Why is Kamala Harris so unpopular?

The polling is...brutal.

(Vice President Kamala Harris)

There’s a nugget buried in a new NBC News poll that’s worth expanding on. It’s this: Just 32% of voters have a favorable opinion of Vice President Kamala Harris while 49% have an unfavorable view of her.

That net -17 rating is the lowest ever measured by NBC News for a sitting vice president. (Mike Pence, by way of comparison, had a -4 favorable/unfavorable score in an October 2019 NBC poll.)

Which begs the question: Why?

The obvious answer — and the one that Democrats give by rote at this point — is that Harris’ unpopularity is directly (and solely) linked to the fact she is a) the first woman to be vice president and b) the first black person to be vice president.

“I do think sexism and racism are part of the problem, no question about it,” former White House chief of staff Ron Klain told Kara Swisher in late April about Harris.

“Her ‘firstness’ also can’t be ignored in how the public metabolizes her,” tweeted NBC’s Ali Vitali.

I think that’s a right answer.

While there’s no polling data to suggest Harris’ race and/or gender is at the heart of why so many people dislike her, it’s hard to imagine that, given what we know about lingering prejudice in the country, the first black woman elected president wouldn’t face some considerable headwinds because of that fact.

So, that, to me, is not up for debate. There is some percentage of the American electorate who doesn’t like Harris because she is black, because she is a woman — or both.

But I also think there’s more to the story here too.

Consider this: Harris is the vice president to a man who is 80 years old — and will be 82 years old when and if he is sworn in to a second term in January 2025.

That, by default, makes Harris — and her role as VP — significantly more important and high profile) than the average second-in-command.

In fact, several Republican contenders have already floated the possibility of Harris being president.

“Every liberal knows it,” former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has said. “They know that it's Kamala Harris that's going to end up being president of the United States if Joe Biden wins this election.”

“Joe Biden, in my opinion…is an awful president,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said on ABC this Sunday. “And we can't afford to have him from age 82 to 86 in the White House or even worse have Kamala Harris assume the presidency.”

The spotlight on Harris, therefore, has been MUCH brighter than on her predecessors in office because there are serious doubts about Biden’s health and well being.

Some of this is cynical political pandering. The likes of Haley and Christie know that Harris is very unpopular within their base. So, by attacking her — and suggesting she might be president — they are throwing red meat to a crowd that loves it. And they are doing so to try to bolster their own conservative chops. It’s less about Harris, really, than it it is about the Republican base.

Then there’s the part of the Harris story that is harder to tell — and therefore less often told: She struggled, mightily, in her early days in the office.

There was this from CNN in November 2021:

“Worn out by what they see as entrenched dysfunction and lack of focus, key West Wing aides have largely thrown up their hands at Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff – deciding there simply isn’t time to deal with them right now, especially at a moment when President Joe Biden faces quickly multiplying legislative and political concerns.”

And this from the New York Times in February:

She has already made history as the first woman, the first African American and the first Asian American ever to serve as vice president, but she has still struggled to define her role much beyond that legacy…

….But the painful reality for Ms. Harris is that in private conversations over the last few months, dozens of Democrats in the White House, on Capitol Hill and around the nation — including some who helped put her on the party’s 2020 ticket — said she had not risen to the challenge of proving herself as a future leader of the party, much less the country. Even some Democrats whom her own advisers referred reporters to for supportive quotes confided privately that they had lost hope in her.

Now, it’s worth noting here that vice presidents have struggled since, well, forever, to delineate themselves from the president and shape their own political brand. You get lumped into “the administration” no matter what you do.

And, that’s not a great thing for Harris’ poll numbers either. Joe Biden’s approval rating is hovering in the low 40s, which is not great!

So, Harris isn’t getting any sort of boost from Biden. But her numbers are even below his — so it’s not simply the drag from the president that explains things.¹

I DO think that some of the explanation — and the blame — has to go to Harris herself. She long struggled to find an issue to define her — abortion rights now appears to be it — and her early media appearances (most notably a June 2021 interview with NBC’s Lester Holt) were not good. At all. ² She has cycled through staff — particularly in her first two years in office.

The key question, of course, is how to allot Harris’ blame pie. Is 75% (or more) of it due to her being a black woman? Do the inherent pressures and frustrations with being vice president account for the majority of her struggles? Or is is mostly her own screwups and errors in office?

Here’s how I would break down the blame pie:

• 50% race and gender

• 20% problems of being VP

• 30% Harris’ own unforced errors

That is to say that gender and racial bias still account for the majority of the opposition to Harris. And the second banana nature of the vice presidency matters too.

But, it is also to say that Harris bears some decent-sized chunk of blame for her own poor numbers too. She’s struggled to step into the role of national leader and to find ways to stand out amid the admittedly-challenging nature of the VP gig.

Regardless of the reason(s), Harris needs to find a way to turn around her numbers between now and 2028 when, presumably, she will be running for president — no matter what happens next November.

1. It’s an open question as to whether Harris’ numbers could be a reverse drag on the Democratic ticket in 2024. I am skeptical — mostly because I don’t think people vote on who the second in command is, especially when we are talking about an incumbent president.

2. The New York Times reported in February that after the Holt interview Harris “all but went into a bunker for about a year, avoiding many interviews out of what aides said was a fear of making mistakes and disappointing Mr. Biden.”