Kamala Harris is officially the most hated Vice President in U.S. history, according to a new poll conducted by NBC. According to NBC, the polling data suggests that Americans are “racist” and “sexist.” The truth about Harris’s abysmal reputation, however, is much simpler than that.
Infowars.com reports: What sets Harris apart is that her own side of the aisle cannot seem to bring itself to describe its view of her as “favorable.” Obama’s 2011 “favorable” number was a full eight points higher than Harris’s is now, and Biden has a seven-point lead on her. Harris’s primary campaign failed, with support in the low single digits. She is unpopular even among progressive Democrats.
Thus, Harris’s internecine likeability crisis, not her race or gender, explains the record-setting gap between the number of respondents who report a “favorable” view of her and the number who report an “unfavorable” view. This is an elephant in the D.N.C.’s 2024 war room. And it is not easily remedied.
The politically astute have much to dislike in Harris’s past, but her current problems are visceral. She starts public appearances by exclaiming she is happy to be there, but few believe her. Americans know and dislike an insincere politician when they see one, regardless of race, gender, or party affiliations.
Once off to a rocky start, Harris then fails to connect with her audience. She espouses criminal-justice reform, but voters feel intuitively that she is the wrong person to address that issue. She speaks of economic hardships, but voters feel she neither understands their struggles nor empathizes. A politician need not have grown up poor to connect with voters on economic issues. Trump does it brilliantly. But a politician must convince voters that their interests come first, which Harris fails to do.
Last, Biden picked Harris expressly for demographic reasons, but voters seem to know he could have found an African American woman in his party who better represents and advocates for them. His failure to search more thoroughly perhaps reveals much about his view of the talents of African American women. Did he really think so little of them as a group that he felt they had no one better than Harris?
Regardless, when Harris speaks on race and women’s issues, voters feel she is posturing for political gain, like she did when she confronted Biden on school desegregation, only to become his running mate when opportunity knocked.
All this has the media and Democratic pollsters up against an uncomfortable reality in Harris’s likeability crisis. Their attributing it to race and gender is a gift to the G.O.P.: The presumed Democratic vice-presidential candidate is not just disliked, but largely unlikeable. And everyone knows why.
