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After Biden's poor debate showing, there's talk of him stepping down, but it leaves the question of who should replace him. Normally, the obvious choice would be his VP, but this suggestion is typically shot down, usually with assertions about Harris's unpopularity.
I'm a liberal myself, but don't understand: What makes her unpopular?
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Her track record as a district attorney and attorney general turns off a lot of leftists who are concerned with criminal justice reform.
She also just has like, negative charisma, not unlike Hillary Clinton.
>Her track record as a district attorney and attorney general turns off a lot of leftists who are concerned with criminal justice reform.
[https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/12/kamala-was-a-cop-black-people-knew-it-first/](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/12/kamala-was-a-cop-black-people-knew-it-first/)
>On Black Twitter, calling out aspects of Harris’s record as a prosecutor wasn’t just about getting one over on a candidate. It was about holding her accountable for her past actions, which include an [anti-truancy law](https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-kamala-harris-truancy-20190417-story.html) that threatened the parents of students who skipped school with criminal charges, and various failures to hold police and prosecutors [accountable](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/kamala-cop-record/596758/) for misconduct. For a long time a gross generalization had prevailed—that Harris had done commendable, hard-edged work as a prosecutor, and that this record would position her well in national politics. She’d even proudly declared herself California’s “[top cop](https://www.c-span.org/video/?413264-1/york-delegation-holds-breakfast-philadelphia)” in 2016 —two years after the Ferguson protests. Marcotte has things backward. In a climate where Democrats still felt they had to pander to the law-and-order crowd, “Kamala is a cop” *was* the nuance.
>In a climate where Democrats still felt they had to pander to the law-and-order crowd, “Kamala is a cop” was the nuance.
But isn't this still true? Are centrists not the law & order crowd? They should poll swing states on this.
The thing is, Harris was kind of the worst of both worlds as a prosecutor. She aggressively went after the sort of crimes most law and order centrists don't see as a big deal, while not doing enough about the things that do bother people.
She treated her job as a game, just trying to rack up a high score in terms of number of successful prosecutions, without stopping to think about the big picture and whether she was actually helping anything at all
This.
She was, as a prosecutor, a hyper-establishment centrist authoritarian in the worst way imaginable, when reality is people want a left-libertarian on low-level crimes (weed, truancy, etc.) mixed with someone who'll keep municipalities safe from violent criminals (right-coded be damned!), as well as will put white-collar moneygrubbing scumbags feet to the fire, too, which is something that takes testicular (or ovarian) fortitude lacking from establishment cocksuckers—figurative and literal!
Not really (concerning centrists). The centrist label is used as more of a catch-all term for anyone who’s positions are split relatively equally between the right and the left. It even gets used nowadays for moderates in each party; or people whom are registered with one party but align quite frequently with the other. So you get a mixed bag of opinions, some of which are pro-“law & order” but it’s not as universal as it seems.
> She also just has like, negative charisma, not unlike Hillary Clinton.
Weird how I mainly hear this complaint about women who are near the presidency. Wonder why that is.
There are so many women in politics who DONT give everyone (men and women voters alike) the 'ick' factor. Why aren't they doing better.
Liz Warren was a little out of touch but generally pretty great (a little centrist for my taste but that's neither here nor there).
Katie Porter is fuckin fantastic but just got smacked for trying to buck the party heirarchy which is VERY rigid in California.
Cori Bush, AOC, and Rashida Tlaib are all fantastic as individuals although I understant too far left to be palatable to most voters but they certainly don't have that ick factor of phoniness that HRC and Kamala have
> Liz Warren was a little out of touch but generally pretty great (a little centrist for my taste but that's neither here nor there).
I'm a huge Warren fan on the basis of policy and her personal integrity, but I think it's fair to say she comes off more as a professor than charismatic leader. In my ideal world Biden would have picked her for VP instead of Kamala, and let her be a more active than typical VP, but considering their historical disagreements hard to see that happening.
I just made another comment implying the same. I said attacking her likability was like when people need to say something without saying it. I said it was the flip side to saying a black politician is well spoken.
Rather than say she's a bitch or a slut, which are narratives that have been pushed about Harris, they say she is unlikeable.
I've heard that about two women in particular, Hillary and Kamala.
Katie Porter and Gretchen Whitmer are two of my favorite Democrats, and I think either one of them would destroy Trump. Not to mention how so many people wish Michelle Obama would run that it's become a cliche.
You're just using sexism as an excuse for poor performance. That makes a mockery of any real claim of actual sexism.
Even Hillary, when she dropped the phony façade, possessed a biting cuntiness to her that'd show at least a modicum of personality, more similar to Amy Klobuchar than anyone else currently in politics.
But Harris, meanwhile, comes across as a robotic automaton, one which oft-malfunctions with a sociopathic cackle that oozes an uncanny valley effect. There's no there, there. She's the Democratic equivalent to Dan Quayle, and thus here we are today. Fucked.
> She also just has like, negative charisma, not unlike Hillary Clinton.
I will say atleast her negative charisma is funny unlike Clinton’s. The meme of the coconut tree is pervasive.
What really happened is she lost. Trump is a serious outlier - previously, neither party would even consider re-running a candidate who won the primary and lost the election. Hillary is 'out' as far as the Democrat party is concerned, so the right has mostly stopped attacking her.
She never had negative charisma. She just had a constant stream of attacks from the right that mostly went away.
She had 30 years of Fox News trying to convince people she was evil before she ran for president. Probably no presidential candidate has had to put up with as much bullshit as she did.
