On a cloudy afternoon at Joint Base Charleston, a US military facility in South Carolina, Kamala Harris walked down the stairs of Air Force Two and said a few words about the war between Israel and Hamas that had broken out four days earlier.
“I’m completely outraged by what has taken place,” she told reporters on October 11. “The President and I take very seriously our commitment to Israel and to the people of Israel.”
But within a few minutes, the Vice-President’s motorcade was rolling towards the College of Charleston, a small liberal arts and science university in the city’s historic downtown area, as Harris shifted from international affairs to a critical mission closer to home.
In a packed theatre, Harris fired up several hundred students in defence of abortion and gay rights, gun control and climate legislation, and voting access — issues which many Democrats see as being threatened by Republican politicians and conservative judges.
“There is an intentional, full-on attack against the freedoms and liberties that have been the basis for what I believe makes us strong and respected as a democracy,” Harris said. “When you all start voting in your numbers, so many of these things are going to take a complete turn for the better.”
The stop in South Carolina was the latest in a series of visits to US universities by Harris in the past few weeks to both rally the youth vote, and improve her own visibility and popularity with core parts of the Democratic party’s base ahead of next year’s presidential election.
US president Joe Biden has not only doubled down on Harris as his running mate heading into what is expected to be a tough re-election campaign, possibly involving a rematch with Donald Trump, but he is counting on her for the critical task of helping drive turnout.
“If we want to win, she needs to be out there — and she needs to be speaking to groups of people who are willing to listen to her,” says Chris Korge, the finance chair of the Democratic National Committee.
Harris, a 59-year old former prosecutor from California who was elected to the Senate in 2016, became the first woman and the first black person in US history to win the vice-presidency three years ago, making her an instant political pioneer with high expectations of success.
But since taking office, Harris has been dogged by low approval ratings, turning her into an easy target for attacks from Republicans who believe she will be a vulnerability for Biden in 2024.
According to the most recent FiveThirtyEight.com poll, 54.9 per cent of Americans disapprove of how she is handling the job, while 38.8 per cent approve — a 16 percentage point gap that may be hard to close between now and election day in November next year.
Harris’s political fragility is particularly relevant because US voters are overwhelmingly concerned about Biden’s age — he is 80 — and his capacity to serve two full terms in good health, placing the spotlight on her even more as his potential successor.
“I think it helps everyone from the vice-president to the President . . . if she does get out more and then people can see more of her human side,” says Mark Warner, the Democratic senator from Virginia, who worked with Harris on the Senate intelligence committee.
More than a dozen current and former administration officials, US lawmakers and Democratic strategists who have been interviewed believe Harris has not been given the political credit she deserves for her performance so far.
They attribute much of her unpopularity to a combination of the hyper-polarised US political environment, the struggles that any vice-president faces in shining through as second-in-command, and her willingness to take on politically difficult causes and assignments early on in her tenure such as the root causes of immigration from Central America.
Meanwhile, they say Biden’s commitment to Harris has been unwavering. The president has featured her prominently in his re-election campaign launch and dispatched her to win support for the campaign at big fundraising events. Behind the scenes, insiders say, he counts on her advice for key decisions and their relationship is as close as the one he had as vice-president under Barack Obama.
“He always wants her in the room for anything that’s important,” says Jeff Zients, the White House chief of staff. When asked if Biden had ever considered choosing a different running mate next year, his response is unequivocal: “The answer is utterly no, zero.”
A difficult start
But even as top Democrats and members of Biden’s inner circle have expressed full-throated confidence in Harris, many say that a relaunch for the vice-president is needed — and even overdue. If the strategy is successful, she can be more of a political asset over the next 12 months.
Until recently, Harris’s political potential had been somewhat muted by circumstances largely beyond her control. At the start of the administration, the Vice-President’s ability to travel widely was curtailed by Covid restrictions, as well as the need to stay in Washington to cast tiebreaking votes on key legislation and confirmations in the Senate, keeping her somewhat hidden.
