The Kamala Conundrum

Political news rarely gets much grimmer than it did for Joe Biden on July 26, when he was greeted by a surprise poll showing that, were he to run again in a contested primary in New Hampshire, he might command less than one-fifth of the vote. It was a far-fetched hypothetical — the likes of Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren won’t challenge him if he runs for reelection — but the dearth of support for a sitting president was still galling. And yet, improbably, the news was even worse for his presumptive heir: Kamala Harris was all the way down in the single digits.

The vice-presidency is, by definition, a nearly impossible job. There’s the prestige and the “one heartbeat away” of it all but few defined responsibilities and political pitfalls at every turn. Eighteen months in, thanks to a combination of Biden’s age and unpopularity, the lingering pandemic and punishing inflation, a relentless opposition, and — most visibly — her own struggles to communicate a satisfactory role for herself, Harris has reached an unparalleled low point.

“There’s a cruel irony to the thing, which is you are almost as big a target as the president for the opposition and critics, but by definition you need to keep a lower profile because no one wants to upstage the boss, and you don’t ever want to be in a position where you’re saying anything even a millimeter differently,” said a veteran operative who has worked with three Democratic vice-presidents. Harris is partly a victim of the enormous expectations placed on her when Biden thought he was selecting the future leader of a vibrant, thriving post-Trump Democratic Party. And if you ask some of her supporters, she may be one of the few things keeping the Biden administration’s languishing popularity barely afloat, leaving Democrats with a conundrum: a successor-in-waiting who is just as disliked as the standard-bearer but is also exactly as irreplaceable.

Article: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/08/kamala-harris-conundrum.html