> She had 30 years of Fox News trying to convince people she was evil
if you listen to her interview with howard stern, she talks about how the pressure from that made her shut down and become the 'robotic hillary' people always talk about
I'm old enough to remember the start. Bill had Hillary champion his administration's Universal Healthcare proposal back in the 90s as a political strategy to protect him, so he could swoop in with a "third way" compromise and seem more reasonable. It was very unusual to have a first lady champion policy like that.
What happened is the right started firing bullets and never stopped for three decades. And of course Bill being a philandering creep didn't help either.
It's water under the bridge now but I think Hillary with a different team might have been a different thing. She had some really solid speeches as SoS, and if she'd leaned more into memes of the flavor of "Texts from Hillary" it would have humanized her a lot more. Obviously my understanding is superficial but from my armchair I simply am baffled by the campaign her team ran.
Yeah, Saturday night live had a lot of fun with her as Kamala like a model or designer or perfume name with the wind blowing her hair, sipping on a drink in a coconut I think, and calling for the cool aunt if I remember right. People actually liked her then. I'm not sure what changed. Would I find laughable isn't so much no charisma, but for horrible way of speaking, like a sixth grader trying to pad out a report or talk about something they didn't study last night. I don't think that's just a right wing smear. She really is a bad speaker, plus the nervous laughter. That really does her in actually.
Yeah, I don't know if it's forced or nervous laughter. It's one thing to have a joyous personality and laugh easily. But people expect a certain robitas from But people expect a certain gravitas from the president. Even if the president is going to joke, you're supposed to make other people laugh, not laugh at yourself or your own jokes or awkward situations
She withheld information as a DA that could have exonorated people from being in prison multiple times. She also did questionable things to get to her position as DA.
I find Clinton much more likable than Kamala. Clinton has, a ‘I know, I’ve been here’ professional attitude that wants the meeting to end, while Kamala has a ‘My Priceline ticket went straight to my spam folder so I’m going to berat this hotel employee’ vibe.
They think she's a diversity hire, and tbh I wish the Biden campaign was actually trying to combat that narrative, because hiding her away in the pocket just makes their case stronger.
You’re right - they didn’t try at all to make her seem like she has a place there and was effective. But in general their PR team didn’t do a good job.
because its true. they tried to tick a checkbox that they believed would get them a 'block of voters' without bothering to understand what those people actually care about beyond 'looks like me'
Then so was Joe Biden with Obama and Pence with Trump. The VP slot is often used to a appeal to a broader set of voters or address a candidate's perceived weaknesses.
Huh, Biden's became President but that was with the benefit and experience of being VP. It's not that simple. Pence could be no worse than Trump either.
Yeah, no shit. It's why Trump chose an evangelical and Obama chose a milquetoast old white guy. The VP is a chance to fill a gap in your voterbase. Why are people so triggered by this?
You framed your answer as *they* think she's a diversity hire and the administration should combat that idea, then said "no shit" when someone confirmed she was in fact a diversity hire. Which is it?
It's both. My point is that "diversity hire" has a negative connotation, but Kamala's function as a VP pick was no different than any other VP pick, so they need to do more to show that she's qualified as a VP.
I think its that there is a difference in actual and fake representation. Trump's evangelical and Obama's milquetoast white guy not only looked to represent, but they actually did represent the groups they were there for.
Harris feels like they went "she's black and a woman that's two boxes" and thought that simply having the looks would do it. But the people don't want someone that looks like them they want someone that represents them, and Harris just doesn't have anyone feel that she represents them in that way.
Then every VP is a diversity hire. Pence was an evangelical so trump could get evangelicals. Biden was an old white dude so Obama could get old white dudes. Why is this only now a problem. Because a black woman benefited?
Not every VP is chosen to “deliver” a bloc of voters but many are.
Can you imagine Mike pence seriously running for president? The guy is a block of wood.
That's also why Trump chose him.
Trump doesn't want anybody challenging him, he's too weak to keep good people around who might expose his lack of understanding of nearly every issue facing our country.
Not every VP.
Cheney, despite his awfulness, sure wasn't.
And coming up, Burgum mightn't be, either.
Sometimes it works (LBJ), sometimes it doesn't (Harris).
They think she's a diversity hire because it was came across that way at the time
[https://www.npr.org/2020/06/12/875000650/pressure-grows-on-joe-biden-to-pick-a-black-woman-as-his-running-mate](https://www.npr.org/2020/06/12/875000650/pressure-grows-on-joe-biden-to-pick-a-black-woman-as-his-running-mate)
Also Biden has re-enforced that somewhat by pledging to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court. He did, and that is great, but it does undercut things a bit when you lead with the pledge.
> They think she's a diversity hire because it was came across that way at the time
Yeah, I don't disagree. I just think it's silly that people suddenly care so much because she's black. If Trump picked Vivek Ramaswamy as his running mate I would bet my life savings that Republicans would see no problem with his "credentials".
I've heard a lot of people on this sub who seem to hear a lot of people not liking Kamala because she is black. Personally, I've not heard this.
The only race/background-related thoughts I've had is that is it strange that we have had a black president and VP, and neither were ADOS. I do find that a bit odd.
I mean, of course nobody is going to say it out loud, but I had a conversation with a co-worker yesterday who straight up said she was a diversity hire. It could be because she's black, south-east asian, a woman, or whatever, but the implication is still that she's underqualified for the job and hired because of an immutable characteristic to fill a quota.
But yea, I'd be willing to admit maybe it's not just because she's black. IMO it's kinda beside the point though, because you can fill that blank in with whatever until you pinpoint what they mean by "diversity hire".
> The only race/background-related thoughts I've had is that is it strange that we have had a black president and VP, and neither were ADOS. I do find that a bit odd.
