Why is Kamala Harris disliked so much as VP?
NBC News poll: Kamala Harris hits record low for VP net favorability
She has some criticisms for her past as an attorney, but I’m not sure why she’s so disliked now. What has she done to engender such distaste from the public?
she’s a black woman? Seems like that’s enough for a lot of people.
Used to really like her as senator. She was a bulldog questioning people in front of committee, and going after other senators for nonsensical arguments. When she became candidate, she became completely stage-managed to the point that she seems so phoney. I'm not suggesting that most politicians are not phoney, but she just comes off fake and smug to me.
I agree. I was a big fan of hers during Congressional testimony. But she is definitely awkward in unscripted environments and would be a poor presidential candidate in a nation where a significant portion of the electorate wants a president they can have a beer with. Additionally, her history as a prosecutor makes Democrats suspicious of her.
Republicans hate her because she's a Black woman. They'll make up other excuses, but none of them hold water.
Yup. Everyone here giving their own reasons for disliking her seems to be missing that the amount of vitriolic hatred spewed at her is wildly disproportionate to anything she's actually done or failed to do.
(speaking as someone who doesn't like her either, in that I don't "like" 99% of politicians)
This is it 100%. I think she's great.
[Kept an innocent man on death row] (https://news.yahoo.com/tulsi-gabbard-kamala-harris-record-as-prosecutor-on-marijuana-death-penalty-021423679.html)
[Supported civil asset forfeiture ] (https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/07/jeff-sessions-civil-asset-forfeiture-plan-government-sanctioned-stealing/)
[Arrested the mother of a disabled girl] (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kamala-harris-truancy-arrests-2020-progressive-prosecutorn5c995789e4b0f7bfa1b57d2e)
And more I’m sure but she was off my list of potential candidates based on any of these alone
With a record like that, she'd fit right in with the other party. I don't know what Biden was smoking when he decided to tap her of all people, but it must be so good it's still illegal in Oregon.
Just what I've picked up from other people, I have no feelings about her whatsoever.
This more or less sums it, there are differences between why the right and left might dislike her (ex. I'd say there's an element of misogyny and racism on the right mixed in with valid criticisms).
But fundementally, she's phony. And people are kind of over phony politicians. And more importantly she's not any good at being phony. You have people like Biden who are just as full of shit, but he has a schtick that works on a lot of people to give the impression that he's this worldly, aviators-wearing grandpa who's gonna "give it to you straight, Jack" yadda yadda.
Kamala, by contrast, has no real convincing schtick like that, her mannerisms are overly polished and practiced, so she just looks like another empty suit.
I'm not going to argue that some of the dislike she receives isn't due to racism or misogyny. There has to be an element of that.
But yes, phony is the perfect word.
I don't even get that from Biden. He just seems so fake from the get-go.
(Next part is irrelevant and only opinion.) But I'd rather go into the ground by someone sneaky and quiet than by an arm-flailing maniac screaming and yelling as I get beaten down into the hole lol.
The single biggest problem standing between the left and sustained and meaningful control of the federal government is the complete lack of ability of voters to circle around a consensus candidate. There are several valid reasons to be critical of Harris just as there are pretty much every single Democratic Presidential decade basically of my lifetime. But Republicans vote consistently for candidates they dislike or even hate just to beat Democrats. Every single candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2016, 2020, and undoubtedly in 2028 will have some vocal subset of registered Democrat voters telling you exactly why they will never in a million years vote for them. I saw it constantly on Reddit and I don't see any reason why it won't continue.
Until somebody drops the magic "consensus candidate" name that somehow pleases everyone, Democratic voters are always going to be a major hurdle to their own success. And frankly I don't think that "consensus candidate" name exists. Such is the curse of being the big tent party opposite the GOP. Republicans know they can continue winning elections for at least a little longer thanks to Democratic infighting alone.
Democrats fall in love. Republicans fall in line.
