In veep trouble: Three barriers putting Kamala Harris in unenviable position ahead of 2024
Cami Mondeaux
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As Democrats look ahead to 2024 and consider alternative candidates if President Joe Biden does not seek reelection, some party leaders are questioning whether Vice President Kamala Harris has what it takes to win the White House.
Biden has not yet declared his intent to run for reelection in 2024, but the president has hinted at doing so in the past few months. However, some Democrats are keeping their options open in case he decides not to seek a second term — with many looking past his No. 2 as a viable option.
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Although she has kept a lower profile during the first two years of the Biden administration, Harris has had her fair share of challenges dealing with negative headlines, gaffes, and staff turnover. As a result, some Democrats are questioning whether she’s the best option to put forward as an alternative to Biden.
Here are three barriers putting Harris in a less-than-ideal position ahead of the 2024 election cycle:
Harris keeps low profile on high-profile matters
One of Harris’s biggest challenges is dealing with criticisms that the vice president has kept too low of a profile over the last two years, often missing from the spotlight when it came to big topics such as immigration and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Part of this criticism stems from the fact that Harris was often kept in Washington to serve as the tiebreaking vote in the 50-50 Senate, keeping her from traveling nationwide. However, now that Democrats hold a 51-49 majority, that could open the vice president up to getting more face time with voters ahead of the 2024 cycle.
“I think the main thing is I wish she was out there and more visible,” J.A. Moore, a South Carolina lawmaker, told the Washington Post. “They want to see that representation, they want to see her face more and see her connection with what the administration is doing.”
Harris’s absence also garnered scrutiny in the early months of the Biden administration after it took the vice president six months to visit the southern border despite being appointed the “immigration czar.” After dodging criticism, Harris visited the El Paso border for the first time in June 2021.
Gaffes and blunders
Criticisms of Harris for her delay in visiting the southern border intensified after the vice president explained her absence.
“I haven’t been to Europe,” Harris quipped to NBC News weeks before making her first trip to the southern border.
Harris has been weighed down by other similar gaffes, typically resulting in the vice president giving a long-winded answer that critics attack as not being substantive. When asked if Democrats failed to codify Roe v. Wade before it was overturned by the Supreme Court, Harris struggled to express her opinion.
“I think that, to be very honest with you, I do believe that we should have rightly believed, but we certainly believe that certain issues are just settled. Certain issues are just settled,” Harris told CBS News in July 2022. “That’s why I do believe that we are living, sadly, in real unsettled times.”
Democratic strategists have expressed concerns that such comments could sink Harris’s chances of being elevated to the presidency, noting her misstatements overshadow her political ability.
“People are poised to pounce on anything — any misstep, any gaffe, anything she says — and so she’s probably not getting the benefit of the doubt,” Jacquelyn Bettadapur, former chairwoman of the Cobb County Democratic Party in Georgia, told the Washington Post. “It doesn’t help that she’s not [that] adept as a communicator.”
Border crisis worsening under Biden administration
Shortly after Biden was sworn into office, he appointed Harris as the administration’s immigration czar to address the surge of illegal immigration at the southern border. However, record-high immigration numbers and a rise in drug smuggling over the last two years have hurt Harris’s reputation on the matter.
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Border Patrol agents made a record-breaking 2.3 million immigrant encounters during the 2022 fiscal year, according to Customs Border and Protection. Additionally, federal officials seized more than 50.6 million fentanyl-laced pills and more than 10,000 pounds of fentanyl powder at the southern border in 2022, averaging out to more than 379 million potentially fatal doses, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
That criticism has increased under the new Congress as House Republicans are slated to hold hearings on the southern border this week, kick-starting GOP-led investigations into the Biden administration’s immigration policies. Those hearings are expected to feature testimony from a number of witnesses, including local officials from border towns.