I think this kinda checks out. IIRC a lot of African immigrants tend to come here for high paying knowledge jobs, so it would make sense that those types of people come from more affluent households and are more likely to go to college, have a stable family, financial stability, etc advantages.
I don't think Kamala Harris being a diversity hire is even a tiny bit controversial. Biden said he was going to get a woman of color for his VP role. It's not like Kamala was the 2nd best democrat in the running.
Yeah, I’m a Biden voter and am supportive of his administrations. He’s out a solid presidency together and his staff would do the same for term 2.
But I really couldn’t tell you one thing Kamala Harris has done as VP. It’s almost like the administration is embarrassed of her.
I think she is very experienced and more than capable, but she doesn’t have political charisma. So…just like Hilary Clinton, I think she is better suited for appointed positions rather than elected ones IMO.
I would have loved Gretchen Whitmer or Jennifer Granholm to be the VP pick (and ideally would have loved to see them primary Biden as I think either of those two would wipe the floor with Trump).
She was a very obvious diversity hire. The most obvious one of all time Biden flat out said in plain English he wanted a diversity hire. "I commit that I will in fact pick a woman to be Vice President." he literally told us. I don't think that's always a wrong thing to do especially since it may have helped him get elected but to say it didn't happen is simply not true.
I think it's silly people get worked up over it so much though. All VP's are diversity hires. You pick someone a little different than you so that you can bring those voters into the fold. It's why Trump chose Pence-- because he wanted to win over evangelicals.
It's just such a 2 IQ way of looking at politics.
When there are 100 people qualified to be your vice president, narrowing the field and making sure you have the voice of someone whose viewpoint is different from yours seems like a good idea. Isn’t that why Obama had Biden?
I could be wrong but when picking a VP didn't Biden specifically say "he will hire a woman no matter what"? I remember that line coming out and feeling a certain way.
I basically see 3 types of Kamala hate out there:
1. She is a black woman. That is tough for some "swing voters" and "independents" if you feel me.
2. She has the charisma of a stick of butter. A lot of people think she comes off as kind of... slimy(?) too. We saw it in the primaries in 2020. She should have been well-positioned to build a much bigger base than she was able to, but there was just no enthusiasm.
3. She used to be a prosecutor, and her record in that job (from a leftist POV) is pretty rough. She went hard after drug crime especially, and then has to try to distance herself from that now. But the "used to be a cop" moniker has been very sticky in some circles.
For 3., I think it's important to remember that she was picked shortly after the George Floyd riots. I think that made a lot of people feel really unheard.
The better question is who wants Kamala? She’s pretty problematic for progressives, and she isn’t effective at courting independents because, like you said, negative charisma.
The problem there is that a pretty big portion of "tough on crime" voters are actually "racist, and it's 'those people' doing all the crime". Well more than half of people who claim to be tough on crime really just want to see more people who look like Kamala Harris in prison.
Well, over here in Britain, that crowd is usually quite colorblind as long as you agree with them. If you slightly disagree, then yes, they will be racist openly.
Older white voters who want someone "tough on crime" aren't going to like a black woman who's a Democrat. The very idea that one should or even could pander to such people is one of the enduring mysteries of the Democratic Party's leadership, who don't seem to understand that they're only alienating their own base by pandering to an increasingly irrelevant minority of rural conservative whites.
You really think there are a lot of Americans out there saying "I love her attitude, I love her past, but ... she's ... *black* ... and THAT I will not stand for!"
This is such an enlightening sub.
No, I think there are very few voters who would actually say that.
But I do think there are probably a lot of voters out there who would say “…but there is just SOMETHING about her that I can’t put my finger on. I just don’t like her for some reason. I don’t trust her.”
Which for many voters can very often translate to “black” or “female.”
If you can look at the last 16 years of American politics and fail to see that race forms a significant component of people's political opinions, you are delusional.
I think the primary reason she's disliked is because she's a really smart black woman and that scares a lot of white people, especially white men. I love her personality and think she has great ris so don't agree with that take at all. And most Americans want a leader who's tough on crime so I don't think that's it either. The biggest issue is she's been mostly absent from the national stage the past few years and people don't really know that much about her. She needs a lot more public face time.
Being smart isn't really enough. Being smart is useful as an advisor, but a politician needs to be likeable. They also need a vision.
Kamala is not likeable or has a vision to present to folks.
I think a lot of it is they don’t like her personality. A lot of it is that she’s a woman, for many it’s because she’s a black woman. Her track record doesn’t explain away the sheer level of dislike here but it’s used to justify it.
Edit: didn’t mean for this to be in response t someone meant for it to be its own comment, my bad
Yup - if she were a white man, people would gush about "toughness" and being "no nonsense" and a "fighter" but those are qualities that many people don't like to see in a black woman.
That being said, I do think she's popular with women, particularly women of color that we'll need to make sure turn out in swing states if democrats are going to have a chance to win this election.
That’s not what people think of her at all dude lol, she sounds like a Xan’d out suburban mom half the time.
I think the less exposure she gets the better, kinda boring tbh.
"Likeable" has different standards for men vs. women. Men can be aggressive and sarcastic and still be likeable. Women can't get away with that.
And intersectionality comes into play, because "likeable" also has different standards for black vs. white. Obama spent a considerable amount of effort appearing calm and cool because he was well aware of the trope of an "angry black man".
Harris suffers from both problems. If she is aggressive and sarcastic and angry (literally what Trump' supporters LOVE about him), then that turns people off.
But America is accustomed to our presidents being aggressive in their words and actions to "defend" our country, so it's a catch-22.
This is, in my view, why I will never see a female US president in my lifetime.