It's reductive, but look at the Christian Right and Trump. Trump is nowhere close to the picture of a Christian. It's astounding he can safely cross the threshold of a church. But he promises to make sure abortion is illegal and men can't pretend to be women to steal kids, so they vote for him. Replace the abortion issue with guns and you get another set of voters who will vote Republican regardless of what they might personally feel.
Meanwhile and to your point on the left, each candidate's worst flaws are held as some kind of uncrossable line by people who are terminally online (which isn't helpful) and the Democratic Party does what they can to feed this and make sure they don't have to enact meaningful change. They just want to maintain the status quo but they get to do it with a pride flag waving behind them. If the Party establishment would just stop putting a thumb on the scale (not just against Bernie but ANYONE remotely progressive/left of the neoliberal center) and let the primary process shake out the most popular candidate, they might actually find themselves winning elections.
More accurate is: Republicans vote, Democrats don't.
If this country had compulsory voting with sane voting days, and better protections against taking away voting rights to blacks and poors, Democrats would have a supermajority in Congress, and a Democratic president for decades.
Replace the abortion issue with guns and you get another set of voters who will vote Republican regardless of what they might personally feel.
The funny part is, Trump suggested to take away guns first, and do due process second - and these 2nd Amendment goobers still voted for him.
The DNC doesn't put their thumb on the scale as much as people like to pretend. The real problem is the under 40 crowd simply not showing up to vote in primaries. There is nothing stopping the same turnout in general elections happening in primaries except people refusing to get off their couches.
But Republicans vote consistently for candidates they dislike or even hate just to beat Democrats. Now, that’s just not true. The Republicans lose elections because of in-fighting too. For example, they lost the most recent election for House in Alaska to a Democrat because Begich voters didn’t want to consolidate behind Palin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Alaska%27s_at-large_congressional_district_special_election
The exception that proves the rule, maybe? That election was the first to use Ranked Choice for congressional offices in Alaska. FPPT voting is a powerful thing, which is why Republicans try to stop it.
I agree. Dems just need to be OK with the person the DNC picks for them and vote like good little peons.
The party needs to figure out what they actually stand for and focus on that. The Republicans have distinct factions but the conflicts between those factions are somewhat in the details. The factions in the Democratic party are wildly different and in direct opposition sometimes. The Democratic party has Socialists, Pacifists, and Environmentalist in the same tent as Corporatists and war hawks. Some of these factions just have zero common ground.
sustained and meaningful control of the federal government
You want a one party system? I'm not a big fan of the Republican party but there are some issues they are championing at the moment like free speech. Back in the day that was the Democrats, and I have no doubts it will flip flop again at some point but that just goes to show how we need at least two parties to act as a check on each other.
Silencing your ideological opponents is great and all until it's you being silenced.
Republicans are not championing free speech. Entirely the opposite with how they're treating LGBT folks currently.
And on that note, the Republicans are so beyond bad that yes, a one party state is actually better. To be clear, a one party state is utterly awful. That's how terrible the Republican party is. They cannot be even remotely viable when their entire platform is hating other people.
I’m not a big fan of the Republican party but there are some issues they are championing at the moment like free speech
Free speech like this?
If the options are one liberal party and one fascist party, or just one liberal party, I would pick the one-party state every time. Anyhow, the Democrats are such an umbrella party that if they were the only party they would almost certainly break into two or more smaller parties, all of which would be far more tolerable than the Republican party.
She's not really a good public speaker for one. Not a lot of charm or charisma. She's not good at schmoozing like Bill Clinton or Obama. A good presidential candidate needs that, and I think it's a big part of why Al Gore and Hillary Clinton lost. She can speak well in public sometimes, but at others she sounds flat, boring, and artificial.
Charisma is a big deal. Think about Reagan Democrats and how people to this day love Reagan even though facts and hindsight analysis show that he was a terrible president who was arguably the start of America's modern decline into horrendous oligarchy.
Because she's black and she's a woman.
Same reason why Hillary Clinton was widely respected every year except when she ran against a man.
