Vice President Kamala Harris’ approval ratings remain at a low point, leading to speculation that President Joe Biden might consider replacing her before the upcoming presidential election.
Biden, who, at 80 years old, holds the record for being the oldest U.S. president, continues to show signs of aging: He experiences speech difficulties, frequent falls, and the White House has taken steps to minimize situations that may expose his physical and mental limitations. There are concerns that, if he is reelected next year, he may not complete his term.
In such a scenario, Harris would succeed him as president, a prospect that has raised concerns within both parties, as reported by multiple sources.
The news site 1945 reports: “According to an NBC poll from June, just 32% of Americans believe that Harris is doing a good job—a number that matched a poll from August 2022 showing virtually the same figures. The same poll found that 49% of Americans hold a negative opinion of the vice president, with some 39% telling pollsters that they have a ‘very negative’ view of her. It gave Harris a net negative approval rating of -17 percent.”
The outlet added: “After years of worsening approval ratings and polls repeatedly showing Harris to be one of the least popular and most divisive politicians in modern American history, even White House strategists are reportedly worried that the vice president could tank Biden’s chances in 2024. It’s not just the White House and high-profile Democrats coming to her defense, though; the media’s doing it too.”
It’s worth noting that determining whether Kamala Harris is the least popular vice president in history is challenging since historical polling data is not readily available dating back to the early days of the United States. For context, during the second term of Vice President Dick Cheney, especially after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, his approval ratings were lower than Harris’ current ratings.
“Perhaps, then, Harris isn’t the least popular vice president ever, but her unpopularity is remarkable not just because it has remained consistently low for such a long time, but because she hasn’t, like Cheney, overseen the invasion of [a] foreign country,” 1945 reported.
Some months ago, Washington Post columnist and Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen offered his take on why Harris remains so unpopular—namely, that she talks to adults like they are children.
“Why is she so unpopular? One may be that none of the issues she’s taken on, like the border or anything else, she hasn’t made any progress and so part of that is the failure of the administration. But the other thing is that she has this habit of talking about the most mundane things in this deeply profound voice,” Thiessen said.
“And when people hear that, when people hear her say, ‘Transportation is about getting people to the place they want to go,’ and says it in such a profound way, they think one of two things. Either they think she’s stupid or they think, ‘She thinks I’m stupid.’ People don’t like to be talked to like a child. And so either they just lose confidence in her or they think she’s talking down to them, and that makes her profoundly unpopular,” he added.
As such, Democrats and left-leaning publications have, for months, called on Biden to sack her before the election.
“The perception that (Biden) will not be mentally fit enough to carry out the demands of the job may be unfair, but that perception is clearly held by a majority of voters, including Democrats and Independents,” wrote Tom Rogers, editor-at-large for Newsweek, in July.