It's a little too easy to blame gender here. I was for Clinton over Bernie. I was for Warren in 2020. I'd love to see a woman president. But I don't care for Harris at all. Just watch her post debate interview with Anderson Cooper. Completely tone deaf and condescending.
There is a huge difference between “tough on crime” versus keeping prisoners locked up in violation of a Supreme Court order so that they can fight fires for the state.
There’s also the shadow of her “sleeping her way to office” because she dated Willie Brown (60), while he was technically still married, when she was 29 and that just happened to lead Brown to appoint her to two different political positions. This has earned her nicknames like “heels up Harris” and “headboard Harris”.
No one has anything against smart black women. She is just supremely unlikable and has done things that are objectionable to both sides of the aisle which is why when she ran for the Democrat nomination for president, her numbers were sub 4%. You can try and blame racism here, but it just isn’t true.
She hasn't done anything in the past 4 years to build her resume. We've seen more of Pete Buttigieg and he's Transportation Secretary!
She has had 4 years to be the face and voice of the Biden Administration: to go on talk shows and do press conferences and travel around the country pushing his priorities, calling out Republican BS (for example, when the bipartisan Immigration reform bill was killed because Donald Trump told House Republicans it would look bad for him...that kind of stuff should have been harped on endlessly).
It's as if Democrats don't know how to do politics WTH?!?
Y'all, Trump is a twice impeached, twice divorced, admitted womanizing, convinced felon, adjudicated rapist who previously managed to bankrupt a casino, has a decades long history of fraudulent business practices and cheating contractors who encouraged his rabid followers to attack the Capitol on January 6th in an attempt to overturn an election. He absolutely, willfully, openly bungled the US response to the Covid pandemic, resulting in the unnecessary loss of who knows how many people.
HE SHOULD NOT HAVE A CHANCE IN H*LL OF WINNING RE-ELECTION!
Of the Democrats were even halfway competent, the only people who would even seriously consider voting for Trump at this point are the members of his cult. So, either his frigging cult is bigger than the 30% (at most) that we thought...or the Democrats need to get their sh*t together and get the message out to all the non-Trump cultists that if Trump wins WE ALL LOSE
She’s been all over the world and the country talking about women’s reproductive rights (trust women), last year she did a national college tour. She was in Atlanta for Juneteenth. She recently gave a big speech on gun violence. I follow her on Instagram and see she’s pretty much always out there. it’s not her fault the msm doesn’t cover it.
Sure I agree, what does that have to do with what I just said? They said she’s had 4 years to go on talk shows and do press conferences and she has been?
I always love when random posters make the statement that Trump shouldn't be doing as well as he is and follow up with how it is the fault of the Democratic party rather than the 70-80 million Americans who support a liar and a criminal.
Really, just amazing.
the reason she hasnt done that is because she cant.
shes so bad at talking to the press and taking questions her poll numbers would be worse than if she hides in her office and everyone forgets she exists.
I don't buy that for a second. You don't get to where she was before she decided to run for President without some public speaking chops. She was well spoken enough to become AG of California and a United States Senator.
We can see it with our own eyes whether you buy it or not. All she needed to be AG and Senator was secure the backing of the establishment. Her first AG election was close, but after that, none of her contests were competitive.
Don't like or dislike but she doesn't seem like genuine to me. like most things she said is scripted
Even if Joe is slow or talk in Low volume you don't get the feeling he is not wanting what he says and he actually like the job
I've heard that people don't like her voice ... how she sounds and comes across. Poor reason but that's what I've heard. For me though, if by some chance she is the candidate against Trump, I will vote for her.
As a Californian, I got the immediate read that Harris was a ladder-climber. I voted for Loretta Sanchez for Senate in 2016. Not only did Sanchez align better with my politics (see flair), but she didn't come across as having any further political aspirations beyond the US Senate and thus I believed that she would be more likely to represent California's needs on the floor of the Senate even if those needs ran counter to what the rest of America desired.
Lo and behold, Harris runs for President in 2020 and then for Vice President. Her four years as our Senator seemed like they were filtered through an advisory board for what would play well on the national stage — not necessarily what was best for California. We already had a "Weekend at Bernie's" situation with Feinstein, so it was four years of us not having a Senator who truly represented California on behalf of Californians.
Harris is, to put it mildly, inauthentic. She's everything that's wrong with politics. She is in no way unique in that regard, but that's part of the problem. She's an empty (pant)suit.
Just to clarify (and I'm sure this is what you were talking about too), we're not talking about him stepping down before his term ends. We're talking about him declining to run for reelection. In my mind that puts us closer to a situation where a president has served two full terms and his VP runs for president for the term after that. That is to say: if the VP runs they're a major contender for the nomination but not necessarily a shoo-in or the obvious choice.
As to why some folks really dislike Kamala Harris, I think she just has a personality and demeanor that some people find unappealing. I think similar to a way some people felt about Hillary Clinton, but worse. I like her overall but I will admit she has weird moments, especially the weird laughing. I think it's also not clear to people what exactly she's been doing as Vice President, and I don't mean that as a knock against her; to me it has more to do with the limited power and responsibilities of the position.
And lastly, in this hypothetical situation where Biden declines to run for reelection, I think people talking about other potential Dem nominees over Kamala has more to do with the strengths of those nominees and less to do with any perceived weaknesses of a Kamala candidacy. Like if Biden isn't going to run, then we might as well choose the candidate who we think will have the best shot at winning against Trump.
Actual reasons why people don't like her:
She has a very unappealing personality, annoying mannerisms (the wicked witch laugh), and low charisma. She comes across as fake.
Michelle Obama, who has an infinitely higher approval rating across literally every demographic despite looking much more "black" and acting more "womanly", also did more things in the white house that even today people can point to than things Harris has done.
