Mediocre White Guys’ Kamala Harris Problem
They are so obsessed with replacing her.
Kamala Harris is the first woman (of any color) to serve as vice president. That’s pretty impressive, but white men who’ve achieved far less in their lives seem to think she’s a political lightweight. When Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer retired, anti-Trump conservative Bill Kristol theorized that President Joe Biden could nominate Harris as Breyer’s replacement and then make charisma machine Mitt Romney his new VP. Last year, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, New York Magazine’s Eric Levitz, and journalist Josh Barro — white men, one and all — proposed ditching Harris from the 2024 ticket.
Unlike the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee for president, Harris is not on trial for multiple serious felonies. There’s little justification for replacing the first Black woman vice president, which wouldn’t benefit Democrats in any measurable way and would alienate the party’s most loyal voting group, Black women.
Barro argued that “Harris’ role as a draw for Black voters is more theoretical than demonstrated.” Of course, his understanding of Black voters (especially women) is mostly theoretical at best. He points out that Harris “has never been elected in a jurisdiction with a large Black population,” and it’s true that Biden consistently performed better with Black voters during the 2020 primary. However, Harris doesn’t need to be Barack Obama for Black voters to feel protective of her and personally offended if she’s publicly disrespected.
Levitz wrote: “To be sure, replacing Harris with another running mate is not a great option. It’s just that Democrats have no good ones. It is risky to switch out the first Black and female vice-president for someone else. But it is also risky to saddle an 81-year-old nominee with an exceptionally unpopular running mate who — if all goes well — will be all but guaranteed the party’s nomination in 2028.”
Harris isn’t “exceptionally unpopular.” According to a FiveThirtyEight analysis, her disapproval rating is lower than Biden’s. Yes, she’s still underwater overall, just like the president, but there’s no evidence that Harris herself is dragging down the ticket through personal scandal and toxic behavior. In our current hyper-partisan reality, Biden’s approval rating is probably the ceiling for any vice president he’d picked. If he’d gone with Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, or Elizabeth Warren, they’d likely have similar numbers to Harris.
Ezra Klein pulled the same banana in the tailpipe when he proposed that Biden withdraw from the race and not endorse his own vice president. Instead, Harris could fight for the nomination in a less-dignified reality TV brawl at the Democratic National Convention. Like Levitz, Klein downplayed the obvious catastrophic fallout from snubbing Harris.
White men from both parties have a Harris problem
Political consultant Douglas MacKinnon, who worked for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, wrote in an op-ed last month that Democrats have a “Kamala Harris problem.”
“I’ve spoken to multiple high-level Democrats, and not one of them wants Harris on the ticket,” he claims. I would bet my Scarlet Witch Disneyland ears that every one of those “high-level Democrats” were white men. Journalist Victoria Brownworth has observed that the supposed “Kamala Harris problem” is one specific to white Democrats.
The majority of white voters haven’t supported Democrats since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 (hardly a coincidence), yet the white male party insiders and pundits believe that just the white right Democrat can win back those voters. It’s true that Biden did better than Hillary Clinton among white voters, especially in key swing states, but this doesn’t mean Harris added nothing to the 2020 ticket. There’s a reason that FDR’s Vice President John Nance Garner said the job was “not worth a bucket of warm piss.” Harris receives zero credit for the administration’s achievements, but replacing her is believed the solution to all Biden’s problems. Harris didn’t make Biden old or cause voters to forget the pandemic happened. She’s hardly the same liability as past VPs Dan Quayle and even Biden himself. She’s relentlessly on message and never undermines the president’s agenda. If John Kerry or John McCain had won in 2004 or 2008, their vice presidents — John Edwards and Sarah Palin — would’ve constantly attempted to steal the spotlight. Harris keeps her own ambitions in check. She’s very good at a not-so-great job.
Wait … that Nikki Haley?
The white men who’ve suggested giving Harris the trap door treatment have so far at least advocated for replacements such as Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Sen. Raphael Warnock from Georgia, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro — you know, Democrats. Whitmer, Warnock, and Shapiro also have won statewide in key swing states.
HBO’s Real Time host Bill Maher, however, went in a different, dumber direction on Friday. He proposed that Biden abandon Harris and apparently everything he claims to believe in favor of Republican Nikki Haley, who just decisively lost her party’s primary. She didn’t even win her home state of South Carolina, whose nine electoral votes will in no way determine the outcome of the presidential election.
