Kamala: Weighed and Found Wanting

As I have written before, going into the 2020 presidential season I thought Kamala Harris had a good chance to come away with the Democratic nomination. She seemed to check all of that party’s boxes. But, as in the old story about the dog food advertising campaign, the voters just didn’t like her. She was gone from the race before the Iowa caucuses.

Continued exposure has not raised Harris in the public’s esteem. Trafalgar polled over 1,100 respondents within the last week, and found confidence in the vice president to be low. This is the most basic question for a vice president: “Based on her performance as Vice President, how confident are you that Kamala Harris is ready to be President?” The results:

Remarkably, even 43% of Democrats are not confident that Harris is ready for the big time.

I don’t know whether the leaders of the Democratic Party, whoever they are, have been planning to ease Joe Biden out of office on the ground of failing health and replace him with Harris. If so, they can’t proceed until either there is a dire emergency, or Harris shows some life in the polls. Moreover, even if Biden manages to survive his term, it won’t be easy for the Democrats to turn to someone other than Kamala–a woman of color–in 2024. Her continuing unpopularity, which public exposure seems to aggravate rather than mitigate, poses a real problem for that party.

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