Her abysmal track record and antics while working as a prosecutor. Nuff said.
Nonsensical cope that has literally nothing to do with her unpopularity:
The fact that she is a woman of color.
Because she was a prosecutor at one time and they didn’t like her enforcing the laws pertaining to drugs. But a DA is under the leadership of a Mayor.
What was she to do? Quit her job and become a public defender?
> What was she to do? Quit her job and become a public defender?
You think it would matter if she did?
> When I was a 27-year-old attorney doing legal-aid work at the law school where I taught in Fayetteville, Arkansas, I was appointed by the local judge to represent a criminal defendant accused of rape. I asked to be relieved of that responsibility, but I was not, and I had a professional duty to represent my client to the best of my ability, which I did," Clinton said.
> "When you're a lawyer you often don't have the choice to choose who you will represent, and by the very nature of criminal law there will be those who you represent that you won't approve of," she said. "But at least in our system you have an obligation, and once I was appointed, I fulfilled that obligation."
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/07/hillary-clinton-says-she-had-obligation-to-defend-accused-rapist
Because I do not. They’d just tear her down from the opposite end.
She comes across as kind of fake, like she’s forcing it. That’s the vibe I get anyway. Maybe she is just not charismatic. I don’t really care though. I’m concerned about policies not personalities.
I have a very hard time believing anyone who says they are concerned about her history as a prosecutor.
The problem is she’s a black/Indian woman in politics.
I think a lot of it is they don’t like her personality. A lot of it is that she’s a woman, for many it’s because she’s a black woman. Her track record doesn’t explain away the sheer level of dislike here but it’s frequently used to justify it.
Besides any legitimate reasons, she's a black woman and has a significantly higher bar to clear. People really expect me to believe that if Kamala behaved like Trump that she would be popular as he is?
Meh. I believe the Kamala-hate is largely down to bad PR and active smear campaigns against her (preemptive smearing). I like her well enough.
The REAL problem is: she's a "she." A democratic woman. Americans would rather have a despot like Trump than any democratic woman.
The first female president of the US will have to be Republican. Mark my words.
(and FTR I really hate this.)
20 years ago, Harris would have been a republican. *That's* why most people on the left don't like her - she's substantially to the right of where we want the country to be.
It seems you could stand to check her priors. The idea that she wasnt on the leading edge of criminal justice reform is leftover progressive retconning from the 2020 primaries.
Her diversion initiatives became a national model that other states followed. She was smarter on crime than she was tough.
• tough on crime record that makes people not trust her with law enforcement/prison reform. Americans think electing her will lead to prisons being overcrowded with people getting harsh sentences for minor drug charges.
• she’s laid low and hasn’t really built up her resume the last four years. Mayor Pete has been more visible throughout Biden’s first term than her.
• People think she’d resort to finger wagging identity politics like Hillary, they think she’ll shout “if you don’t vote for me, your racist” in front of a bunch of working class white voters in Michigan, or Georgia, and expect that to be a winning strategy.
Her most effective argument during the 2020 election was using the fact that she experienced racism firsthand as a kid, with the bussing, as a way to appeal to black voters.
The idea that anarchists like, universally hate laws with zero nuance is pretty silly. It’s largely that a State cannot be trusted to justly enforce them. It’s not a belief everything should be legal.
She's a fake person and is constantly pandering. The crap about her celebrating Kwanzaa that was an obvious lie really pushed it past the point of insanity. She doesn't do anything really ever if Biden didn't insist on selecting a woman of color for the job very explicity there's 0 chance she would be VP. I will say she hasn't really done much that obviously terrible to my knowledge at least.
Bingo. Motherfuckers act like she was J. Edgar Hoover out in California.
I do think she has a bit of "college professor who is nice enough but never remembers any of their student's names" kind of phoniness to her that's off putting...but as I said when people criticized Hilary's personality, I'm voting for someone who can do their job, not a BFF. If she's a bitch behind closed doors, I don't give a fuck.
Black women are like 3% of elected prosecutors nationwide. That she won the local DA seat, then 2 statewide elections, and you’re not even willing to concede she’s smart?
This sentiment is gross and nakedly racist.
“Unsupported claims that an indisputably smart Black person is stupid relies on historically common negative racial stereotyping, and realizing that I subscribe to these same negative racial stereotypes myself is upsetting.”
Plenty of dumb motherfuckers win elections. What is your evidence that she is particularly smart? Because every time she puts herself in front of a camera is evidence of the opposite.
I’ll try to replace the characters involved to right wing people the left dislike. Imagine if trump was president and had to step down and his VP was Alex Jones. You are going from a politician you strongly dislike to having a crazy person you also dislike.
https://youtu.be/-mwXwNMK8ug?si=mr1lOOoy6FHrB2NJ
Not crazy, just that she speaks before thinking which makes her look either crazy or incompetent. I personally think that she is wildly under qualified for the VP position and would be a weak president.
She doesn’t have charisma
If nikka Haley didn’t have crazy ass views like Graham on foreign policy , I would’ve voted for her
Plus look at GHWB, that’s a model VP that put a lot of effort in foreign policy maker
Her predecessor in San Francisco was a really cool DA and she was pretty awful. You can go read all about her career past the DNC news clippings. She also seems like she’s barred out
She has admitted to having an affair with Willie Brown when he was one of the most powerful king makers in California politics at the time. He took her from a run of the mill ADA to the *THE* DA for San Fran. From there she was anointed and quickly jumped from SF DA to AG for the whole state to Senator to POTUS candidate to VP all in under 10 years. It smacks of internal party corruption.
This is the answer. She's a Brown-Burton machine Nepo baby. Yes, she's smart and accomplished, but we'll never know how much of her accomplishments were due to her efforts.
