The most popular vice president in the United States

What does Kamala Harris actually do? This question is more pressing than ever for the once so promising vice president, Joe Biden. Many now see it as just a bad cast.

What does US Vice President Kamala Harris have in common with stars such as Michael Jackson, Nelson Mandela and Muhammad Ali? The famous American magazine “Time” has dedicated a so-called “commemorative edition” to all of them in recent years.

Kamala Harris Memorial ‘Time’ Edition (Source: Power Media Group)

But there is one notable difference: the singer, freedom fighter, and boxer special editions have been published to honor the deceased characters’ lifelong legacy and fulfillment. The special issue of the vitality of Kamala Harris With the subtitle “The Wonderful Story of Our Nation’s First Woman as Vice President” was released a few weeks after her inauguration.

Debutante and Dilettante?

Too early to evaluate, it seems. Or just in time. Because the separation with Kamala may end abruptly much sooner than expected. Their reputations are damaged, and Harris’s popularity has plummeted to its worst record in 50 years for an American vice president. Only 37.9 percent of those surveyed It was according to surveys are satisfied with their services. 52.7% are dissatisfied. This has never happened recently. A disaster for a beginner.

In addition, there are increasing reports about her supposedly chaotic behavior in office, about employees who are supposed to flee from her when they resign, and rumors of a rift with Joe Biden. Articles about her political failures appear all the time when it comes to the tasks she has been assigned: solving immigration problems and reforming the electoral law, which is aimed at protecting the voting rights of minorities in particular.

In Washington political circles, some people are not surprised by this. How can we tell how the vice president is fundamentally unobsessed when Kamala Harris had to crush her pre-election campaign to run for president just eleven months later in 2019 due to financial problems, it is said in many places. Joe Biden only nominated them to score better with women and minorities as a candidate after Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. However, his side must be the white workforce.

With Kamala Harris, is a star dying over the US capital that didn’t really shine? Was it or was it expected to be too much?

Historically, but without achievements

The expectations of the California man, who is often charming, warm and sexy, were high and still are. Perhaps the largest ever for second place in the United States.

Harris has historically started the position three times, which he has often ridiculed as merely an extra role. But she is the first woman in the history of the United States. She is the first “colored character”. For the first time, she is the Vice President of Joe Biden, the oldest US president ever to hold the office.

So-called “candidates” for Vice Presidential positions are often strategically filled in US election campaigns. For example, to win the shaky states of the head. Or also designate potential successors at an early stage. George H.W. Bush served as Vice President of Ronald Reagan for eight years before he himself became president.

However, in the case of Kamala Harris, it seems more likely than ever that she will be number one sooner than expected, and thus also become the first woman in that state position. Either because Joe Biden could resign for health reasons during his tenure. Or in the next election in 2024 at the latest, if the president, contrary to his always necessary assurances, decides not to run for a second time at the age of 82.

under special supervision

So it makes sense that the media and political opponents – Republicans and Democrats alike – are looking closely at much earlier than before to see who could become the most powerful person overnight, or what their achievements look like so far. But is this unfair?

In a recent interview with Politico, Joe Biden’s government spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said it was “out of the question” that the many ongoing attacks against Kamala Harris are at least partly due to her being a woman and a minority. “It really weighs her shoulders,” Psaki said. It is a reading that Harris’ critics vehemently deny.

A comparison is difficult, but with Condoleezza Rice, an African-American woman was a security adviser to the President of the United States and then even Secretary of State. Its popularity ratings have always remained fairly stable.

At the time, after September 11, 2001, the country was not as divided and politically militant as it is today. In 2021, at least from the point of view of many Republicans, Kamala Harris will be the representative of the hated progressives who cannot and really want to solve the problem of illegal immigration on the US southern border with Mexico. In other words: Twenty years later, racism and chauvinism may play a bigger role again than they did during the Bush administration.

However, with progressives in their camp, Harris is seen as an unwelcome hard-liner, especially when it comes to immigration issues. “Do not come!” The vice president received a lot of reprimands from the left-liberal spectrum of Democrats for this sentence, which was aimed at potential refugees, but also sounded clumsy on her trip to Guatemala this year. At the same time, the number of illegal immigrants was two times higher in June of this year than in the entire period of 2020.

