OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Vice President Kamala Harris is preparing to make a comeback and she is going to have to step out of the shadow of President Joe Biden to do it.
Her popularity hit a low of 28 percent 8 months ago as she became the most unpopular vice president in the recorded history of the United States and was less popular than the president, IO News reported.
But she is now at a 39 percent approval rating, which is still remarkably low but must be considered a victory for her. She is still 14 points less popular than former Vice President Mike Pence was at the same time in his vice presidency but far better than she was.
Recent events in the United States were a political gift for her. The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that kept abortion legal across the country for half a century, was tantamount to opportunity knocking loudly at the Vice President’s door.
Over the last few weeks, Ms Harris has abandoned the torpor that has characterized her time in office, suddenly and enthusiastically criss-crossing the country, engaging in what her aides call the “How Dare They” tour.
Everywhere she goes, she asks the question: “How dare they tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her own body?”
At times, she portrays the Republican-appointed majority of justices on the US Supreme Court as equally irresponsible and extreme as the raging, Trump-backed mob that brought death and destruction to Capitol Hill last year.
Wherever she visits she portrays a dark and dystopian future where Republicans are annihilating everyone’s rights and she presents herself, and the Democrats, as the solution.
In the past two weeks she has been to Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Virginia
“When it comes to… intimate decisions about heart and home,” she said on Saturday, Americans “should be able to do that without the government telling them what to do.”
It comes after a scathing piece published by Newsweek, Professor Jason Nichols notes how “we are stuck with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.”
“It was the meme of the week: Joe’s gotta go. It felt like every liberal news outlet took part in a week of a scathing critique of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, with many even from the President’s own party suggesting he commit to not running in 2024,” Nichols wrote.
“This is not to say that Joe Biden’s presidency has been entirely successful. Many feel he has been unable to secure important legislative victories or fulfill campaign promises, despite having a majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. President Biden also failed to secure voting rights or police reform, both big issues for African Americans, who also happen to be the Democrats’ most loyal and important voting block,” he added.
Nichols declared: “The President also appears helpless in the fight to protect bodily autonomy and healthcare for women and girls in the wake of the reversal of Roe v. Wade, while Biden’s signature piece of legislation, Build Back Better, died in the Senate, where he couldn’t even rally consensus within his own party. And it’s unlikely that the President will be able to deliver much of anything in the final two years of his term, as Republicans are likely poised to take the House of Representatives.”
Nichols is hardly the only one sounding the alarm bells about Biden and Harris.
In an explosive story last month from New York Magazine, titled, “There Has to Be a Backup Plan. There’s a Backup Plan, Right? Inside the 2024 soul-searching that’s happening in every corner of the Democratic Party,” author Gabriel Debenedetti discusses how Democrats are facing a reckoning.
Debenedetti notes how there seems to be a major divide between Biden and his allies on one side and Harris and her loyalists on the other.
With Trumpism re-ascendant, ambivalence about Biden’s age and political standing is fueling skepticism just as the image of his understudy, Vice-President Kamala Harris, dips even further than his. The most recent analysis from the Los Angeles Times has her net approval rating at negative 11. The result is a bizarre disconnect within the Democratic Party, with two factions talking past each other.
One group consists of Biden and his loyalists, who are convinced that while the ticket’s numbers are undeniably bleak, they’re historically unsurprising for a president and VP facing their first midterm and will surely bounce back. The second group comprises a broad swath of the Democratic elite and rank and file alike, who suspect that vectors of age, succession, and strategy have created a dynamic with no obvious parallel in recent history.