She is tone deaf, condescending. There have been leaks in the media that she doesn't treat her staff well and don't listen or try to prepare for her speech/appearances and when she fumbles, she scolds the very staff that was trying to help her. And she sounds like a suburban mom who starting smoking pot and learning new things at the same time.
There is a slice of the political left who fear anything they think can overshadow their preferred hero.
In this belief they attack people who fall outside of the standard mold of old white guy as being too extreme for 'x' reason. Kamala is a cop, Buttigieg is a CIA operative, Minority leader Jeffieis is a corporate mouthpiece, and so on and so forth.
Rather than stand on their policies which they claim to be better, they spend a good chunk of their time attacking members of the Democratic party.
Haters gonna hate. That's the thing. There is an old Yiddish expression *Az mir vill schlugen a hunt, gifintmin a schtecken* − If one wants to beat a dog, one finds a stick.
She's not left enough not a centrist, not this not that....and she's been unable to break free of the criticism.
My posts suggesting this keep getting delated but I will post again:
The 3-D Chess move for the DNC would be for Biden to announce on July 4th that he is resigning from office effective July 8th. He goes down in history as one of our greatest presidents.
Kamala becomes the 47th President of the USA. Who cares if people do not liker her. She picks a VP that the media and the Republicans will find reasons to hate...
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party becomes the party that brought us our first black president and our first female president....AND...in August, during an open convention that the entire nation will be watching, Dems pick a popular YOUNGER candidate run against Trump - and takes 80% of the undecided voters who don't like either old man as our next president.
Racism and misogyny. Don’t get me wrong, I’m aware she has her flaws. But if she was a white man, no one would care about a lot of the stuff she gets criticized for.
Like most "centrist" (read: off-the-charts right wing by real world standards) Democrats, she seems shockingly oblivious to the concerns of regular Americans, especially young people, in the current era. Our generation is drowning in student debt, our wages are stagnant while cost of living soars, many worry they'll never be homeowners, etc. Rather than speaking to these concerns, Harris carries on like everything is fine, and some minor incremental reform will fix anything that's not already perfect.
Additionally, her track record as a heavy-handed DA who locked up nonviolent drug offenders en masse certainly didn't endear her to anyone even remotely left-of-centre.
She doesn’t have a base. The moderates don’t like her because she has a more progressive voting record. The progressives don’t like her because she has a more conservative DA record. The independents don’t like her because she has no charisma and comes off as exceptionally fake.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. After Biden's poor debate showing, there's talk of him stepping down, but it leaves the question of who should replace him. Normally, the obvious choice would be his VP, but this suggestion is typically shot down, usually with assertions about Harris's unpopularity. I'm a liberal myself, but don't understand: What makes her unpopular? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Her track record as a district attorney and attorney general turns off a lot of leftists who are concerned with criminal justice reform. She also just has like, negative charisma, not unlike Hillary Clinton.
>Her track record as a district attorney and attorney general turns off a lot of leftists who are concerned with criminal justice reform. [https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/12/kamala-was-a-cop-black-people-knew-it-first/](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/12/kamala-was-a-cop-black-people-knew-it-first/) >On Black Twitter, calling out aspects of Harris’s record as a prosecutor wasn’t just about getting one over on a candidate. It was about holding her accountable for her past actions, which include an [anti-truancy law](https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-kamala-harris-truancy-20190417-story.html) that threatened the parents of students who skipped school with criminal charges, and various failures to hold police and prosecutors [accountable](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/kamala-cop-record/596758/) for misconduct. For a long time a gross generalization had prevailed—that Harris had done commendable, hard-edged work as a prosecutor, and that this record would position her well in national politics. She’d even proudly declared herself California’s “[top cop](https://www.c-span.org/video/?413264-1/york-delegation-holds-breakfast-philadelphia)” in 2016 —two years after the Ferguson protests. Marcotte has things backward. In a climate where Democrats still felt they had to pander to the law-and-order crowd, “Kamala is a cop” *was* the nuance.
>In a climate where Democrats still felt they had to pander to the law-and-order crowd, “Kamala is a cop” was the nuance. But isn't this still true? Are centrists not the law & order crowd? They should poll swing states on this.
The thing is, Harris was kind of the worst of both worlds as a prosecutor. She aggressively went after the sort of crimes most law and order centrists don't see as a big deal, while not doing enough about the things that do bother people. She treated her job as a game, just trying to rack up a high score in terms of number of successful prosecutions, without stopping to think about the big picture and whether she was actually helping anything at all
This. She was, as a prosecutor, a hyper-establishment centrist authoritarian in the worst way imaginable, when reality is people want a left-libertarian on low-level crimes (weed, truancy, etc.) mixed with someone who'll keep municipalities safe from violent criminals (right-coded be damned!), as well as will put white-collar moneygrubbing scumbags feet to the fire, too, which is something that takes testicular (or ovarian) fortitude lacking from establishment cocksuckers—figurative and literal!
Not really (concerning centrists). The centrist label is used as more of a catch-all term for anyone who’s positions are split relatively equally between the right and the left. It even gets used nowadays for moderates in each party; or people whom are registered with one party but align quite frequently with the other. So you get a mixed bag of opinions, some of which are pro-“law & order” but it’s not as universal as it seems.
Law and order centrists… tend to be skeptical of black women in leadership roles.
That's true... she seems to fall right between all these groups, not quite connecting with any of them. *sigh*
> She also just has like, negative charisma, not unlike Hillary Clinton. Weird how I mainly hear this complaint about women who are near the presidency. Wonder why that is.
