. Harris plans to visit urban centers of swing states to persuade Black voters, young people and other liberal constituencies to re-elect Mr. Biden, according to people familiar with discussions about her campaign efforts. She will lead the administration’s advocacy for abortion rights, tout the administration’s climate investments and echo Mr. Biden’s pledge to protect Medicare and Social Security.
Some top Democratic lawmakers and donors have been questioning Ms. Harris’s future behind closed doors for months, saying they don’t think the vice president has used her platform effectively, according to attendees at these events.
To be fair, vice presidents are supposed to be the president’s biggest cheerleaders and it’s considered bad form to try and “outshine” your boss in that regard in an effort to bolster your ideological bonafides.
That being said, in the support role she’s in as Biden’s veep Harris has been a miserable failure, with the ongoing border crisis and her continued embarrassment of this country on a world stage being two notable examples.
But beyond that, something else to keep in mind is that during Harris’ failed run for president, a big reason her 2020 candidacy went nowhere fast is because her support among two core reliably Democratic voting blocs – black voters and female voters – evaporated within a few weeks of the first Democratic primary debate in the summer of 2019.
For instance, a post-second Democratic primary debate poll from Quinnipiac University taken in early August 2019 showed Harris’ support among black Democrats dropping from 27 percent in early July of that year to a mere 1 percent. The same poll showed her support among Democratic women drop from 24 percent in early July to just 7 percent in early August.
Biden, the old white guy, did much better than she did in that same August 2019 poll:
Biden gets 47 percent of black Democrats, with 16 percent for Sanders, 8 percent for Warren and 1 percent for Harris;
Women Democrats go 31 percent for Biden, 24 percent for Warren, 10 percent for Sanders and 7 percent for Harris;
While it’s true that that was just one poll, it was an indicator of things to come. Harris’ campaign never bounced back after that and she threw in the towel in December 2019.
And the problem for Harris now as she gets set to go on the road on behalf of Joe is that even though her failure to gain traction in 2019 was a long time ago from a political perspective, she’s still being viewed in Democratic circles as a political liability for Biden in 2024. Not only that, but in addition to having to convince black and young voters to pull the lever for Biden even as his approval ratings remain well under 50 percent, she’s also got to persuade the Democratic faithful that she herself deserves another four years.
That’s gonna be an extremely tough sell for someone with so little in her vice presidential portfolio to brag about.
Flashback–>> Watch: Liz Warren Raises Eyebrows When Asked if Kamala Should Be Biden’s Running Mate in 2024
Trending on RedState Video
