During her failed presidential campaign, then-Sen. Kamala Harris was her own worst enemy. Despite the fact that her first 2019 primary debate performance where she lobbed one staged attack after another at Joe Biden was wildly cheered by the media, it didn’t take long for her rising star to come crashing down to earth.

Within just a few weeks, her poll numbers fell. Tulsi Gabbard scored a knockout punch against Harris during her second debate. Polls were taken that summer that showed a majority of black and female voters were not warming up to her. By December 2019, she dropped out of the race before the first primary/caucus votes were cast.

Her star rose again the following summer after Biden picked her as his vice presidential nominee, the result of him being pressured relentlessly for months to pick a black, female Democrat to be his running mate.

Here we are now, two summers after her presidential campaign began to crater, and Harris’ woes are apparent again, from the disastrous way she’s handled the border crisis to date to the numerous reports swirling with allegations from former and current staffers that a divaesque Harris is extremely difficult to work with and has her priorities askew.

It’s gotten so bad for Harris that there are now murmurings from various Democratic camps that she will not be welcomed as a campaign surrogate for vulnerable Democrats going into the 2022 midterms:

“As of right now, I think she has the potential of doing more harm than good for some of these candidates,” said one Democratic strategist. “My sense is she’ll probably raise a lot of money and maybe she’ll go to some specific districts, but they’ll have to be really strategic with her.”

“She doesn’t have the standing at this moment to go to a lot of these tighter districts,” the strategist added.

No one is coming out and saying she’s doing an amazing job, because the first question would be ‘On what?’” acknowledged one Harris ally. “She’s made a bunch of mistakes and she’s made herself a story for good and bad.”

[…]

“I don’t think someone like Mark Kelly would want her anywhere around him,” the Harris ally said.

While it’s not unusual for a president and/or vice president to be viewed as a political liability in certain states/districts depending on their ratings, for a Vice President who was heralded by the media and pundits alike for her “historic first” and who has been given the kid-glove treatment all along the way, that Harris is being treated like a piranha* in certain Democratic circles just seven months into her term is just further evidence that she’s hit rock bottom with the party.

If the negative views of Harris hold, this could prove to be a nightmare for her long-term if Biden decides not to run for a second term and she throws her hat in the ring to be his replacement. Vice presidents who run to “succeed” their predecessors are usually considered shoo-ins for their party’s nomination, but Harris could prove to be an exception to the rule if she can’t reverse opinions of her even within her own party. A failure on her part to secure the nomination would be an embarrassment that cannot be fully described in words.

Time will tell, of course, as to how things work out for her in terms of a presidential nomination, but if her history is a reliable indicator, things will not go well, and she’ll only have herself – not her race or gender – to blame. Because what it boils down to is that Kamala Harris is just not very good at what she does.

*Note: Yes, I meant to use “piranha” here instead of “pariah.” Thanks for noticing 🙂

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