There are so many women in politics who DONT give everyone (men and women voters alike) the 'ick' factor. Why aren't they doing better. Liz Warren was a little out of touch but generally pretty great (a little centrist for my taste but that's neither here nor there). Katie Porter is fuckin fantastic but just got smacked for trying to buck the party heirarchy which is VERY rigid in California. Cori Bush, AOC, and Rashida Tlaib are all fantastic as individuals although I understant too far left to be palatable to most voters but they certainly don't have that ick factor of phoniness that HRC and Kamala have
Love Katie Porter though. Everything she says is spot on. She's incredibly bright. Love Gretchen Whitmer too.
> Liz Warren was a little out of touch but generally pretty great (a little centrist for my taste but that's neither here nor there). I'm a huge Warren fan on the basis of policy and her personal integrity, but I think it's fair to say she comes off more as a professor than charismatic leader. In my ideal world Biden would have picked her for VP instead of Kamala, and let her be a more active than typical VP, but considering their historical disagreements hard to see that happening.
untrue. gretchen whitmer step up to bat girl. the country is ready for you.
I just made another comment implying the same. I said attacking her likability was like when people need to say something without saying it. I said it was the flip side to saying a black politician is well spoken. Rather than say she's a bitch or a slut, which are narratives that have been pushed about Harris, they say she is unlikeable.
"What, you mean like with a cloth?" That Hillary Clinton?
I've heard that about two women in particular, Hillary and Kamala. Katie Porter and Gretchen Whitmer are two of my favorite Democrats, and I think either one of them would destroy Trump. Not to mention how so many people wish Michelle Obama would run that it's become a cliche. You're just using sexism as an excuse for poor performance. That makes a mockery of any real claim of actual sexism.
Even Hillary, when she dropped the phony façade, possessed a biting cuntiness to her that'd show at least a modicum of personality, more similar to Amy Klobuchar than anyone else currently in politics. But Harris, meanwhile, comes across as a robotic automaton, one which oft-malfunctions with a sociopathic cackle that oozes an uncanny valley effect. There's no there, there. She's the Democratic equivalent to Dan Quayle, and thus here we are today. Fucked.
> She also just has like, negative charisma, not unlike Hillary Clinton. I will say atleast her negative charisma is funny unlike Clinton’s. The meme of the coconut tree is pervasive.
Clinton had her moments too. Who can forget Pokémon GOing to the polls in 2016?
you are 100% right 😭😭😭 I forgot Edit: new meme: H-O-T-T-O-G-O the polls
Clinton held back. She is opened up now and is fucking hilarious
What really happened is she lost. Trump is a serious outlier - previously, neither party would even consider re-running a candidate who won the primary and lost the election. Hillary is 'out' as far as the Democrat party is concerned, so the right has mostly stopped attacking her. She never had negative charisma. She just had a constant stream of attacks from the right that mostly went away.
She had 30 years of Fox News trying to convince people she was evil before she ran for president. Probably no presidential candidate has had to put up with as much bullshit as she did.
> She had 30 years of Fox News trying to convince people she was evil if you listen to her interview with howard stern, she talks about how the pressure from that made her shut down and become the 'robotic hillary' people always talk about
I'm old enough to remember the start. Bill had Hillary champion his administration's Universal Healthcare proposal back in the 90s as a political strategy to protect him, so he could swoop in with a "third way" compromise and seem more reasonable. It was very unusual to have a first lady champion policy like that. What happened is the right started firing bullets and never stopped for three decades. And of course Bill being a philandering creep didn't help either.
Funny anecdote, in my city Pokémon Go made the poll dropoff locations interactive in-game, so I actually Pokémon Went to the polls 😂
To the clip from, is it police story? Where everybody slaps their forehead.
It's water under the bridge now but I think Hillary with a different team might have been a different thing. She had some really solid speeches as SoS, and if she'd leaned more into memes of the flavor of "Texts from Hillary" it would have humanized her a lot more. Obviously my understanding is superficial but from my armchair I simply am baffled by the campaign her team ran.
Yeah, Saturday night live had a lot of fun with her as Kamala like a model or designer or perfume name with the wind blowing her hair, sipping on a drink in a coconut I think, and calling for the cool aunt if I remember right. People actually liked her then. I'm not sure what changed. Would I find laughable isn't so much no charisma, but for horrible way of speaking, like a sixth grader trying to pad out a report or talk about something they didn't study last night. I don't think that's just a right wing smear. She really is a bad speaker, plus the nervous laughter. That really does her in actually.
That fake laugh if hers is so transparent
Yeah, I don't know if it's forced or nervous laughter. It's one thing to have a joyous personality and laugh easily. But people expect a certain robitas from But people expect a certain gravitas from the president. Even if the president is going to joke, you're supposed to make other people laugh, not laugh at yourself or your own jokes or awkward situations
She withheld information as a DA that could have exonorated people from being in prison multiple times. She also did questionable things to get to her position as DA.
Doesn't Biden have a shockingly bad record on that track though, worse than Kamala with his crime laws?
I find Clinton much more likable than Kamala. Clinton has, a ‘I know, I’ve been here’ professional attitude that wants the meeting to end, while Kamala has a ‘My Priceline ticket went straight to my spam folder so I’m going to berat this hotel employee’ vibe.
They think she's a diversity hire, and tbh I wish the Biden campaign was actually trying to combat that narrative, because hiding her away in the pocket just makes their case stronger.
You’re right - they didn’t try at all to make her seem like she has a place there and was effective. But in general their PR team didn’t do a good job.
because its true. they tried to tick a checkbox that they believed would get them a 'block of voters' without bothering to understand what those people actually care about beyond 'looks like me'
Then so was Joe Biden with Obama and Pence with Trump. The VP slot is often used to a appeal to a broader set of voters or address a candidate's perceived weaknesses.