“I know it’s crazy to think that she could run with Biden,” Maher said, before continuing his crazy-ass thought, “but that’s my dream, a unity ticket. And then he would, I think, definitely win.”
That’s not a “unity” ticket. It’s a political suicide pact. Journalist Tara Palmeri pointed out that replacing the first Black woman vice president with Nikki Haley, who recently flunked Civil War history, would not go over well with the Democratic base. Maher’s response was cluelessly racist: “[Haley’s] a woman of color!” Haley is not Black! Not all “women of color” are the same. Haley denies that the United States was ever a racist nation, and she blamed Barack Obama, the first Black president, for starting the “divisions in our country.”
Haley isn’t even one of the few remaining Republicans who claims they’re pro-choice, like Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, or Kyrsten Sinema. She supports a federal abortion ban and sided with the Alabama Supreme Court’s IVF ban. Maher is also cluelessly sexist if he hasn’t noticed that every Democratic victory over the past two years is the result of outraged women fighting for their reproductive rights.
I’ve stated my concerns over whether Harris could carry the Rust Belt if she were to assume the presidency during Biden’s second term. However, Haley is a Republican governor from a reliably Republican state, and during the GOP primary, she lost Iowa, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Michigan. Donald Trump didn’t even compete in the Nevada primary, and Haley still lost to “None Of These Candidates.” She’s no Swing State Cinderella. Harris is arguably more electable than Haley, considering that her own party actually likes her.
Of course, if Biden can’t finish his second term, I’m not worried that President Harris will nominate far-right extremists to the Supreme Court or sign whatever terrible bills a MAGA Congress sends her. A President Haley would do just that. If Biden opens his administration up to a potential right-wing hostile takeover, then he learned nothing from his pre-school classmate Abraham Lincoln.
I’ve had enough of white men proposing “unity” tickets that elevate a supposed “normal” non-Putin-humping Republican. “Normal” Republicans have had three separate opportunities to nominate a “normal” non-MAGA Republican presidential candidate. They have repeatedly failed, presumably because they don’t represent a significant segment of the electorate, and their “solution” to the Trump threat they couldn’t stop themselves is that Democrats should help put a “normal” Republican in the White House. I thought they opposed Affirmative Action.
Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t leaving the ticket. Accept it and let’s work to stop Trump.
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This is a topic that lights my hair on fire because I have yet to find a single male friend of any race, no matter how liberal, who isn’t an asshole towards Kamala Harris. I have no idea where they are getting their news but they appear to believe every dumbass BernietoTrump type or Republican talking point. Even when you can get them to admit that their data is a pile of anecdotal horseshit, they refuse to accept that their gut might just be sensing that she is a woman and Black, that they don’t have some hidden spidey sense. They are sure she is corrupt. That she slept her way up. That she is useless. That she alienates voters. They really don’t want to believe that all their unearned privilege might have affected them so deeply that they retain bias. They voted for Warren, they’ll have you know. They voted for Obama. Just, they just don’t like Kamala.
I think the only way we are ever going to get an elected female president is if someone kicks the bucket in office first and a female vp moves up. And even then, I suspect all my liberal male friends are going to try every trick in the book to express how much better a different, penis-y-er candidate might be a better choice first.
Why no, I haven’t gotten over my desire for a Warren/Harris and then Harris/SomebodyNew ticket for 2016,2020,2024, and 2028, thank you.
I'm not American but I am a long-time observer of US presidential politics, and every time some media clown starts floating "[Democratic candidate] should name a Republican as their running mate FOR UNITY" I ask myself, how the fuck is that supposed to work? The VP is there to handle some of the workload, be a tie-breaking vote in the Senate as needed and be ready to take over if something happens to the president. How does that work when they're from the other party? The people get a Republican president instead of the Democrat they voted for? what does that do to votes in the Senate? Whose policies is a Republican VP going to support while they're campaigning? Who actually believes that would create "unity" besides political pundits who spend their time huffing each other's farts? Am I going to stop asking rhetorical questions? NEVER!
TL;DR: I have never seen anyone outside the political chattering classes take the idea of a "unity ticket" seriously, with good reason. It won't work. And for whatever reason, it's always Democrats who are supposed to pre-fuck their administrations by choosing a Republican VP. It's a terrible idea that just won't die.