Kamala Harris Slips in Polls but Maintains Strong Approval from Black Voters. Is She a Token Puppetician, Misunderstood or Set Up for Failure or All the Above?

Noah Bierman asks, Is the Biden administration setting Vice President Kamala Harris up for failure? Is she a historic figure but “not that interesting” as a politician? Are white liberals, despite their rhetoric, “gun-shy” in elevating women and women of color?

As Harris enters what may be a turbulent period of her vice presidency, we are beginning to see some thoughtful and fairly provocative analyses of both her record and her standing as the first woman and first Black and Asian American person to hold her post.

Now that Harris is having some trouble in polls and public perception, there are growing concerns among Democrats about her political ability. The question many have, even if they agree she is a good politician, is whether she is a great one — capable of leading the ticket when Biden leaves the stage. Biden, 78, has said he plans to run for reelection, though he has not quelled speculation that he could decide otherwise.

The speculation about Harris is especially urgent for Democrats who worry that former President Trump will run again and further threaten democratic institutions.

Some of Harris’ supporters argue, as Greer does, that Harris is being hamstrung by the White House. They point to her biggest solo assignments — curbing immigration from Central America and expanding voting rights against restrictive state GOP bills and a filibuster in the U.S. Senate — as unwinnable.

“She was far from a diversity hire for Mr. Biden, and she has clear potential as a national leader, but she needs the time, support and right combination of goals to learn and grow,” Greer writes.

Greer says that even if Harris wins on immigration by deterring people from coming, she loses, because liberal Democrats in the party’s base will see her efforts as a betrayal. And if she fails to discourage people from coming, others will claim she’s ineffective.

Harris is definitely catching heat from progressives over her warnings, issued last month from Guatemala, that migrants should stay home and will be turned away if they complete the dangerous journey to the border. But I’m not sure heat from the left on that issue is as big a long-term political danger as Greer outlines. 

Most of Harris’ efforts in Central America involve seeding economic development and aid, in hopes of giving people a reason to stay in their countries. If those efforts pay off, they will garner praise from all wings of the Democratic Party and could dent Republican attacks on the administration’s performance at the U.S.-Mexico border.

But Greer’s bigger point is hard to argue. The immigration issue is tough, and Harris, who went to the border last month under political pressure, has now been dragged more deeply into other controversies, including conditions at a tent city for migrant children set up at the Fort Bliss Army Base.

The administration is also facing complaints from the left about its use of a public health law to turn migrants away and from the right about the large increase of children and families coming to the border, among other challenges.

Biden’s aides say they are not setting a trap for Harris, pointing out that he had a similar assignment when he served as President Obama’s vice president. 

But the stakes were different. Biden got the job at the tail end of the administration, after defining himself on the national stage for decades. And, as we now know, Biden’s efforts failed to yield long-term results.

Greer’s second major point cuts deeper for many in her party. She writes that while “Republicans tend to say the quiet part loud,” many Democrats “would never be able to vote for a Black woman at the top of the ticket, no matter how qualified.”

In polling, Democrats tend to rate Biden higher than they do Harris, though the difference is fairly small. Many of Harris’ allies, while agreeing that race and gender affect her poll numbers, say they also believe she fares worse than Biden simply because she is the vice president — the same reason many of her predecessors did worse in public opinion surveys.

“You can’t try to outdo No. 1 when you’re No. 2,” Donna Brazile, a friend of Harris’ who ran former vice president Al Gore’s unsuccessful presidential campaign, told me.

The pollster Cornell Belcher agrees with Brazile. And though he believes it is too early to look too closely at polls, he points to some positives for Harris, including strong approval from Black voters. 

The electorate that decides the Democratic primary and general elections in 2024 and 2028 — when Harris may run for the top job — will be more diverse than the one that elected Donald Trump in 2016 or the one that elected Biden in 2020. And, at least for now, South Carolina — where African American voters play a decisive role in the Democratic primary, including reviving Biden’s flagging candidacy last year — is arguably the most important state in the process of selecting a nominee.

“Be careful about trying to read too much in this far out,” said Belcher, who polled for Obama.

But all of this is contingent on whether Harris is seen as growing into the job, how well she does on her current and future assignments and how the Biden administration as a whole is viewed. And one thing is almost certain at this point: She is not likely to win a Democratic nominating contest without a fight.