Vice President Kamala Harris’ chances of succeeding President Joe Biden to the presidency are highly unlikely.
Harris and Biden have repeatedly clashed. Many former vice presidents including Biden have used the vice presidency as a springboard into the Oval Office, or have waged unsuccessful campaigns.
Others include Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, Dan Quayle, Al Gore. Mike Pence has been mentioned as a longshot possible contender for the 2024 GOP nomination.
Biden and Kamala Harris Under the Lens
Numerous news reports suggest that Biden and Kamala Harris have had an ongoing tense relationship since entering office in January 2021.
Biden is alleged to have called Harris a “work in progress,” author Chris Whipple wrote in his book “The Fight of His Life.” Whipple received extensive access to the Biden administration while researching the book.
Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff also allegedly expressed frustration over his wife’s limited involvement in official assignments on behalf of the administration. She has been placed in charge of no-win issues like immigration, voting rights in Republican states, and a handful of other difficult issues. Republicans have blamed her for the administration’s ineptitude against the Mexican drug cartels.
Other accounts called the Biden-Harris relationship during their first year in office an “exhausted stalemate.”
“It’s hard to miss the specific energy that the White House brings to defend a White man, knowing that Kamala Harris has spent almost a year taking a lot of the hits that the West Wing didn’t want to take themselves,” a former Harris aide told CNN in November 2021.
Harris Brings Issues
Harris’ office has been filled with gossip about her toxic leadership style. Politico reported that Harris refuses to take responsibility for her failures and blames others for negative results.
“People are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses and it’s an abusive environment,” Politico quoted a staffer as saying. “It’s not a healthy environment and people often feel mistreated. It’s not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like s—.”
Polling shows Harris with a 37 percent next approval rating, according to Five Thirty-Eight back a few months ago.
Talk has included replacing Harris on the ticket in 2024, but Harris dismisses such discussions as Washington gossip. She told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell back in Februrary that she expects to be on the Democratic ticket with Joe Biden next year – and that did panb out. A Rasmussen Reports poll from early in the year found that only 39 percent of voters wanted Kamala Harris on the Democratic ticket alongside Biden, who will be 82 on Inauguration Day 2025.
Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks to the National League of Cities via video conference Monday, March 8, 2021, from the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House. (Official White House t by Lawrence Jackson)
Vice President Kamala Harris meets with Texas Democratic Legislators, Wednesday, June 16, 2021, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)
“Right now, she seems to be an albatross,” CNN quoted an unnamed Democratic Party chair who expressed concern about Harris’ poll numbers and about Biden’s reelection chances. “She’s either going to be a liability or a help. And you better embrace her because it’s not like she’s going to be off the ticket.”
The same caustic personality that cost her during the 2020 primary season makes many Democrats reluctant to support her as a candidate if she wages a second campaign in 2028.
John Rossomando has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award in 2008 for his reporting.