President Joe Biden began his term with an odd tone.
Much like a couple in a New Age marriage, the White House has constantly referred to the “Biden-Harris” administration. The administration has continued to hammer this point to ensure Vice President Kamala Harris is seen almost as an equal, even as she is almost invisible .
In press releases and statements, even some issued this week, the White House, federal agencies, and even Democrats on Capitol Hill have referred to the administration this way.
Yet Harris has been largely invisible, despite Biden’s efforts to thrust her into the limelight, by making her the White House czar over the southern border crisis and voting rights, and tapping her as liaison to Big Labor.
But keeping Harris seldom seen is not helping her.
The Los Angeles Times this week reported on its ongoing effort to track Harris’ popularity. Harris is a California native, and was the state’s attorney general and one of its U.S. senators.
As of Tuesday, Harris’ approval rating was nine points underwater, with 42 percent seeing her favorably and 51 percent unfavorably.
That was actually four points worse than Biden’s in-the-tank rating.
But where Harris really surprises in this analysis is how she compares to her immediate predecessors.
At this point in her term, America’s first woman vice president is more unpopular than all of them – including Dick Cheney, whose critics saw him as a combination of Darth Vader, Benito Mussolini, and Lex Luthor.
After 280 days in office, Harris is closest to former President Donald Trump’s No. 2, Mike Pence.
According to the Times, she is running 2.8 percent less favorable than Pence was at that point.
But she is way behind the rest.
The Times notes that Harris’ favorability rating, after 280 days on the job, trails that of Biden by 17.2 percent.
She also lags behind Al Gore by 38.4 percent, and Cheney by a whopping 51.7 percent.
Her unfavorability ratio intersected with her approval rating in mid-June and the gap has been widening ever since.
The Times wants to attribute her plummet to the usual suspects.
“As Harris’ stature has increased,” the paper reported, “so has the volume of sexist, violent and misogynistic attacks against her on social media, with researchers finding hundreds of thousands of examples.”
Perhaps, though, the answer is simpler and less woke.
Maybe as Harris’ stature has increased, Americans are increasingly reminded of the bad ideas and grating personality that garnered Harris zero support when she ran for president in 2019, and dropped out of the Democratic primary before the first vote was cast.
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