While President Joe Biden remains saddled by a rock-bottom approval rate and mounting concerns about his age and cognitive health, he remains the apparent nominee ahead of next year’s general election in part because his heir apparent — Vice President Kamala Harris — is even less popular.
An NBC News poll in June found that her favorability rating is 17 points underwater, which is the lowest on record for any vice president. Last month, the left-leaning New York magazine published a piece calling on Biden to drop Harris, who is widely seen among Democrats as unfit to take over the duties of president.
Nevertheless, staunch partisans continue to defend the first Black woman to ever serve as vice president, as evidenced by the vicious backlash to a new profile of Harris in The Atlantic.
As Elaina Plott Calabro accurately reported in the article, Harris was beset by “rhetorical blunders, staff turnover, political missteps, and a poor sense among even her allies of what, exactly, constituted her portfolio” in the months that followed Inauguration Day.
She went on to note that the White House was forced to reaffirm Biden’s confidence in Harris, but that statement did not assuage mounting concerns about the vice president’s abilities.
“It would be hard to find even the staunchest Democrat who would call Kamala currently a good fit for the job,” Calabro concluded.
Although the seemingly fair assessment of Harris’ record attracted some support from both sides of the aisle, a slew of identity-focused critics attempted to portray it as unfairly negative.
You know this is nonsense. Your critical of a POC woman in power because you’re afraid. I expect a redo after you actually do your research and an apology. I stand with our VP
— debbie156-MeidasMighty Ⓜ️Ⓜ️☮️ (@debbie156) October 10, 2023
A sampling of the social media responses include personal attacks based on Calabro’s race and the claim that she was willing to do the “dirty work” of racist White men by daring to write the article in the first place.
“Get therapy for daddy issues & stop trying to undermine women who are truly powerful in their own right,” one critic wrote.
As much as the vice president’s core supporters might claim otherwise, there is plenty of evidence that the Democratic Party has no intentions of allowing her to muck up its electoral chances by allowing her to run for president.
In February, Politico’s Jonathan Martin wrote: “High-level Democrats are rallying to President Biden’s reelection, not because they think it’s in the best interest of the country to have an 82-year-old start a second term but because they fear the potential alternative: the nomination of Kamala Harris and election of Donald Trump.”