But she is now more free to set her own schedule and criss-cross America to defend the administration’s policies, and take the fight to Republicans on political and social terrain that is more friendly to Democrats, even with swing voters.
“At first, she was trying to find her stride while under intense public scrutiny, which I think was heightened because of gender and race,” says Anthony Coley, a former senior Justice department official under Biden. “Now, she’s clearly settled into the role and looks quite comfortable in it.”
After the Supreme Court last year overturned Roe vs Wade — the legal precedent protecting abortion rights — angering women across the country and driving many to the polls for Democrats in congressional and local elections, Harris seized on the issue as one of her focal points.
“This is not just an intellectual discussion, this is not just an academic discussion,” she told the students in Charleston, adding that “people are silently suffering”.
But Harris has also taken the initiative to make her own, sometimes impromptu, trips to the country’s big social and political battlegrounds, in a sign of the more combative style she was known for before entering the White House.
A favourite target for Harris has been Florida, where Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor and 2024 presidential contender, has shifted the one-time swing state far to the right with policies that span curtailing gay rights and abortion laws to book bans and a crackdown on the curriculum. He has particularly focused on how schools approach institutional racism or discussions about sexual orientation or gender identity.
At a Miami fundraiser last month, Harris described Florida as the “epicentre” of Republican attacks on freedom. “We know you’re living in difficult territory,” she told the donors.
But one of the Vice-President’s key interventions came in April when Republican lawmakers in Tennessee expelled two Democrats from the state house for protesting its pro-gun laws, and she scrambled to Nashville in a show of support from the highest level of the White House.
Jim Clyburn, the South Carolina Democratic congressman and civil rights champion, describes it as “one of the finest moments” of her time in office. “She can feel the threats to this democracy like nobody else can,” he says. “She speaks from the heart and the soul.”
As she has spread her wings, Harris has taken some risks. During a stop at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff last week, one student, applauded by the audience, accused the Biden administration of “inhumane” policies, referring to tightened immigration curbs at the US-Mexico border — and in its support for Israel’s attacks on Gaza.
But Harris handled it deftly, receiving moderate cheers with her response: “I believe that Israelis and Palestinians both deserve peace, deserve self-determination, and deserve safety.”
‘The America we are becoming’
As she has sought to boost her political profile and connect with voters, Harris remains prime fodder for Republican political campaigns — as well as the focus of attacks on conservative media and social media channels.
“A vote for Joe Biden is a vote for Kamala Harris,” said Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor running for her party’s 2024 presidential nomination, on Fox News in August. “And the thought of a President Kamala Harris should send a chill up every American’s spine.”
Trump has in the past mocked her name, laughter and her way of speaking. “I don’t think she’s performed well on the big stage,” he said in April, also to Fox News.
Harris responded to such criticism in an interview with CBS last month, saying that her Republican detractors “feel the need to attack because they’re scared that we will win based on the merit of the work that Joe Biden and I, and our administration, has done”.
But Ed Goeas, a Republican strategist and pollster, says the party’s candidates are trying to exploit an “underlying weakness” with Harris and the role she plays. “She’s been the face of Biden conceding more to the progressives — and that drives her negatives,” he says.
Harris also has detractors among supporters of her party, though any criticism is often expressed quietly. Some Democratic donors, particularly on Wall Street, remain nervous about her political viability with moderate voters and are unhappy with Biden’s decision to retain her.
“What I hear from so many of my Republican friends is that Biden is bad, but [they are] scared that he’s not going to make it and [they are] going to get her,” says one left-leaning financier. “Sensitivities are high all around” regarding Harris, says a different Democratic donor from corporate America.
Korge, of the DNC, says that kind of scepticism is baseless: “Whenever I hear a donor be critical of whether she is strong enough to be on the ticket . . . I say: ‘do you listen to her? Do you ever hear her talk?’”
