The Washington Post gave her a 28% approval rating. Here’s why.
Since Kamala Harris was sworn in this January her approval ratings have steadily fallen with the American public even worse than President Biden who now sits at a 38% approval rating. According to the Los Angeles Times she is sitting at an approval rating that is even worse at this point than Joe Biden and Mike Pence. There’s a lot of articles that seem baffled that the person who couldn’t carry her own state and told people from immigrant countries not to come is not popular. Here’s why she’s not well liked among all age groups.
The KHIVE
While online supporters are not representative of an entire base of a fans for a particular candidate, if we’re going to do it with Bernie Bros then it’s fair to apply to same standard to the K-Hive. The K-Hive are group of Kamala Harris’s biggest fans who tend to dox anyone who doesn’t view the current Vice President as perfect. There is no perfect candidate and while candidates of Presidential supporters will have a small segment that are negative, only 2% of supporters of Sanders, Warren, Yang, Biden, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg were negative. A Harvard study was conducted analyzing over 100 million tweets to reveal that the Bernie Bros were no more negative than other Democratic primary candidate’s supporters, Harris’s supporters were not analyzed for that study.
This toxic group of supporters are known for viciously attacking potential allies rather than using critical thinking and logic to win people on your side. The group has wished Bernie Sander’s death with pictures of coffins, to ominously saying former candidate Marianne Williamson “will be going through some things” to finding a Warren supporter’s address and stalking her in real life, to laughing about Sanders being in the hospital after a heart attack.
While not representative of her entire fan-base the Vice President may have a problem with her online supporters much like Donald Trump supporters. Although Trumpers are definitely far more ignorant and xenophobic.
While supporters of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang, and Marianne Williamson were statistically in line with ever other candidate’s group of supporters, the K-Hive was never analyzed despite reports indicating her supporters called child protective services on a non-Harris supporter. Maybe that’s why she is historically unpopular. You build coalitions by being open to compromise with people you inherently disagree with and listen, the K-Hive does the exact opposite. Much like Hillary Clinton (who I supported in 2008) it was a cult of personality, any deviation or slight criticism resulted in being ridiculed and ostracized.
Immigration and Truancy
Her ‘Do Not Come’ comments were one of the dumbest things she has said as Vice President, and it will come back to haunt her with Hispanic voters if she ever hopes to win. Most Hispanic voters come from a collectivist point of view and really share and sympathize with immigrants who want to come to America for a better life for them and their families. To tell their neighbors not to come is like telling your family who was thrown of out their home not to come. While Latino voters did elect her as Senator that was before her other controversial remarks were made that earned backlash from California Latino lawmakers.
“…the idea of fining or jailing parents over school absences is both cruel and unwise.” — The Guardian
The second reason is her record before she became part of the ticket. Truancy laws was part of a tough on crime approach that punished poor families by locking of their parents for one year. Not only did she prosecute the parents of children to be jailed for a year she famously laughed about it as we can see in this video. But it wasn’t funny. As the guardian notes “the idea of fining or jailing parents over school absences is both cruel and unwise.” And it gets even worse. The New York Times wrote when she was urged by advocates to embrace criminal justice reform, she actively opposed them and continued to prosecute even when the evidence was tampered with.
“Most troubling, Ms. Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors.” — The New York Times
Largely Absent
While most Vice Presidents were given roles for dealing with foreign policy, Kamala Harris has been largely absent. The only thing she has been tasked to do is deal with immigrants trying to come to America to the Mexican border. While some could blame Biden, she could volunteer to do more like pressuring Senator Manchin to support a $15 min wage (she only did this once with the $1400 stimulus check back in March), going to states with Republican senators and talking to Republican voters to pressure them to Build Back Better, and hold rallies in Arizona to nudge Kyrsten Sinema to vote for popular provisions like lowering prescription drug prices for seniors. But she hasn’t nor has she advised anyone else to do so.
I firmly believe if she did more traveling and used a bully pulpit for things like Voting Rights and the minimum wage and actively pushed President Biden to cancel $50,000 in student debt her approvals would be much higher. And who knows that might help stave off an electoral defeat for the midterms.
