Vice President Kamala Harris has become so unpopular that her approval rating is worse than former Vice President Dick Cheney’s approval after he shot a man in the face by accident with a gun.
A brand-new poll found that nearly half of all voters view Harris negatively, with just 32% approving of her performance in office.
“Mike Pence managed to survive the entire coronavirus crisis without hitting Harris’s net negative 17 approval rating. Despite Democrats getting clobbered in the 2010 midterm elections, then-Vice President Joe Biden (barely) broke even in the NBC poll, with a plus 1% approval rating. After the Bush administration invaded Iraq, Dick Cheney’s net approval was a whopping plus 23%. Even amid the war, shooting his friend in the face, and the White House’s lackluster response to the Great Recession, Cheney managed to outperform Harris, who is presiding over a peacetime country with a still-bustling economy”, the Washington Examiner reported.
“Pence, Biden, Cheney, and Al Gore all served essentially as liaisons to the Hill, helping out bosses who were all relatively new to the Swamp, having served as governors or, in the case of Barack Obama, fewer than three years in the Senate. Sure, those other four running mates did provide some perceived “electability” for their electoral tickets. Rightly or wrongly, an old white man was added to Obama’s ticket out of fear of racial anxieties, and Pence’s evangelical credentials crucially solidified Trump’s support among college-educated conservatives skeptical of the thrice-married celebrity. But a good vice president has a purpose beyond carrying her boss over the finish line. Outside of fundraising, Harris still hasn’t really found hers, and that’s reflected in the polling”, the outlet added.
A separate survey found that Harris has officially become the least popular VP in modern history.
An NBC News survey, conducted earlier this month and published this week, found that just 32 percent of registered voters have a positive view of Harris compared to 49 percent who have a negative view, leaving a net negative rating of -17 points, or “the lowest for any vice president in the poll’s history,” the outlet reported.
Indeed, 39 percent of respondents said they have a “very negative” view of Harris.
The outlet noted that Harris’ approval rating is the lowest for a VP since 1995 when Al Gore was VP to President Bill Clinton. During his tenure, VP Mike Pence was at 34 percent positive and 38 percent negative in October 2019 for a -4 rating.
The vice president’s dismal approval rating could be a drag on President Joe Biden’s ticket for the 2024 presidential election.
“There’s no doubt Harris is a drag on the ticket, but the extent to which she’ll pull down Biden will largely depend on who the Republican nominee is”, Thomas Gift, associate professor of Political Science at University College London (UCL) in the UK, told Newsweek.
“If it’s Trump, then her impact will be near zero because the difference in the presidential choices will be so stark”, he said. “If it’s another GOP nominee, then the prospect of Harris in the White House may be enough to swing a few voters over to the opposing side”.
“Biden can’t afford to dispense with Harris for all the obvious reasons—identity politics, and the prospect of alienating a small fraction of the progressive base being chief among them”, Gift commented. “But anyone in the White House who’s being intellectually honest would tell you that Biden knows Harris offers very little by way of help in his re-election bid”.
Despite her low approval ratings, President Joe Biden opted to retain Harris as his running mate when announcing his 2024 re-election campaign in April despite her lousy approval ratings.
According to Axios, during that time, the White House and Biden’s campaign were actively working to reshape Harris’s public image, as there were concerns that she could potentially have a negative impact on the ticket.
According to Washington Post reporter Cleve R. Wootson Jr., several Democrats have anonymously expressed concern about the potential for her to lead the party or even remain as vice president after 2024, Fox News in its report said.
In a story under the headline, “Some Democrats are worried about Harris’s political prospects”, Wootson noted that it was based on interviews with “more than a dozen Democratic leaders in key states,” adding that several prominent members of the party have concerns about Harris’ political future based on her VP experience.
“Harris’s tenure has been underwhelming, they said, marked by struggles as a communicator and at times near-invisibility, leaving many rank-and-file Democrats unpersuaded that she has the force, charisma, and skill to mount a winning presidential campaign”, he wrote.
