OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The popularity, or lack of popularity, of Vice President Kamala Harris has been a pressing issue for the administration and for President Joe Biden and now she is making her excuses..
The vice president believes that it is racism and sexism, not her lack of any skills or accomplishments, that has people not liking her.
She has told confidants that if she were white and male that the media coverage of her would be more kind, The New York Times reported.
An early front-runner whose presidential ambitions fizzled amid a dysfunctional 2020 campaign, Ms. Harris was pulled onto the Biden ticket for her policy priorities that largely mirrored his, and her ability as a Black woman to bolster support with coalitions of voters he needed to win the presidency. But according to interviews with more than two dozen White House officials, political allies, elected officials and former aides, Ms. Harris is still struggling to define herself in the Biden White House or meaningfully correct what she and her aides feel is an unfair perception that she is adrift in the job.
Faced with declining approval ratings, a series of staff departures and a drumbeat of criticism from Republicans and the conservative news media, she has turned to powerful confidantes, including Hillary Clinton, to help plot a path forward.
Ms. Harris has privately told her allies that the news coverage of her would be different if she were any of her 48 predecessors, whom she has described as all white and male. (Charles Curtis, who served as vice president under Hoover, spoke proudly of his Native American ancestry.) She also has confided in them about the difficulties she is facing with the intractable issues in her portfolio, such as voting rights and the root causes of migration. The White House has pushed back against scathing criticism on both fronts, for what activists say is a lack of attention.
“I think it’s no secret that the different things she has been asked to take on are incredibly demanding, not always well understood publicly and take a lot of work as well as a lot of skill,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said of Harris. “You have to do everything except one thing, which is take credit.”
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has been a candidate for president herself, has given Harris advice.
“There is a double standard; it’s sadly alive and well,” she said. “A lot of what is being used to judge her, just like it was to judge me, or the women who ran in 2020, or everybody else, is really colored by that.”
California Democrat Rep. Karen Bass said that she believes Harris is facing more scrutiny because she is the first black woman vice president.
“What the White House could’ve done is been clearer with the expectations of what was supposed to happen under her watch,” she said.
“I know, and we all knew, that she would have a difficult time because anytime you’re a ‘first,’ you do,” she said. “And to be the first woman vice president, to be the first Black, Asian woman, that’s a triple. So we knew it was going to be rough, but it has been relentless, and I think extremely unfair.”
But she does believe that Vice President Harris is the heir apparent to President Biden.
“I think she is the front-runner,” she said. “I think she’ll be the front-runner.”
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have unfavorable ratings higher than that of Donald Trump.
According to the RealClearPolitics collection of polls, the left-wing propaganda campaigns against Trump have failed.
Currently, Biden’s unfavorable rating sits at 52.6 percent.
Harris’s unfavorable rating is even higher, 53.3 percent.
Meanwhile, Trump sits at 52.4 percent.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is sitting even worse, with her unfavorabl
