At 57 years old, Vice President Kamala Harris finds herself enthroned as, perhaps, the most powerful woman in the world’s most powerful nation. One would think that such a position could only be occupied by the most adept and cunning politician — yet the opposite is true of Harris.
Harris’ approval ratings began dropping around the summer of 2021 — just a few months into President Joe Biden’s tenure in the White House — and they have been deeply underwater ever since. More recently, Americans have disapproved of Harris by double-digit margins. Harris’ office has meanwhile been shedding top officials in reaction to what they describe as a toxic and frustrating work environment. During her public appearances, Harris has continually struggled — often speaking in word salads and crumpling under the pressure of basic questions asked of the current administration’s policies.
How did one of America’s worst politicians end up one heartbeat away from the presidency?
An Activist From Day One
Kamala Devi Harris was born in Oakland, California on October 20, 1964. Her father, Donald Harris, is a Jamaican-American economist and professor emeritus at the prestigious Stanford University, and her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, worked as an Indian-American biomedical scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
From a young age, Harris was immersed in an activist culture. During the 2020 election cycle, Harris said that she had once been wheeled along by her parents in a stroller during a civil rights march. After she had fallen from the stroller and was separated from her family for a time, the young Harris became distressed.
“My mother tells the story about how I’m fussing,” Harris recounted, “and she’s like, ‘Baby, what do you want? What do you need?’ And I just looked at her and I said, ‘Fweedom!’”
Though Harris was undoubtedly impacted by strong political influences during her early years — her parents, after all, met through the civil rights movement — this particular story seems to be lifted from an account delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a 1965 interview. The civil rights icon described how he had drawn inspiration from a young girl who, while marching in a demonstration alongside her mother, looked a policeman in the eye and declared she wanted “Fee-dom.”
Massaged childhood stories aside, Harris would eventually carry out the work of the “system” that Dr. King had often campaigned against — namely, as a prosecutor.
Systemic Racism
Harris eventually left her home state of California to attend Howard University, an historically black institution in Washington, D.C. After earning degrees in political science and economics, she earned a law degree from the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law. Within a year of graduating, she was tapped as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California.
She spent the next decade working in various public attorney posts while also dating California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown — a man three decades her senior. Brown appointed Harris to positions on the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the Medical Assistance Commission, which earned her around $80,000 per year in addition to her prosecutor’s salary. Brown, himself, admitted that he “may have influenced her career” through the appointments.
Eventually, Harris won a competitive election for district attorney of San Francisco in 2004. In 2011, she ascended to the role of California attorney general. During her stint in state politics, Harris built a rock-solid alliance with the abortion lobby. To this day, they continue to shower her with accolades such as the “Champion of Choice Award.”
Harris’ record as a prosecutor has garnered criticism from both the Left and the Right. Though she has insisted that she will reform the system from the inside, Harris has been previously known to throw the book at minor offenders while neglecting the pursuit of justice against far more brazen criminals.
In San Francisco, Harris earned the ire of police unions for declining to pursue the death penalty for a gang member who murdered an officer; yet, she aggressively prosecuted the guardians of habitually truant students, calling the issue “tantamount to a crime.” She brandished penalties such as $2,000 fines and jail sentences for parents of such students, most of which were primarily from low-income and racial minority communities.
In one particularly stunning act of incompetence, Harris’ office failed to disclose the fact that a technician had been skimming cocaine from a crime lab and mishandled evidence — leading to over 600 drug cases being tossed out.
Nevertheless, Harris soon found herself working at the paragon of political incompetence — the United States Congress.
Live By Prosecution, Die By Prosecution
Harris was sworn into the Senate on January 3, 2017 — only days before former President Donald Trump would enter the Oval Office. Harris’ four years in the Senate were thus marked by her opposition to the Trump agenda.
Most notably, Harris gained national attention for aggressively cross-examining Brett Kavanaugh upon his nomination to serve on the Supreme Court — especially in regard to the Robert Mueller investigation and the sexual assault allegations made against Kavanaugh.
In the words of President Trump, “she was nasty to a level that was just a horrible thing… the way she treated now-Justice Kavanaugh, and I won’t forget that soon.” President Trump wasn’t the only one to remember.
Yet, Harris, despite gaining significant attention throughout the Kavanaugh hearing, was among the first to drop out from the primary race — ironically due to an aggressive stretch of cross-examination from a fellow Democrat.
Moments after Harris mercilessly blasted Joe Biden — her current boss — for working alongside segregationists in Congress, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) called out her record as a prosecutor in California. A clearly flustered Harris failed to produce a compelling response to Gabbard. Harris’ campaign never recovered, and she dropped out two months before the Iowa caucus. She told supporters that “my campaign for president simply doesn’t have the financial resources we need to continue.”
However, Harris’ career in national politics was just beginning.
We Did It, Joe!
In August 2020 — after three months of widespread, aggressive racial activism spurred by the death of George Floyd — the Biden campaign overlooked Harris’ accusations of Biden’s segregationist past and tapped her as his running mate.
Without a doubt, Harris checked off many boxes on the diversity roster. As well as being a woman, she is an African-American and an Indian-American. Biden had vowed to select a female as his vice presidential nominee, and he saw this promise through by selecting Harris as his running mate. Harris’ relatively short tenure in the federal government balanced out Biden’s decades in the Senate and White House, and her relative youth counterbalanced Biden’s advanced age.
When the Democrats defeated Trump and Pence in the general election and began their administration, Harris immediately began taking on responsibilities typically reserved for the commander-in-chief. She is often the first point of contact between foreign leaders and the White House — most recently, she traveled to eastern Europe as the symbol of American support for Ukraine.
Harris, however, deeply bungled her role as the Biden administration’s “border czar.” Under her watch, the United States has witnessed a record surge in illegal border crossings. Additionally, she has only visited the southern border once — and at a location hundreds of miles away from the heart of the problem. Instead of addressing this issue at the source of the problem, she traveled to Guatemala and Mexico to discuss the “root causes” of illegal immigration. When questioned on the outcomes of her work, Harris routinely fumbled and responded, again, with word salads.
Indeed, these bungled public statements have been a staple of Harris’ tenure as vice president.
For instance, she told a crowd of United States Naval Academy graduates last summer: “Just ask any Marine today, would she rather carry 20 pounds of batteries or a rolled-up solar panel, and I am positive she will tell you a solar panel — and so would he.” In the spring of 2022, she told members of the United States Space Force: “Space, it affects us all. And it connects us all. There are so many opportunities in space for our country and for all of humanity — from science, to commerce, to national security. All of you on this base know the importance of the space systems that you use and operate and how important they are for our national security.”
Beyond her best attempts to appeal to the public, Harris has failed to appeal to her own employees. She has already churned her deputy chief of staff, director of digital strategies, deputy press secretary, communications director, chief spokesperson, director of press operations, deputy director of public engagement, national security adviser, and speechwriting director.
Some cite money, others cite burnout, and more cite not wanting to be labeled as a “Harris person.” In response, Harris has resorted to asking former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for advice on handling poor likability.
Within one year of assuming office, Harris managed to earn herself an abysmally low approval rating of 28%. The closest comparison is a 30% approval rating earned by Vice President Dick Cheney — which was earned toward the end of President George W. Bush’s controversial second term.
In the words of Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro, Harris is “Michael Scott” — the incompetent boss from NBC’s hit sitcom “The Office” — except “not likable or sympathetic.” It remains to be seen whether Kamala Harris has a future in national politics beyond the Biden administration. For now, it is certainly clear that she has a lot of ground to gain back.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.