It’s been a long time since Kamala Harris has been the subject of this much attention. Usually, the actions of the number two in the White House go pretty much unnoticed. But since Joe Biden’s disastrous televised debate at the end of June, all eyes have been on the vice president. Everywhere she goes, she drags a pack of journalists behind her, generates almost as much interest as Kim Kardashian on social networks, and on Predictit, an online betting site, she is given a better chance of winning the Democratic nomination than Joe Biden.
For now, she is mostly engaged in a perilous balancing act. She is his most likely replacement if the president decides to withdraw from the race – an eventuality that he has so far categorically ruled out. Her role, however, is to call for support so that he remains in the race. The day after the debate, she instructed her teams and her allies not to encourage speculation. She appeared at his side at the Democratic governors’ meeting at the White House, at the celebration of the Fourth of July, the national holiday, and defended him fiercely. She went to plead his case on CNN just after his televised appearance, acknowledging that he had had a “laborious” start in front of the cameras but that he should be judged on his three and a half years in office and not on 90 minutes of debate. And in all the election rallies, she repeats that he is a “fighter, a leader who fights for the people of our nation.”
A Vice President Far From Popular
If Kamala Harris plays the loyal faithful, on the other hand, the panicked Democratic hierarchs are looking for the least suicidal option. Can she really save the party from defeat or does she represent a greater risk than Biden? Because the vice president is far from popular. This 59-year-old Californian, half-Indian, half-Jamaican, nevertheless has an impressive CV. She was a California prosecutor, then a senator before running in the Democratic primaries in 2020. Following an insipid campaign, she withdrew from the race very early, before being chosen as Joe Biden’s teammate and becoming, at the end of a historic election, the first woman and the first black vice president of the United States.
She is already being presented as a female Obama. But her beginnings are chaotic and she struggles to find her feet. She finds herself in charge of thorny and almost insoluble issues on illegal immigration or the reform of voting rights which has no chance of succeeding given the divisions in the Senate. The chain of departures of members of her team does not help to improve her image. And the media focuses on her rambling speeches, her untimely bursts of laughter doubtless due to nervousness and her blunders, notably during a calamitous interview on NBC, where she gives a convoluted answer starting by saying “We went to the border” with Mexico, before acknowledging that she personally has not set foot there. The more she is attacked, the more she seems on her guard and makes slurred statements. Her advisers justify her lack of oratory ease by her training as a former prosecutor accustomed to weighing every word. Yes, but there you go, she left the courts in 2017. Joe Biden complained at the beginning of his term, according to the book by journalist Chris Whipple, that she had “improvement to make”.
As the mandate progresses, she has struggled to escape the caricature, maintained by the media and Republicans, who present her as a bland and clumsy second relegated to a role of ornament. “Kamala Harris is trying to define her vice presidency. Even her allies are tired of waiting”, headlines, in February 2023, the New York Times. Is she too cautious, as she has been criticized for during her career? Or is it the fault of the White House, which did not highlight her enough, while Joe Biden had promised to be a transitional president? “She was kept on the sidelines for a long time,” says Tim Ryan, a former representative of the House, in an interview. According to her defenders, Kamala Harris is judged much more harshly than her predecessors because of the latent racism and sexism in politics. It is also due to the poorly defined and thankless role of vice president. “It’s not worth a rabbit fart,” Franklin Roosevelt’s right-hand man elegantly summed up. You are never anything more than number 2, without real independence, with the strict rule of not overshadowing the president. “And in Kamala’s case, she can’t really bring added value to Joe Biden because he has so much experience,” says Joel Goldstein, a historian specializing in the vice presidency.
In 2022, the vice president took advantage of the Supreme Court’s decision to remove the constitutional right to abortion to reposition herself and play a more visible political role. She emerged within the administration as the pasionaria of reproductive rights. She was clearly more comfortable talking about abortion than Joe Biden, a practicing Catholic who refused to utter the word. She began to crisscross the country to denounce conservative “extremists” and even visited a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Minnesota in March. A major first for a vice president. This did not really boost her popularity rating, but in the process, she increased her trips to universities, black communities, and chambers of commerce to promote the administration’s reforms. The White House also sent her on solo missions abroad more often, to the Munich Security Conference, to Dubai for COP28, etc.
The least bad option?
Not all Democrats are convinced of her ability to defeat Donald Trump, however. According to recent polls, she is, like Joe Biden, neck and neck with the former president. Hence the mention within the Democratic establishment of other possible candidates such as Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer, the governors of California and Michigan.
But snubbing Harris would be politically dangerous. It would risk alienating the African-American electorate, furious at seeing the first black female vice president scrapped. “She is not the best option. She is the only realistic option to win,” says an anonymous document written by Democratic officials that has circulated in the media. Its authors acknowledge her unpopularity but emphasize her “massive structural advantages.” “She is already in place, can build on Biden’s successful record, without the age problem. Young people and blacks will be more receptive to her candidacy than to the president’s,” analyzes Kevin McMahon, professor of political science at Trinity College. She could also ensure a smooth transition by saying, for example, “I will continue to consult with Joe Biden once I am president.” Another significant factor is that Harris is better placed than her opponents to easily recoup the $240 million war chest of the Biden campaign.
Trump supporters have already begun to attack her fiercely. They portray her as a dangerous leftist, accuse her of having hidden Biden’s health, of being responsible for the migrant crisis at the Mexican border… This is not new. Donald Trump, a long time ago, sought to sow doubts about her legitimacy by claiming – falsely – that she was born abroad. He deliberately mangled her name, Kamala (lotus flower in Sanskrit). And he has even just given her an ironic nickname: “the funny Kamala”, a sign that in reality, he takes her seriously. Because if she is chosen as a candidate, “the dynamic of the campaign risks changing”, continues Professor McMahon. “Trump’s teams have been preparing for months to have Biden as an opponent and have been developing attacks on his age. But if Harris takes his place, they will have to recalibrate their message less than 120 days before the election.” In the meantime, Democrats have quietly commissioned a study on the vice president’s chances against Trump.
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