When a group of voters were asked during a focus group about Vice President Kamala Harris, their assessments were brutal: If she's helping Biden, you don't see it. It rubs me the wrong way. It was chosen because of its demographic. The big things she had, she failed.
The comments, whether fair or not, are a problem for President Biden and Harris, and that was echoed in interviews with voters here in Arizona, a key swing state where Harris spoke on Friday. More than three years after the oldest president in the first term in history, his replacement has failed to win a majority of voters or convince them that she is ready to intervene if Biden falters, according to opinion polls.
“Swing voters don't like it,” said Gunner Ramer, political director of a group called Republican Voters Against Trump, which allowed the Times to view videos from three focus groups, including a crossover group that included people who voted for former President Trump. In 2016 and Biden in 2020.
It wasn't just former Trump voters who were negative about Harris. In a focus group of Black voters who were disappointed with Biden, no one raised their hand in support of Harris, with one participant calling her a “bad news bear.” A focused group of California Democrats, though they like Harris, had to be asked to debate her and said she needed more influence and exposure.
Many of Harris' allies and supporters say the rulings are influenced by racism and sexism, noting that other vice presidents have remained in the background with less scrutiny and have seen their popularity tied to the top of the ticket. Some people in focus groups criticized her clothing or compared her to Hillary Clinton in comments that appeared to validate those concerns.
But her low popularity may pose a political problem that her predecessors did not face, given the focus on the ages of Trump and Biden, 77 and 81 years old, respectively. More than half of voters, 54%, said she was unqualified to serve as president in a March USA Today/Suffolk poll, compared with 38% who said she was qualified.
“If there is a health event for either candidate, the vice president is at the forefront in terms of people who might be on the fence, people who might not like both candidates,” said David Palaiologos, who conducted the USA Today poll with Suffolk. Voters' evaluation of Harris. “And there are a lot of people whose decision may depend on their comfort level with the choice of vice president.”
Harris has heard the criticism since entering the White House to a historic victory in 2021. While she rarely responds directly, she has ramped up her appearances with key Democratic groups, often maintaining a more aggressive campaign and travel schedule than Biden. Many allies believe her role as the administration's leading voice on abortion rights will strengthen her and the Democratic ticket on an issue that helped deliver the party unexpected success in the 2022 midterm elections.
She spoke Friday in Tucson, three days after the state Supreme Court ruled that the 1864 ban on abortion could be implemented in the coming weeks. She framed the Democrats' case against Trump, who has claimed credit for turning the Supreme Court against abortion rights and said last week that every state should decide on the issue.
“Just like he did in Arizona, he basically wants to take America back to the 19th century,” Harris said.
Several voters said in interviews in Phoenix on Monday that they were unaware of Harris' presence in their state just a few days ago, highlighting the challenge of attracting interest as vice president in an era of information overload.
“If she's coming for us, she's not showing it,” said Tracy Sayles, a 52-year-old black Democrat.
Sayles voted in the previous election for Democrats Hillary Clinton and Biden, but now says her choice is 50-50 in the upcoming election, despite calling Trump a “vulgar” because Biden “looks like he's sick.” She said she would have driven to see Harris in Tucson if she had known she was in the state, but she felt the vice president was hiding.
Another voter who dislikes Trump and Biden, Jeff Garland, said he hasn't seen much of Harris either.
“But from what I’ve seen of her, she doesn’t look like someone I would want running my country,” said Garland, a 57-year-old retired Army member who said he voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. He plans to sit in 2024.
Kelly Hoverson, a 31-year-old Democrat, said she “wasn't happy about Biden” but was more optimistic about Harris, despite hearing concerns from younger friends and relatives about her history as a California prosecutor.
“I just want a woman president,” she said. “I just want to see that in my life.”
Studies by the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, which works to advance women's equality in politics, suggest that women face a “fantasy barrier” when running for the top executive positions, because voters have a harder time envisioning them in the job than white men. , who have held the positions historically.
“Men can tell, women can show,” said Amanda Hunter, the foundation's executive director.
Polls suggest that Harris, who dropped out early in the 2020 presidential primary, has made significant strides with the Democratic base. Three-quarters of Democrats had a favorable view of her in a USA Today/Suffolk poll, which showed just over a quarter of independents viewed her favorably.
Brian Fallon, who serves as her campaign communications director, said she has “proven to be a highly effective messenger on issues ranging from reproductive freedom to gun violence prevention,” and said she is “uniquely positioned to mobilize critical groups across the Biden-Harris coalition, including progressives and independents.” Both.
The fact that many voters say they are still unfamiliar with Harris is something her allies and advisers see as an opportunity, because it leaves room for persuasion when more voters focus on the race in the early fall.
“This is not one or two speeches, this is just four or five months of work,” said Cornell Belcher, who worked as a pollster under former President Obama.
Belcher argued that the small segment of persuadable voters who gave Harris her lowest score would not decide the race. The question will instead be whether Democrats can rebuild their coalition of young voters, women and people of color who re-elected Obama in 2012 and formed the backbone of Biden's 2020 victory.
“I'm more concerned about these younger voters coming off the ramp, like they did in 2016,” he said, crediting Harris with getting her work to reach them on campus tours and other outreach activities.
But there are questions here too, with inconsistencies in polls of voters aged 18-29, given the small sample sizes of the subgroups. One Emerson College poll conducted in early April showed Harris receiving very high favorable marks among these younger voters, nearly 49%, while another poll conducted by The Economist a few days later showed that only 34% of that age group viewed to it positively.
It is unclear whether Trump, who has not often targeted the vice president, will continue his attacks on Harris, which are unsurprisingly toxic among the Republican voter base. “If they cheated in the election, it could be Kamala,” Trump said during a rally in North Carolina in March, echoing his false claims of widespread election fraud.
He quickly returned to Biden: “We have enough problems with this guy.”
Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, described Harris as irrelevant. She said: “The political reality is that Biden is underwater and is a failed president.” “Sure, she might be his equal in those failures, but he's the target.”
Longtime Republican pollster Wyatt Ayres agrees that running mates generally don't influence votes, but he points to Sarah Palin in 2008 as an exception, largely because polls showed dual concerns about John McCain's health and suitability. Palin for office. He argues that Harris, who described it as a lapse in walking, presents a similar problem.
“There may be time, but if you don't have the ability to be more visible and look like you're ready to be the leader of the free world, it's going to be difficult to achieve,” Ayres said.
Harris is counting on that time. It's fairly busy with public events, but vice presidents, by design, don't tend to attract as much attention as the president.
As the campaign heats up and Trump is chosen as his running mate, they will likely see more of her, and perhaps in a different light.
“For people who have doubts about it, the question they'll ultimately be asked is, 'How will it look compared to X?' said Joel Goldstein, a historian who is studying the vice presidency. “Now, she is measured against an ideal figure.”
