As the 2024 battle for the White House begins, Vice President Kamala Harris’s approval ratings are dismal — in the low 30s.
Why is her public standing so low?
After watching her antics, Americans have realized she is an incompetent gadfly.
To understand how Harris, a "San Francisco socialite turned politico, fast-tracked her way to the national stage only to lose the faith of the base and her president," pick up a copy of Charlie Spiering’s new book, "Amateur: Kamala Harris in the White House."
It is an unfettered look at the woman who is one heartbeat away from the presidency.
Born in October 1964, Kamala’s parents, Donald, a Jamaican, and Shyamala, an Indian, were both radical Leftist academics.
Harris spent her youth in Montreal Canada living with her divorced mother, a professor at McGill University. After graduating from a Canadian high school, Harris went to Howard University because "she wanted to experience a life where everyone was black."
Graduating with a degree in political science, Harris subsequently studied law at the University of California Hastings College of Law.
After passing the bar exam on her second try, she was hired as a clerk in the Alameda County District Attorney’s office.
In 1994, at age 29, Harris became the girlfriend of California’s most powerful political bon vivant, Willie Brown.
Brown, who served as the speaker of California State Assembly and as mayor of San Francisco, introduced Harris to California’s beautiful people and appointed her to two part-time state positions that paid about $100,000 a year.
Hired by San Francisco’s progressive district attorney, Terence Hallinan, in 1998, Harris quit in August 2000 claiming that office was "dysfunctional."
With behind the scenes help from Brown, Harris entered the primary opposing Hallinan.
Running as a tough Law and Order crime fighter, she beat Hallinan in a runoff by 10 points.
In office, Harris proved to be inept.
But . . . she was lucky.
She got away with manipulating conviction numbers and survived a scandal in her crime lab that affected thousands of criminal cases.
Shortly after being reelected in 2007, Harris announced she would run for state attorney general in 2010.
After winning by only 0.8%, she tried to appease the right on criminal issues and the left on social issues.
In her second term as A.G., eyeing higher office, she moved further to the left earning headlines as the number one prosecutor of those who are anti-abortion.
Harris jumped into the U.S. Senate race in 2016.
While she managed to win, she was a lazy candidate who refused to prepare, and blamed her mishaps on her staff.
In the Senate Harris was a "Showboat" senator preferring to make headlines instead of doing the work to master national policies.
She excelled at showing her disdain for anti-abortion nominees.
During the Kavanaugh hearings, Harris tried "to paint the widely respected husband, father, and coach as a drunken and abusive frat boy."
Eyeing the White House, Harris, rated the most liberal senator by the nonpartisan GOV/TRACK, challenged the Democratic Party for "resisting the pursuit of identity politics" and supported defunding the police in Los Angeles, California.
As a candidate for president, Harris was a flop.
One staffer said she had "No discipline. No plan. No strategy."
In November 2019 after The New York Times published a devastating account of Harris’s doomed campaign, Harris called it quits on Dec. 3.
But her luck held out. Despite savagely attacking Biden for his opposition to school busing in the 1970s, he chose her as his vice president.
However, Harris wasn’t ready for the big leagues.
She "continued struggling in news interviews, proving unable to take hard questions."
And "whenever she was surprised, caught off guard, or found herself in an awkward moment, she burst out laughing no matter what the topic."
As vice president Harris continued to abuse staffers.
"With a boss who was thin skinned, uncooperative and impatient during her first year in office," Sperling notes, "staff exits from the vice president’s team mounted as reports of a nightmarish working environment piled up in the press while D.C. insiders marveled at the wreckage."
Then there are the vice president's "word salads."
Unable to talk substantively about major issues, she tangles up words and speaks in non sequiturs and tautologies.
An excellent example is this Harris line delivered at the scene of the mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois: "We’ve got to take this stuff seriously, as seriously as you are because you have been forced to take this seriously."
Realizing Harris is an amateur, Biden and his staff have kept her backstage except on one issue — abortion.
Since Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022) reversed Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), she has been hitting the hustings preaching: "no limits on abortion, no concessions to the pro-life argument."
"Amateur Hour" makes for a most depressing read.
Even though Spiering makes the case for dumping Harris from the Democratic national ticket, it isn’t going to happen.
Joe Biden is stuck with her.
One can only hope that the heavy Harris albatross hanging around Biden’s neck will prevent him from getting over the finish line this November.
Until then, we're stuck with her also.
George J. Marlin, a former executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is the author of "The American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years of Political Impact," and "Christian Persecutions in the Middle East: A 21st Century Tragedy." Read George J. Marlin's Reports — More Here.
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