Harris always fights on two fronts. The way she deals with the issue of immigration entrusted to her turns both camps against her – both right and left. It is true that her popularity has steadily declined since taking office. But with the onset of the public debate over immigration, things really only went downhill in the summer. Your approach to boosting the economy in the home countries with the help of American companies may be sustainable. However, she cannot achieve quick results with this strategy alone.

Harris can’t deliver

Although rhetorically unimaginative as Don’t Come, nearly every attempt to make a political difference seems to Harris at the moment. Vaccine skeptics and anti-vaccine opponents cannot be persuaded by repeating the phrase “Get a booster.” The massive increase in the vaccination rate is also seen as the key to overcoming the epidemic in the United States. Harris’ charm and vitality seem to have evaporated. She seems annoying, upset, and sometimes unhappy.

No wonder, even with their second big topic, electoral reform, nothing is really going forward. The so-called “John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act” and the “Freedom of Voting Act” are intended to prevent it from increasing the difficulty of voting for minorities, particularly in republican states. But in the US Senate, Harris still faced opposition from two Democrats, Joe Manchin and Kirsten Senema, of all people. In the event of an impasse, the vice president can secure the lost majority with her vote. But only if all 50 Democratic-leaning senators actually participate.

After all, Harris isn’t the much-touted kingmaker. You and President Joe Biden depend on Mansion and Cinema. Harris can hardly be blamed for the fact that these two senators developed a side drift to the core of their brand. But in the end, the reasons for failure fade into the background. The deciding factor is whether the vice president succeeds in delivering. Harris knows it himself, and in one she said, “I have work to do. I will do this work.” An interview aired on December 26 with CBS.

Poor leadership or the wrong advisor?

A favorite topic, at least one that was hotly debated in Washington politics, did not come up: the vice president’s administration. An unusually large number of Kamala Harris’ employees quit in their first year. According to Washington Post and CNN reports and statements by Harris staff included in them, what appears to be common at the end of the term is due to the vice president’s leadership style. There is talk of “subversive behavior patterns” and the fact that she sometimes selects her employees as if she is still a California attorney general or the chair of an investigative committee.

Such qualities are not uncommon among those in power, especially men. Her intake of Harris’s may be indicative of hidden sexism. On the other hand, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden also started explicitly with the aim of introducing a different style of leadership after the Trump era.

Following the reports, an employee from Kamala Harris hurriedly tweeted in December, “Hello. My name is David Gein. I work for Vice President Harris on behalf of the American people as the Assistant Director of Operations, and I love my job.” This did not make things better – on the contrary, she seemed helpless and marching.

Of the circles of Democrats in Washington, working with Harris’ team, Hartina Flournoy, Harris’ chief of staff in particular, was said, according to information from t-online, to be a problem. The 65-year-old has worked as a chief of staff in former President Bill Clinton’s office since 2013. Prior to that, she organized donations to Hillary Clinton’s pre-election campaign from 2007 onwards. Bernie Sanders employees in particular are said to have felt that Flournoy could bite unpleasant colleagues among Democrats. In short: Hartina Flornoy is seen as a real dragon in Kamala Harris’ waiting room, and therefore an unbearable superior to the staff. Also because she comes from the Clinton camp, it is said that it is not Harris but Bill and above all Hillary who is holding the actual threads in the background.

what will be left

You can’t blame it all on Kamala Harris himself. A deputy’s popularity ratings in the United States are always linked to the president’s values. And Joe Biden is currently not as convincing as the hitherto unpopular US president, Donald Trump.

In his autobiography on Kamala Harris, journalist Dan Morin writes of her grandiose ambitions from the 2019 pre-election campaign: “Even if your campaign stalled before the first votes were cast, Harris made a great impression. Something always remained about her. In the memory. That’s how she works with Kamala Harris. “. It should not be underestimated.

Thus, the question leading up to 2022, the year of the important midterm elections, is: What exactly will we remember? Will it be more than a very early commemorative edition of Time magazine? In any case, the Republicans have already chosen immigration and the southern border with Mexico as the main campaign theme. If Democrats lose a midterm meltdown, not only should Joe Biden be to blame, but outright Kamala Harris should also be blamed.

The number two may never have been considered the next number one with a promising future. But as much as Kamala Harris’s opportunities and ambitions are related to the aging of the current president of the United States, her fate is also clearly linked to the potential political decline of Joe Biden. But Kamala Harris is a fighter. Anyway, she repeated one sentence to her mother Shyamala over and over on her way up: “In many things you may be the first, but make sure you are never the last.”