It’s a day ending in a “y,” so it’s time for another mainstream media voice to argue that Kamala Harris is actually really good at her job of vice president, and is being drastically underestimated by an allegedly hostile media. Joy Reid of MSNBC contends that Americans just haven’t been able to see the real Kamala Harris.
For starters, Reid says VP Harris is about as real as they come. People just haven’t had a chance to see that side of her. “She’s just a regular sister in the same way people would always say that Michelle Obama is like if your cousin became First Lady. Kamala Harris is like if your cousin became VP of the United States,” she said. “I think she doesn’t get to show that personality often enough, and so people haven’t had a chance to get to know her,” she said. . . .
Reid told me that she hopes the Vice President will have more opportunities to take control of the narrative created by the talking heads and show Americans who she really is. “Most of the media is still white and male. And their take on Kamala Harris becomes the take. It becomes conventional wisdom,” she said. “I was able to kick off my heels and talk real. We need more conversations like that.”
As noted late last year, Harris does have a few factors outside her control that hinder her performance as vice president. Most of her Senate and campaign staffers didn’t come with her in the vice presidency. None of her top staff have worked with Harris for long. Her current chief of staff was formerly a vice president at George Washington University. Her current national-security adviser previously worked at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her current communications director was previously a commentator for CBS News.
As veep, Harris gets assigned the least popular issues to focus upon, the ones that the president doesn’t want associated with himself. Welcome to the not-so-glamorous aspects of life as vice president.
And Harris doesn’t fit many of the traditional roles of the job. She’s not a foreign-policy specialist, she doesn’t have longtime, strong ties on Capitol Hill, and as her presidential-primary campaign demonstrated, she doesn’t have a strong relationship with any particular constituency. She’s in the uncomfortable role of the heir apparent for a president who does not want to admit that he’s too old to run for another term. Biden apparently isn’t even interested in maintaining his weekly lunch habit.
And remember, some of Biden’s closest friends and allies didn’t want her in this position and are unlikely to ever trust her. It’s fair to wonder if Jill Biden ever forgot Harris’s attacks on her husband during the primary. Apparently the Biden staff finds Harris and her staff frustrating.
But at some point, it becomes absurd to continually contend that Americans still haven’t seen or heard the “real” Kamala Harris. For starters, who is preventing Harris from showing Americans her “real” self? She’s the vice president. She can grant interviews with anyone she likes, give just about any speech she likes. At what point is it fair to say that the problems with Harris’s image are the fault of Harris herself?
Finally, Harris spent four years in the Senate, spent about a year as a presidential candidate, and has been vice president for about a year and a half. How much more time will it take for Americans to “get to know” the “real” Kamala Harris?