Kamala Harris is the Worst Thing that Could Happen to America?
There’s a lot to recommend the vice president – if people would pay attention to what she does, not how she laughs or if she gaffes.
Vice President Kamala Harris running for or becoming president is the single worst thing that could happen to the United States – if you believe Donald Trump. Just last week Trump criticized her poor performance in the 2019 Democratic primaries and accused her of covering up President Joe Biden’s health issues. He’s even been test-running insulting new nicknames for her, including “Cackling Copilot” and “Laffin’ Kamala Harris.” Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, recently characterized Harris as “the worst vice president in history.” Former Republican candidate for president Nikki Haley has said that the idea of Harris becoming president “should send chills up everyone’s spine.”
Even Democrats have questioned Harris’ abilities. An unnamed Michigan Democrat quoted in a February New Yorker article cited her disastrous 2019 campaign and lack of campaigning skills. In January 2023, when asked about Harris remaining as VP when Biden ran again, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Ma.) was lukewarm about Harris just moments after enthusiastically supporting Biden. Early in Biden’s presidency, in November 2021, criticism of Harris from Republicans was bad enough that the White House press secretary issued a statement calling Harris “a vital partner” and “a bold leader.”
Related: 25 Lies Kamala Harris Told In Her Debate Against Trump
One can chalk up much of the commentary to racism or sexism or both. Republican language about Harris echoes the way they talk about former first lady Michelle Obama, painting Black women as threats, but never enumerating how or whom they threaten. A New York Post contributor last week called Harris the most “fatuous” politician in America, saying Biden only chose her as a running mate because she was a Black woman, and concluded we “may soon be subjected to the country’s first DEI president.” A recent academic study found that racism and sexism tainted evaluations of Harris; former President Barack Obama Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton faced similar bias. But when The Atlantic runs a long magazine article asserting that few people think she’s ready to be president, what is going on?
Many of the criticisms of Harris seem to be more about her political agenda. When Harris said rural Americans might not be able to photocopy their IDs to vote at polling stations, pundits jumped on her for saying that rural areas don’t have easy access to copy shops. Was she out-of-touch – or merely pushing back against barriers created by restrictive voter ID laws?
Other criticisms of Harris seem more like policing behavior. She was condemned for laughing nervously at a press conference when asked whether the U.S. would accept more Ukrainian refugees. It is difficult to see this as disqualifying her from being president.
So if she hasn’t done anything terrible over the past couple of years, you might think the issue is that she simply hasn’t done anything much at all.
This is not the case.
Historically, being vice president was a pretty thankless, do-nothing job. The role was not clearly defined in the Constitution. The voters’ perception was that the VP was nothing more than the guy standing by in case something happened to the president. Walter Mondale ushered in a whole new model of the modern vice presidency under Jimmy Carter, actively participating in meetings and policymaking. Since then, Al Gore, Dick Cheney and Joe Biden all expanded the role greatly.
Harris fits the mold of the modern VP and has been active on a number of fronts in policymaking and advocacy, though the president has assigned her some particularly thorny and hot-button issues. She tackled the immigration challenge convincingly by working on addressing long-term problems in Mexico and Guatemala through a “root causes” approach, focusing on improving economic and social conditions in Central America to make it more attractive to stay in one’s home country rather than emigrating. Unfortunately for Harris, the recent influx of migrants has come more from Caribbean-facing states, including Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela. One might fault Harris for not being able to predict immigration patterns, but she was able to find funding for her initial plan before it was scuttled. This shows a willingness to propose concrete policy solutions, a vanishingly rare trait in politics these days.