Molly O’Rourke, a Democratic pollster at Hart Research, says she does not see evidence that Harris is harming Biden’s prospects of re-election. “The reality is that voters don’t know much about her but when they hear about her record, the reaction is quite favourable,” she says. “Her unfavourability or her negatives, are with voters who were never going to be gettable or in a reachable audience for Biden anyway,” she adds.
Over the summer, O’Rourke conducted a survey for Emily’s List Action, the political wing of the advocacy group supporting abortion rights, among voters leaning towards Biden but not fully committed. The share of those who said Harris was “ready to be president” jumped from 54 per cent to 70 per cent once they learned more about her, says O’ Rourke.
One former aide said Harris’s appeal ran deep within the Democratic base. “She is the face of the America that we are becoming. There are a bunch of people who look up to her,” they say.
Julie Zebrak, an attorney who has organised and fundraised for Harris, says the doubts about the vice-president among Democrats should be put to rest.
“For folks waiting for somebody else to come along, besides accepting the reality that she will be on the ticket, they might want to give her another look,” she says.
‘Effective and intuitive’
For some supporters, the worries regarding Harris are overblown and echo the experience of vice-presidents that have gone before her.
Brad Smith, the vice-chair and president of Microsoft who hosted a fundraiser for Harris in Seattle in August, says the current hand-wringing is usual at this stage in a re-election bid.
“The questions that people are asking about Kamala Harris are exactly the same questions they asked when Joe Biden was vice-president, or when Al Gore was vice-president, or when George HW Bush was vice-president,” he says.
Smith is a Harris fan. After working with her on mobilising private investment in Central America, as well as on the rise of artificial intelligence, he says he found her to be effective and intuitive. “She’s quick to pick up on what is on people’s minds and that’s part of what makes somebody successful as a political leader,” Smith says.
Beyond mobilising the base on hot-button social and cultural issues, Harris will have to make Americans more comfortable with the idea that she is ready to step in as president if that moment should come.
Her approach to foreign and economic policy, two areas where she had limited experience before arriving in Washington, will be especially scrutinised.
One senior administration official said that internationally Harris had developed a strong record from the start, with early trips to visit president Emmanuel Macron in Paris in 2021 and to the Munich Security Conference in 2022, where she met Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, on the eve of Russia’s invasion.
She also spent time in the Indo-Pacific, including last month, representing the US at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations leaders summit in Indonesia. During the Middle East crisis, Harris has participated in many of the highest-level meetings and calls.
Zients says Harris brings a fresh perspective to internal discussions, and Biden appreciated her “good advice” on the Israel-Hamas conflict following a meeting of the national security team last week, which she had joined via a secure link from Los Angeles.
On economic policy, Harris has focused more on boosting small business, including work with Janet Yellen, the treasury secretary, on community and minority-owned banks. “She told me early on how important it was to make sure that resources were made available to support small business, that access to capital was a huge issue and that she wanted to see an equitable recovery,” Yellen told the Financial Times.
But even as top administration officials vouch for Harris’ credentials, the public may need additional convincing: national polls show an essentially tied match-up between Biden and Trump, which means the race could be decided again by small margins in a handful of swing states.
With such little room for error, many factors could be decisive for the result, including perceptions of the vice-president. If Biden is defeated, his decision to keep Harris may be second-guessed but, if he wins, it could offer her a new political springboard.
“Right now she’s being compared to an ideal. Come November 2024, people will be asking ‘how is she comparing to her Republican counterpart, or the presidential candidate?’” says Joel Goldstein, a professor of law and vice-presidential scholar at Saint Louis University. “It’s hard for me to see people saying: ‘because of her I’m gonna vote against the Democrats’.”
Clyburn, the South Carolina congressman, expects her and Biden to be re-elected next year, putting Harris eventually “in a good position to be the odds-on favourite to succeed him as president”.
“We are all human beings, none of us is perfect,” he says. “But I don’t find anything about her that worries me at all.”
Read the full article here