The case for Kamala Harris
Why the VP is doing just fine
Every few months, a familiar storyline pops up: Democrats are worried that Kamala Harris isn’t doing a very good job as vice president. She’s not visible enough, she has had too much staff turnover, she isn’t adjusting to the VP role as well as she should. And so on and so forth.
The latest iteration of this storyline came in a Washington Post story Monday headlined: “Some Democrats are worried about Harris’s political prospects”
Here’s the key bit from the story:
Harris’s tenure has been underwhelming, they said, marked by struggles as a communicator and at times near-invisibility, leaving many rank-and-file Democrats unpersuaded that she has the force, charisma and skill to mount a winning presidential campaign.
As Biden passes the halfway point of his term, Harris faces a critical moment. If he seeks reelection as expected, she would be a central part of the campaign, making it a high-stakes dress rehearsal for her own potential bid in 2028. If Biden steps aside, she would instantly move to center stage as his potential successor, facing the heightened attacks and scrutiny that accompany such a role.
I take no issue with the story as reported. There are plenty of on the record quotes in it from Democratic activists expressing both their admiration for Harris and their concern about her prospects.
And I have no doubt that the concerns expressed in the story reflect a broader set of worries within the party about what happens if Joe Biden decides not to run in 2024. (All indications are that Biden will run again although he has made no formal announcement of his plans.)
But, the reality of Harris’ situation — and the history of vice presidents running for the top job — suggests to me that this cyclical worry about whether she is doing a good enough job as VP is all sort of pointless.
First of all, consider the job of being the vice president. While it might not be as useless as John Nance Garner once described it (“not worth a bucket of warm piss”), it’s not all that great a gig.
It’s an ill-defined role in which the only real mandate is to never, ever get ahead of the president. Or show up the president. Or get better press than the president. Or do anything, really, that draws a lot — or even a little — attention to you.
Consider the vice presidency of Mike Pence. His entire job — at least as it seemed from the outside — was to a) praise Donald Trump and b) stand over Trump’s shoulder when the president signed a piece of legislation into law.
Up until January 6, 2021, Pence played the role of Ed McMahon to Trump’s Johnny Carson — a yes man who was always around to laugh at the president’s jokes and defend him publicly when the moment called for it.
Which is to say that the only real job of the vice president — and the one that actually matters to his or her future — is maintaining a strong relationship with the president.
And there’s no indication that there is a rift between Biden and Harris. In fact, Biden tweeted this just days ago:
(Sidebar: That tweet came in response to a quote from Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren that seemed to hedge on whether Harris should be the vice presidential nominee again. So….)
And as long as Harris keep Biden in her camp, she’s succeeded as vice president, politically speaking. That goes double if he endorses her if and when she runs for president.
There’s a nugget buried in that same WaPo story about Harris which is illuminating (and much more positive) about her future. It’s this: “Every sitting or former vice president who has sought the Democratic nomination since 1972 has gotten it.”
Every. Single. One.
And, it makes sense. While the vice presidency as a job isn’t any great shakes, it is a very high profile role. You are constantly in the public eye. People get comfortable with you. They feel they know you. And in politics, that’s the name of the game.
Harris has other advantages that suggest her future political prospects are better than some nervous Democrats believe.
She is already a history maker as the nation’s first woman, first African American and first Indian American to serve as vice president. Given that positioning, it seems likely that Harris would enjoy overwhelming support in the female and black community if she decided to run for top job — two critical voting blocs in a Democratic primary election.
She’s also from the state of California which gives her a nice delegate haul (assuming she would carry the state in the primary process) and a massive donor network to raise the tens (and maybe hundreds) of millions she would need to run and win a nomination.
None of this guarantees that Harris would be the party’s nominee or win the White House. She would have competition for the nomination, for sure, and a general election is always heavily dependent on the overall mood of the country.
But the notion that she is somehow falling down on her job as VP — and that whispers to that end will somehow mean she can’t win a presidential nomination fight — is just wrong headed.
Harris is enduring what every VP must endure. The reward, if history is any guide, is the party’s presidential nod.
"Consider the vice presidency of Mike Pence. His entire job — at least as it seemed from the outside — was to a) praise Donald Trump and b) stand over Trump’s shoulder when the president signed a piece of legislation into law."
Cristo,
Your point is well taken, except that Mannequin Mike is polling at 9%. The Old Testament Christian will need to return to rural Indiana radio to resume his role as a "Decaffeinated Rush Limbaugh" for his senior years with Mother.
"Every sitting or former vice president who has sought the Democratic nomination since 1972 has gotten it. Every. Single. One."
. . . Mondale. Gore. Biden.
I don't think that three is really enough to constitute a strong precedent.
There's another precedent that seems more compelling to me: Of *sitting* vice-presidents from any party who have been nominated to run for president since 1836, the list of successful candidates in the general election includes Martin Van Buren, John Breckenridge, George HW Bush . . . that's it: three. (If you go back to the start, you add Th. Jefferson, but the electoral system was fundamentally different).
That's over the course of 184 years. In just my lifetime, I've seen three sitting vice-presidents *lose* general presidential elections: Nixon, Humphrey, and Gore. All three had the advantage of earlier prominent senatorial careers, and Gore, in particular, was a high-profile and productive vice-president in an era of exceptional economic growth. The great exception, Bush Sr., began his campaign polling woefully behind Michael Dukakis (Dukakis had leads in the range of 10-17 points in the early months), despite the fact that Bush was associated with one of the most popular US presidents. Lee Atwater's invention of the deep-disinformation presidential campaign in 1988 reversed the situation for Bush, but evidence for the weakness of the vice-presidential position in a general election is historically overwhelming.
There are reasons why VP is a poor launching pad. It's not an advantage to have your name ID tied to a more dominant figure, and Harris's case confirms how hard it is to have an independent profile for voters to recognize (even Humphrey and Gore were dogged by this, despite having clear pre-VP political personas--Cheney, a dominant VP, was the only clear exception, although Biden had an very unusual profile too). Harris may well be in good position to get her party's nomination according to precedent, but I think her problem in that regard is that many members of her party understand the history of these candidacies and are very much afraid of inviting a repeat. If Biden really believes she's the right candidate and wants her to succeed if he does not choose to run, I think he's going have to help her craft a clear, visible, and successful independent profile over the next twelve months, not just as a congenial sidekick.