WASHINGTON – Republican attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris are taking hold, and the White House is running out of time to reframe the narrative, Democrats say.
At a meeting two days after President Joe Biden announced his 2024 reelection bid, a group of Democratic strategists told the White House as much during a briefing for television pundits on the pair’s agenda.
For more than two years, Republicans had been attempting to paint Harris as incompetent. And yet, the strategists found, the White House was still developing its strategy for how to combat the ruthless assault against the first Black and Asian American woman to hold the vice presidency.
A discussion ensued about ways to lift up Harris and improve her image, four participants in the meeting said. Democrats in the room argued that Harris would benefit from more public appearances in environments where she can be herself and in front of voting groups with whom she is already popular.
Biden has since made a visible show of support for Harris, defending her in an interview and playing up an unannounced visit the pair made to a Mexican restaurant on Cinco de Mayo.
But some Harris allies fear it’s too late. The vice president’s poll numbers have been below 50 percent since the duo’s first year in office, and several Democrats, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, expressed concern that they may be beyond repair.
Views about Harris, a former state attorney general who briefly ran for president and served a partial term in the U.S. Senate, may be hardening, and some Democrats say Biden’s team did not take the issue seriously fast enough.
In a CBS News poll taken late last month, Harris had a 43% approval rating and a 57% disapproval rating. Although she has wide Democratic support, Harris is viewed favorably by just 35% of swing voters.
Harris’ negatives rose early in the administration after she was tasked with leading an effort to stem the tide of illegal migration to the U.S. from Central American nations. The assignment led to a barrage of attacks from Republicans, who sought to make her the face of the border crisis.
In the last year, Harris has found a niche in promoting abortion rights, railing against the Supreme Court decision that gave states the ability to ban the practice.
“It has helped the vice president focus on a single issue that she talks about repeatedly,” said Jamal Simmons, a former communications director to Harris who departed the White House in January. “She continues to have 10 or 12 issues that she cares about and focuses on and pop up. This issue of reproductive freedom is one that is not going away.”
GOP attacks intensify on Harris
The attacks on Harris are not a new phenomenon. But with the presidential campaign underway, Republicans’ focus on the vice president has intensified.
GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley suggested last month that Biden, who is 80, would not live through the end of a second term.
Last week, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador wrote in a Fox News op-ed that Harris, 58, is “one of the most incompetent elected officials in the country."
Rep. Jim Clyburn, a national co-chair of Biden’s reelection campaign, said the White House should not “stoop that low.”
“That kind of low life stuff, they ought not respond to,” Clyburn, D-S.C., said in an interview.
He tied the attacks that are meant to discredit Harris to the period after the Civil War, known as the Reconstruction era, and said discrimination against Black office holders and anti-democratic events such as the Jan 6. insurrection will continue if they are left unchecked.
Patrick Gaspard, an Obama-era official who was executive director of the Democratic National Committee, said he believes Americans are not yet paying close attention to the 2024 race. “There isn't anyone in that White House from the president on down who can be shook by this at all,” said Gaspard, referring to the criticism of Harris.
The White House knows that attacking the vice president as a means of undercutting the ticket is part of an old political playbook, which Biden himself is familiar with having run for reelection alongside former President Barack Obama, he said. And most voters will be concerned about near-term challenges, including the economy and their personal rights, Gaspard added.
Rallying the Democratic base
Staunch backers of Harris say that with the right approach, the vice president can still build on her support. In a Suffolk University/USA TODAY poll from mid-December nearly 11% of voters said they were undecided about Harris.
“What will help her numbers go up is when they begin conducting a paid advertising campaign that extols the work she’s been doing the last two years,” Simmons, the former Harris aide, said.
Harris’ allies say that questions about who the vice president is and what she has accomplished stem from a lack of familiarity with her background and record that was exacerbated by the constraints on holding in-person events during the pandemic.
“I just think that Vice President Harris hasn't gotten the credit she deserves,” Biden said in an MSNBC interview that aired this past Friday. “She is really very, very good. And with everything going on, she hasn't gotten the attention she deserves.”
The recent addition of Stephanie Young, a senior adviser who’s focused on communications, was viewed by Democrats with close ties to the White House as a step toward bolstering Harris' image. She came to the vice president’s shop from When We All Vote, an organization founded by former first lady Michelle Obama.
Young delivered the section of the presentation that pertained to Harris during the meeting with Democratic pundits and strategists alongside Harris press secretary Kirsten Allen.
“The meeting was an opportunity to share more about the Administration’s work overall. It also served as an opportunity to share the Vice President’s work and ensure the leading voices communicating with the American people were fully aware of what the Vice President is doing on the American people’s behalf. It was a two way conversation to increase understanding and connection,” a White House official who declined to be named said in a statement to USA TODAY.
The official emphasized Harris’ work on abortion rights, gun violence prevention and infrastructure projects and said the vice president would be “out and in the fight” over those issues in the weeks and months ahead.
Democrats said they expect the White House to strategically deploy Harris to rally base voters, much as it did in the 2022 midterms – putting her in front of audiences with whom she's popular. The vice president has relatively high approval ratings with Black voters, registered Democrats and voters under the age of 30, in particular.
Harris’ recent trip to Tennessee, where she spoke to students at a historically Black university and met with three state legislators who were ejected from office, was among the recent public appearances that White House allies praised.
Harris is representative to a diverse generation of younger voters of what is possible in America, said Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of the progressive, youth advocacy group NextGen America.
And having the vice president out on the campaign trail making the case for another four years to Gen Z voters would be “really smart on their part,” she said. “There is a lot that they can talk about about what they've done, and not just pointing to the other side and how bad the other side is.”
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