Kamala Harris had been a conspicuous absence. She now sees herself as a problem; as a drag on the Democrats, according to a part of them.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of the leading leaders in Joe Biden's party, this week avoided endorsing the vice president as number two – again – in the president's possible candidacy for re-election in 2024. When the host of a Asked by Boston Public Radio if the president should attend, Warren said without a doubt. "It's so much what he has done...", she said entranced. But when the journalist asked her if Harris should complete the electoral tandem again, the 73-year-old parliamentarian and academic simply passed. “The truth is that I want to put aside the issue of what can make him [Biden] feel comfortable on his team,” she said. And she clarified that she was not suggesting that the two of them were not a team "or that there are problems" between them, but she made it clear that she did not want to get wet for Kamala.
The intervention of the influential senator sounded alarm bells in the Democratic formation, while encouraging the local media to investigate Harris's situation in the party at this time, when he has just passed the halfway point of the term.
The former prosecutor and senator quickly went from stardom as the first female vice president in US history – also being black and of foreign descent – to a bleak territory marked by poor communication; some continuous defections in her team and a thankless management in matters such as immigration, the right to vote or abortion.
Harris' trips to Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Orient, as well as his trips to the interior of the country, have rarely gained relevance if it has not been for some controversial statement such as the "Do not come to the United States" that he released in Guatemala. And it is obvious that his political approaches and speeches have not dazzled enough to give him a differentiated and attractive profile.
Harris's low relevance can be attributed in part to racism or machismo on the part of her fellow citizens, as indeed the Democrats who support her maintain. Others, however, simply do not appreciate in her the political qualities that are required of her to reach the presidency of the country and exercise the position competently.
In this context, Warren's statements were devastating, opening the spigot to other opinions in the same sense. “Many Democrats don't know enough about what Harris is doing. And it doesn't help that she's not an expert communicator,” said, for example, the progressive leader of Georgian Cobb County, Jacquelyn Bettadapur. His points of view opened an extensive chronicle in the Washington Post in which a dozen Democratic leaders and strategists questioned in some way the ability of Harris, both to take over from Biden in the event of his resignation from the candidacy and to make a good role at his side in a reissue, in 2024, of the 2020 electoral tandem.
The truth is that, while Biden's approval ratings fell below 50% in August 2021, after the withdrawal of the troops from Afghanistan, the popularity of the vice president had already collapsed in April of the first year of the legislature. . And from then on she did not even touch 50% again, and even dropped below 30% in November 2021. Now her support rate is 39%, compared to 42% for Biden.
At this point in the game, analysts consider it too scandalous to separate Harris and difficult to revive his figure. His growing presence at local and international meetings has not just restored his initial shine, perhaps because he already suffers from a certain stigma, which makes the staff more aware of his possible setbacks than of what he can contribute.
Her team, or rather the last of her successive teams, suggests that she is about to "reset" to, very soon, gain prominence and come to the fore. But with that same task, his second director of communication, Jamal Simmons, came to the position a year ago, and in December he announced that he was leaving: the same thing that the first to occupy the positions of chief of staff, spokesman, principal assistant, adviser Homeland Security and Harris speechwriter. All of them had also promised a twist so that their boss would finally show her head. And when her current successors say the same, those precedents do not help to believe them.
The proximity of the campaign plays, however, in favor of a takeoff. And it's now or never. Biden needs a stronger vice president, either for her to stick with him or for her to take the baton from her. If she doesn't come back now, Kamala Harris will be or will continue to be, more and more, a problem.