Hillary Clinton was widely respected every year
(source needed)
Here's a list of objectionable stuff Hillary was involved with prior to running for president:
(source needed)
Gallup used to poll her favorability pretty regularly, and until she ran for president in 2015 (from which she's never recovered) she seldom had an underwater approval rating. i'd say the characterization of wide respect is reasonably accurate given this data, although i don't agree with the poster's proposed causation
While this is certainly part of it (and all of it for a large number of people), I think it is overly simplistic view and disregards her past as a DA in which she enforced a draconian truancy program.
I assume nearly half of the country hates her for being black and/or a woman, while some other large chunk of the country hates her for being "a cop." I think she's fine. She's done the job a hell of a lot better than a whole list of other VPs I could name. And since I'll be voting against Republicans no matter what, if a Biden-Harris ticket is the opposition I'll be checking that box. No problem.
The only thing conservatives hate more than black people having power is black women having power. So, of course conservatives hate her.
Progressives are tired of neo-liberals sucking corporate cock as hard as the republicans. She is a neo-liberal (and thus a diet conservative), so progressives don't like her (or Biden) either.
That really just leaves neo-liberals to actually like her.
For me, it's strictly because of this. I'm not suggesting truancy isn't an issue worth combating, but going at it this way showed a shocking lack of sense - to the degree where I'm not sure I could trust any grown-ass adult who would go along with such an idea for more than 2 minutes.
What, specifically, are the issues you have with holding parents accountable for the actions of their children?
It's punishing families who are the most vulnerable. Instead of defunding the fucking police a bit so that the money can go to social programs specifically to help these families, it comes at them with cops and jail. Fucked up way to "help" people.
Nothing screams "my kid is going to turn away from truancy" like having a parent in prison.
When your cure only hastens and reinforces the bad behavior, your cure is bad and you should feel bad.
I would have no issue at all with child protective services being engaged, but sending an overworked single mother to jail isn't helping anything, it's just slaking bloodlust for punishment when people don't do as you'd wish.
If the goal is ensuring every child is equipped with an equal opportunity for education, then there are always better choices than hauling mom or dad off to jail. Can you seriously not see how patently absurd that is? It's a boneheaded move from top to bottom and she should feel shame for the rest of her life for putting her political muscle behind it. Educating every last child is important, but this proposed solution only makes things worse.
And that's what the issue is. It's not that there was intervention, it was this specific intervention is stunningly short sighted and entirely punitive.
Criminalizing nonsensical aspects of life to feed the private prison industry is really shitty.
The fact that she threatened to have the mom of a disabled girl arrested
I don’t hate herby nay means, but it just feels like she really hasn’t done much of anything during her tenure in office tbh
I'm mean the VP's #1 job is to have a pulse, so she has full marks on that front.
As far as we know =_=
She's painful to listen to. Can't string a clear sentence together and laughs constantly. Not inspiring or particularly incisive. Which is a particularly disappointing combo when Biden is the same.
I'd guess it is the "isms"
She's just incompetent. Look at some interviews with her, she can't answer basic questions and has done absolutely nothing as a VP. It has nothing to do with her being a woman or black.
She's a right wing authoritarian.
She was disliked before she was VP
as you can probably pick up from the responses so far: she gets all of the racism and bigotry you'd expect from being a visible minority public figure and all of the flack you'd expect from her fairly cringeworthy, not great track record as a politician. her core demographic is basically a slice of liberals who don't care that much about politics and enjoys the facade she puts on--and that's a small audience, politically. anyone who examines her track record more deeply will probably find a bone to pick with her, or is likely going to hate her because of her identity.
Partly because of discrimination, partly because she lacks charisma. There are a substantial number of people that dislike her because she's a black woman and they have biases against both, sometimes without even knowing it. There are also some people on the left that dislike her because she's a moderate liberal that used to be a prosecutor. Honestly she's about standard as vice presidents come, so though I'm farther to the left than her I don't have any strong feelings on her.
What has she done to engender such distaste from the public?
My question is what has she done (that's actually has improved the country) since she's been VP?
