Ever since she became vice president, critiques — both fair and unfair — have plagued Kamala Harris.
There have been questions about how she’s represented the administration as a spokesperson, concerns about staff turnover, and most recently, worries about whether she’s been effective as a VP, and what that could mean for her future as a leader of the party.
The latest wave of criticism featured a number of unnamed Democrats disparaging her and worrying that she wouldn’t be able to win an election at the top of the ticket. As a particularly stinging line in a February New York Times piece put it: “Even some Democrats whom her own advisers referred reporters to for supportive quotes confided privately that they had lost hope in her.”
Such intense scrutiny has been driven, in part, by a heightened focus on Harris as President Joe Biden’s successor. Given the president’s age, and the possibility that Harris may actually have to step into the presidency, there’s been a much bigger spotlight on her record than there otherwise might be. Harris’s identity — she’s the first woman, first Black person and first South Asian person to hold the VP’s office — has also contributed to an unprecedented level of attention relative to her predecessors, historians told Vox.
To better understand Harris’s performance as vice president, and what to make of these critiques, Vox spoke to more than two dozen sources, including White House officials, top Democratic strategists, activists, and academic experts. The White House did not respond to a request for comment and the vice president’s office pointed to a public statement from press secretary Kirsten Allen, who highlighted what Harris has done so far in a Twitter thread.
As we’ve seen over the past week there is no shortage of people willing to anonymously or publicly tear down the vice president. So since no one seems to know what she has done or is doing I’ll put in all in one place:
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