President Joe Biden made a promise — and the result of that promise isn’t looking great right now.
Biden vowed that he would pick a female vice president, pigeonholing himself into having limited options for his running mate. There are plenty of women out there who would make great vice presidents. However, Biden selected Kamala Harris, and his party may pay for that. If Democrats suffer politically as a result, it will be well deserved.
Harris is not doing well in opinion polls as of late. She’s not as unpopular as, say, former President Donald Trump, but she’s also less popular than Biden. Her RealClearPolitics polling average this week shows that she has a 45% approval rating and a 46% disapproval rating. Compare that to Biden himself, who has a 51.3% approval rating and a 44.6% disapproval rating.
The public previously rejected Harris. She ran for president in the 2020 Democratic primary and dropped out before the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary. She got fewer delegates than former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Hawaii Democrat, someone who played a role in killing the Harris campaign.
Gabbard exposed how Harris prosecuted people for using marijuana and school truancy, tried to block evidence that would have freed someone on death row, and kept people in prison beyond their sentencing and used them as cheap labor while serving as attorney general of California. That says a lot about Harris’s character. Why couldn’t Biden have picked Gabbard as his running mate instead?
It’s not hard to imagine why the public dislikes Harris. She tried smearing Biden as a racist in the Democratic primaries and laughed it off (like she does with a lot of serious questions) when asked about it at a later date. Biden’s offense: He dared to oppose busing that forced children to trek across cities into dangerous neighborhoods where they were subjected to violence and riots in the name of racial equity.
Harris also wobbled back and forth on “Medicare for all,” which would be the biggest entitlement program in U.S. history and said that she wanted to decriminalize illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. The latter is a policy that would result in more illegal immigration. Now, she’s rightfully telling people from countries such as Guatemala not to come to the already overwhelmed U.S. border. Props to her for doing the right thing in the end, but she makes herself hard to trust. Not to mention, people should have little faith in the Biden administration to secure the U.S.-Mexico border since it’s not advocating for any serious restrictions on illegal immigration — but does want a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
Not to mention, like much of the modern-day Democratic Party, Harris is a pro-abortion extremist. She supports unpopular second- and third-trimester elective abortions, as well as commonsense requirements such as parental notification, waiting periods, and informed consent laws. Informed consent often tells women about all of their choices — including how they can get public assistance to support their child, as well as their respective state’s safe haven law, which may not be common knowledge.
If Biden’s party suffers because he got Harris instead of an honest centrist, that’s on Biden. If he does seek reelection — hopefully, he doesn’t — let’s hope it’s at least with a different running mate.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts. He is also a freelance writer who has been published in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other outlets.