What roles does a VP have that front and center for policy though? Fundamentally a lot of the roles with in the executive branch are kind of invisible to the general public. Unless your neck deep into politics (and I don't mean the cable news network.. but more along the lines of reading stuff from federal register and CRS reports, and straight up political science research papers.)
unless your that deep into things what the VP does might as well be invisible
This is the real question. I'm sick of people dismissing criticisms against her because she's black and/or a woman. Give me an actual reason to like her!
She's definitely a horrible public speaker. I totally disagree with how she tackled truancy during her time as a DA/AG. Is this just my internalized racism speaking or can I ACTUALLY feel this way?
This is probably the best breakdown of public perceptions of her record:
A close examination of Harris’s record shows it’s filled with contradictions. She pushed for programs that helped people find jobs instead of putting them in prison, but also fought to keep people in prison even after they were proved innocent. She refused to pursue the death penalty against a man who killed a police officer, but also defended California’s death penalty system in court. She implemented training programs to address police officers’ racial biases, but also resisted calls to get her office to investigate certain police shootings.
But what seem like contradictions may reflect a balancing act. Harris’s parents worked on civil rights causes, and she came from a background well aware of the excesses of the criminal justice system — but in office, she played the role of a prosecutor and California’s lawyer. She started in an era when “tough on crime” politics were popular across party lines — but she rose to national prominence as criminal justice reform started to take off nationally. She had an eye on higher political office as support for criminal justice reform became de rigueur for Democrats — but she still had to work as California’s top law enforcement official.
Her race and gender likely made this balancing act even tougher. In the US, studies have found that more than 90 percent of elected prosecutors are white and more than 80 percent are male. As a Black and Indian American woman, Harris stood out — inviting scrutiny and skepticism, especially by people who may hold racist stereotypes about how Black people view law enforcement or sexist views about whether women are “tough” enough for the job.
Still, the result is the same: As she became more nationally visible, Harris was less known as a progressive prosecutor, as she’d been earlier in her career, and more a reform-lite or even anti-reform attorney general. Now critics have labeled her a “cop” — a sellout for a broken criminal justice system.
Sauce is Vox
Thank you for sharing that there is nuance beyond just "she's black."
On the conservative side of the fence, she's black and Indian and most unforgivable of all, a DEMOCRAT!
On the liberal side, she's taken a hard stance on crime, including minor drug offenses that probably shouldn't be crimes.
She's got something for everybody! To hate!
I like her well enough. Would love another love affair like the obamas but that might be once in a lifetime kind of thing.
Her last name literally means "horrible" in Finnish and from what I've heard that's somewhat accurate
The last four Vice Presidents have been strong enough to be seen as decent contributors to their administrations; Cheney and Biden have both been at the forefront in representing the Executive Branch in sensitive negotiations.
Harris hasn't seemed to be tapped by this administration to perform the same role. Worse, it feels like this administration has intentionally pulled Harris back while putting Buttigieg in roles that would otherwise go to Harris.
Her position will get her attacked, but it feels like she isn't being defended by the Biden Administration for reasons.
I'm not American but I get the impression the left hates her because she's a fairly right wing neoliberal?
When Biden was first elected, I saw one of those "what you order from Wish vs what you get" memes about this.
Had Bernie Sanders & AOC on the "expectation" side and Biden & Harris on the "reality" side.
It's crazy how the right screams that Biden is extremely left while he's center at BEST. Just shows how far they continue to shift right. I mean hell, some of them stopped watching Fox "news" because it became too "liberal" for their taste. That should tell you a whole lot.
It's kind of funny, but also really fucking sad when these people scream about Biden being a far left communist who wants to destroy America with radical socialism or whatever.
I don't know how many actually believe it sincerely. Well, a lot do, but I think there's also an element of just shouting buzzwords without knowing what they mean. Parroting, really.
Like, dude... Please come to where I live and see that our centre-right party has identical policies to the Democrats. Overton Window is extremely fucked in America right now.
It’s not crazy at all. They want the social expectation of what “far left” is to get established at Biden as a baseline. So they’re going to tie that label as much as they can so that when actual progressives put out a platform they’re seen as completely insane and non-viable despite the rest of the developed world doing it for decades.
