Kamala Harris has been given some key tasks by the Biden administration, and she has been a remarkable failure at them all.
From immigration czar to cheerleader for Biden, she is a mismatch of awkward laughter, dishonest statements, and zero results. She is the most unpopular politician in America – and when your competition is Donald Trump and Joe Biden, that’s saying a lot.
But now Harris is being sent out on a midterm tour to try to complete an impossible task.
Vice President Kamala Harris is ramping up campaign road trips to turn out young voters and voters of color for the midterms — stopping this week in Wisconsin and South Carolina but so far without scheduled appearances with key Democratic nominees on the ballot.
So, Harris is headed out to recruit young voters to go out and vote – a frequent Democratic tactic that almost never works.
- On Tuesday, Harris is scheduled to speak at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, S.C., her sixth visit this year to a historically black college or university.
- She will also participate in a roundtable discussion with student leaders at Claflin University that day.
That’s not all.
- She told students at the University at Buffalo in New York last week that the administration acted on clean energy legislation because “we heard you” demand that leaders “take action on the climate crisis like the crisis it is.”
- She also held a rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago last week, and recently addressed a gathering of interns and young Hill professionals at an event for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.
Now, there are two different parts to this task. The first, and most impossible, is to recruit young voters to turn out for the midterm election.
That was Bernie Sanders’ plan in 2020, and it failed miserably. Despite his popularity among young voters, particularly college students, they never actually went out to vote for him, which was part of the reason that Biden was able to win the nomination.
Recruiting young voters has also been a part of several other candidates’ plans in recent years. Younger voters showed up in higher numbers for the actual presidential election in 2020, but in primaries and midterm elections, they are historically absent. If they are relying on young voters to save Democrats right now, it’s not a good situation for Democrats.
The second part of her task is to bring voters of color back to the Democratic party. This is far more serious.
There are two issues Democrats have with voters of color. This first is the Hispanic vote. In their case, Democrats have focused too much on social/cultural issues, which most Hispanic voters disagree with, and too little on economic issues, which even the New York Times is pointing out is a major area of concern with Hispanic voters.
And while the polling is more or less a toss-up on where those voters are headed in November, the GOP has the advantage on the issues.
The other problem for Democrats is black voters, who aren’t in danger of voting for the GOP in significantly higher numbers than before but are more likely to stay home if the Democrats don’t make a good case.
Like Hispanic voters, black voters poll overwhelmingly concerned with the economy, especially on the heels of the Trump era, where black unemployment was at a record low and income was rising. Economic uncertainty and inflation have washed a lot of that away, and black voters (already more prone to stay home during midterms) may wash their hands of the party they traditionally support.
The Democrats were riding a wave of optimism toward the end of the summer as polling seemed to favor them. But the polls are shifting once again in the GOP’s favor, and while some are questioning whether it’s a wave or a trickle, it’s definitely a Republican year.
So that leaves Kamala Harris, an unpopular politician with awkward laughter and regular word salad statements, trying to recruit a bunch of voters that the Democratic party has little chance of winning over in big enough numbers to save them. Why is Biden routinely trying to set her up to fail?