By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Contributing Columnist
Virtually from the moment that Vice President Kamala Harris took office in 2021 she had to spend a lot of time defending the Biden administration, Democrats, and most importantly herself, from withering criticism. So withering that at one point most Americans thought she was doing a lousy job as vice president.
This is the second in a two-part series on Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential bid. It’s excerpted from Earl Ofari Hutchinson’s new book “Kamala!”
Her rating in an October USA Today/Suffolk poll that year bottomed out at 21% approval. That was a historic low. No vice president, and that included George W. Bush’s controversial, always under fire, Vice President Dick Cheney, had reached that historic low.
Before, during, and after President Joe Biden’s White House win, the talk was non-stop about his age and health. There was endless speculation over what to do if Biden faltered from illness or something age related in his first years in the White House.
There was even more speculation over whether Biden, who would turn 80 during a reelection bid in 2024, would be up to the grind of a campaign, or even make the effort. In every instance, the chatter about Biden’s future immediately turned back to Harris. She would be the logical successor as a presidential candidate or as a fill in president if illness rendered Biden unable to perform his duties.
The Republican Party sniffed blood and deep vulnerability, and yet another monumental opportunity to attack. Harris now became their prime target. Their game plan was simple — wage a gutter campaign of sniping, rumor-mongering and flat-out attacks on her. A parade of Republican officials and candidates snatched at that game plan against Harris as the vice president.
They also hammered her as a poor organizer and a hard taskmaster, playing up any grousing from staff members about her supposed failings as an administrator. This subtly reinforced the image of Harris as an ill-equipped and unfocused administrator.
This combined the crucial elements of personal and political hit attacks to weaken the Republicans’ perceived major rival for the White House in 2024.
Those attacks were just the warm up for the even bigger, bolder and venomous slurs against her the moment she became the Democratic presidential contender.
The other supposed Harris vulnerability was the same one the Republicans played on to tar Hillary Clinton in her 2016 presidential bid. Strong, tough, decisive, and, yes, aggressive, are the exact qualities that voters and millions of Americans want and expect in their leaders.
For many, that means the presidential office is a man’s office. Polls still show that a considerable number of voters say they have reservations about a woman president.
Donald Trump exploited that sentiment to the hilt. He was the biggest sexist, misogynist, female abuser that ever sat in the White House. But he was still seen as brash, tough, and outspoken.
For many women that seemed to mark him as having the right stuff to be president. Seventy-four million-plus voters still thought that about him in his losing bid for reelection in 2020. Millions of those voters were women.
As vice president, the GOP’s attacks on Harris did much harm. As mentioned, her poll rating plunged to historic lows in 2021 and 2023. However, that wasn’t the entire story.
In the early months of her vice presidential tenure, her ratings were favorable. That is until the critics piled in on her. In the stunningly short span of three months the reversal in her ratings was breathtakingly astounding.
The GOP believed it had the perfect foil in Harris to cripple Biden and his policies. But equally important, it recognized that she could well be the Democrat’s candidate for president in 2024 if Biden chose not to run again. The game plan was to wage a relentless attack against her in case of that eventuality.
Trump campaign strategists confirmed that not only was that the plan but the attacks on her would intensify and new wrinkles would be added to it the moment Biden stepped down. The first new wrinkle was to give her a pejorative nickname. She now became “Laffin’ Kamala Harris,” or “Cackling Copilot Kamala Harris.” That tag mocked her fulsome laugh. The next wrinkle in the Harris hit assault was to tar her as a far-out California, left wing radical who would promote chaos and anarchy in the presidency.
The next wrinkle was to pound her as “the border czar” and then toss total blame on her for the alleged leaky border invasion. The greatest new wrinkle was to endlessly link her as Biden’s Siamese twin in his supposed mismanagement of the economy and the crime surge.
None of those were borne out by the facts. However, as with personal slurs and slanders, if repeated long and loud enough, and if enough people believed them, they could prove effective.
This was the hell that Trump vowed to “unleash” against Harris at a rally in Atlanta earlier this month. He and his campaign operatives have been as good as their word and much more when it comes to their on-going assault on Harris.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His latest book is “Kamala!” (Middle Passage Press) He is the host of the weekly Earl Ofari Hutchinson show on Blogtalkradio.com Saturdays at 9 a.m.