I'm sorry? Fox News is too 'liberal' for them?
Real world center is American Red Party Communist because this country is so fucked
I think this is the Overton Window changing.
I get the impression that someone like FD Roosevelt would not be possible in the US now.
As a centrist, both sides scream that the other is to the extreme.
Doesn't help that she was a prosecutor in California during three strikes. She's basically a cop.
Ah, that's right. I had never heard of her until the US election and I remember looking her up and being a little dismayed.
I'm more on the opinion that any VP that bleeds will be hated.
Maybe not by the same people, though?
Where I live, we have had three female Prime Ministers - at one point both main political parties were led by women. I hated one of them because she cut welfare for single mothers, cut hospital funding, cut school funding, etc etc.
[Kept an innocent man on death row] (https://news.yahoo.com/tulsi-gabbard-kamala-harris-record-as-prosecutor-on-marijuana-death-penalty-021423679.html)
[Supported civil asset forfeiture ] (https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/07/jeff-sessions-civil-asset-forfeiture-plan-government-sanctioned-stealing/)
[Arrested the mother of a disabled girl] (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kamala-harris-truancy-arrests-2020-progressive-prosecutorn5c995789e4b0f7bfa1b57d2e)
And more I’m sure but she was off my list of potential candidates based on any of these alone
Fine with me. Her favorabity is higher then Trump or Biden. So I think your asking a loaded question.
For me, it's this:
[Harris] fought for this law, which raised the financial penalty and made it a criminal misdemeanor for parents, up to a year in jail, when their children missed at least 10 percent of school time.
She is a strong black woman. That is reason enough for people. They will come up with other reasons, just like Hillary. You will hear a lot of “I will vote for a woman. Just not that woman.” Or, “I just don’t like her.” It’s all bullshit. They don’t want to promote a woman.
For those of you who will inevitably downvote me, just ask yourself, do you hate/distrust/dislike Kamala just like you hate/distrust/dislike Hillary? Hmmmmm
Yep, they’re here in the comments calling her a cop and a neoliberal. The bar a woman has to clear (and a Black woman at that) to be taken seriously is insane.
Not putting poor people in prison for being poor is not a high bar.
“I would vote for a woman. Just not that woman.”
I've been hearing that song for decades now. By a sheer coincidence, that woman somehow always happens to be the woman with the best shot of running for president on a Democratic ticket.
She does not have a shot at running for president lmao.
Former cop and decisions in the past most likely. Some of it could be racial though.
I dont like her because she is a fucking cop.
She’s an accomplished Black woman. That’s literally it.
Yeah. Right. Has nothing to do with her being some neoliberal cop who has a shit record from the left. It's because she's black. And a woman. Got it.
She has a great track record, both personally and professionally, if you had any interest in investigating it. Yes, even on cop stuff and leftist stuff — the details of which (including a lot of great social justice stuff, like trying to pass Federal laws against lynching and banning choke holds, racial profiling, and no-knock warrants) might surprise you.
But people like you have no interest investigating. Because why bother? She’s an accomplished Black woman. May as well just call her a neoliberal and a cop and be done with it.
I don't like her because of situations like her truancy laws. If you think she's not liked just because of her race and/or gender, then you'll never understand why people don't agree with her.
She's a racist, classist noeliberal and a fucking cop (or close enough).
Her political career has been chock-full of attacking public institutions like schools, protecting white-collar crime which destroyed countless lives, protecting child molesters in the church, implementing policy against the poor, and protecting prison slavery. I'm not sure where exactly the confusion lies.
This isn't Facebook grandpa, you need to show your work.
This is i,t shes a fucking cop. I dont trust cops.
The Cons should love her, I don't get it.
Woman. Of color. Democrat.
That's a large part of why no republican (or conservative) is going to give her any respect.
I get why rich people are Republicans. It pisses me off when poor people gladly vote against their own interests in order to "own the democrats." OK but you're still in west va coal country with mountains being pulled down and the only hope for your kids is to leave and maybe visit. And now Republicans are making child labor legal so they might not even get that opportunity.