Why Democrats Can’t See Kamala Harris for Who She Is

In the run-up to the 2020 election, legacy-media outlets went to Herculean lengths to block and tackle for Kamala Harris. Almost any criticism of Harris was swiftly flagged and scolded for its internalized racism, sexism, and or both — the “double bind” of “racism and sexism” that shows “not only the bias that women and people of color face, but the fact that for women of color, that bias is more than the sum of its parts,” as an October 2020 New York Times analysis put it. Even the allegation that Harris was “phony” was off-limits — “when used against a person, and especially a woman of color, experts say” charges of phoniness have “a harmful subtext,” the Times counseled.

Those “experts” are noticeably absent from the more recent coverage of the first half-black, half–South Asian woman to serve as vice president. There are signs that at least some journalists are beginning to suspect that Harris isn’t living up to the world-historic god-queen caricature that their profession spent the last few years constructing for her. In the past week, the nation’s two papers of record — the New York Times and the Washington Post — have each published pieces gingerly raising questions about Harris’s conspicuous mediocrity. On that front, the Times and the Post are well behind the decisive majority of Americans, who have been telling pollsters they disapprove more than they approve of Harris for the better part of a year and a half.

About the Author

Nate Hochman

Nate Hochman was a staff writer at National Review.

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In the run-up to the 2020 election, legacy-media outlets went to Herculean lengths to block and tackle for Kamala Harris. Almost any criticism of Harris was swiftly flagged and scolded for its internalized racism, sexism, and or both — the “double bind” of “racism and sexism” that shows “not only the bias that women and people of color face, but the fact that for women of color, that bias is more than the sum of its parts,” as an October 2020 New York Times analysis put it. Even the allegation that Harris was “phony” was off-limits — “when used against a person, and especially a woman of color, experts say” charges of phoniness have “a harmful subtext,” the Times counseled.

Those “experts” are noticeably absent from the more recent coverage of the first half-black, half–South Asian woman to serve as vice president. There are signs that at least some journalists are beginning to suspect that Harris isn’t living up to the world-historic god-queen caricature that their profession spent the last few years constructing for her. In the past week, the nation’s two papers of record — the New York Times and the Washington Post — have each published pieces gingerly raising questions about Harris’s conspicuous mediocrity. On that front, the Times and the Post are well behind the decisive majority of Americans, who have been telling pollsters they disapprove more than they approve of Harris for the better part of a year and a half.