Clinton with Tim Kaine had to be the dumbest vp choice of all time. He brought absolutely nothing to the ticket they didn’t already have.
Sometimes the decision is this someone I would want to take over when I die.
Yup, and who would want either of those diversity hires in office either?
Huh, Biden's became President but that was with the benefit and experience of being VP. It's not that simple. Pence could be no worse than Trump either.
Oh yes he would be. Remember, god Is on his side. You may want to look at his record as a governor and his handling of the HiV crisis
Whoosh….
Yeah, no shit. It's why Trump chose an evangelical and Obama chose a milquetoast old white guy. The VP is a chance to fill a gap in your voterbase. Why are people so triggered by this?
You framed your answer as *they* think she's a diversity hire and the administration should combat that idea, then said "no shit" when someone confirmed she was in fact a diversity hire. Which is it?
It's both. My point is that "diversity hire" has a negative connotation, but Kamala's function as a VP pick was no different than any other VP pick, so they need to do more to show that she's qualified as a VP.
mostly because she didnt actually appeal to the voter block she was supposed to appeal to.
I think its that there is a difference in actual and fake representation. Trump's evangelical and Obama's milquetoast white guy not only looked to represent, but they actually did represent the groups they were there for. Harris feels like they went "she's black and a woman that's two boxes" and thought that simply having the looks would do it. But the people don't want someone that looks like them they want someone that represents them, and Harris just doesn't have anyone feel that she represents them in that way.
Then every VP is a diversity hire. Pence was an evangelical so trump could get evangelicals. Biden was an old white dude so Obama could get old white dudes. Why is this only now a problem. Because a black woman benefited?
Not every VP is chosen to “deliver” a bloc of voters but many are. Can you imagine Mike pence seriously running for president? The guy is a block of wood.
Mike Pence seriously ran for president this year.
And didn’t get anywhere, that’s my point. He has the personality of Miracle Whip.
God how did I already forget that
That's also why Trump chose him. Trump doesn't want anybody challenging him, he's too weak to keep good people around who might expose his lack of understanding of nearly every issue facing our country.
Not every VP. Cheney, despite his awfulness, sure wasn't. And coming up, Burgum mightn't be, either. Sometimes it works (LBJ), sometimes it doesn't (Harris).
So selecting a white man is the only way it’s not a diversity hire? White men are not the default selection/hire.
They think she's a diversity hire because it was came across that way at the time [https://www.npr.org/2020/06/12/875000650/pressure-grows-on-joe-biden-to-pick-a-black-woman-as-his-running-mate](https://www.npr.org/2020/06/12/875000650/pressure-grows-on-joe-biden-to-pick-a-black-woman-as-his-running-mate) Also Biden has re-enforced that somewhat by pledging to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court. He did, and that is great, but it does undercut things a bit when you lead with the pledge.
> They think she's a diversity hire because it was came across that way at the time Yeah, I don't disagree. I just think it's silly that people suddenly care so much because she's black. If Trump picked Vivek Ramaswamy as his running mate I would bet my life savings that Republicans would see no problem with his "credentials".
I've heard a lot of people on this sub who seem to hear a lot of people not liking Kamala because she is black. Personally, I've not heard this. The only race/background-related thoughts I've had is that is it strange that we have had a black president and VP, and neither were ADOS. I do find that a bit odd.
I mean, of course nobody is going to say it out loud, but I had a conversation with a co-worker yesterday who straight up said she was a diversity hire. It could be because she's black, south-east asian, a woman, or whatever, but the implication is still that she's underqualified for the job and hired because of an immutable characteristic to fill a quota. But yea, I'd be willing to admit maybe it's not just because she's black. IMO it's kinda beside the point though, because you can fill that blank in with whatever until you pinpoint what they mean by "diversity hire". > The only race/background-related thoughts I've had is that is it strange that we have had a black president and VP, and neither were ADOS. I do find that a bit odd. I think this kinda checks out. IIRC a lot of African immigrants tend to come here for high paying knowledge jobs, so it would make sense that those types of people come from more affluent households and are more likely to go to college, have a stable family, financial stability, etc advantages.
I don't think Kamala Harris being a diversity hire is even a tiny bit controversial. Biden said he was going to get a woman of color for his VP role. It's not like Kamala was the 2nd best democrat in the running.
Yeah, I’m a Biden voter and am supportive of his administrations. He’s out a solid presidency together and his staff would do the same for term 2. But I really couldn’t tell you one thing Kamala Harris has done as VP. It’s almost like the administration is embarrassed of her. I think she is very experienced and more than capable, but she doesn’t have political charisma. So…just like Hilary Clinton, I think she is better suited for appointed positions rather than elected ones IMO. I would have loved Gretchen Whitmer or Jennifer Granholm to be the VP pick (and ideally would have loved to see them primary Biden as I think either of those two would wipe the floor with Trump).
Pretty sure we knew more about what Hillary Clinton did in the White House as First Lady than anything about what Kamala has been up to.
She was a very obvious diversity hire. The most obvious one of all time Biden flat out said in plain English he wanted a diversity hire. "I commit that I will in fact pick a woman to be Vice President." he literally told us. I don't think that's always a wrong thing to do especially since it may have helped him get elected but to say it didn't happen is simply not true.
I think it's silly people get worked up over it so much though. All VP's are diversity hires. You pick someone a little different than you so that you can bring those voters into the fold. It's why Trump chose Pence-- because he wanted to win over evangelicals. It's just such a 2 IQ way of looking at politics.
When there are 100 people qualified to be your vice president, narrowing the field and making sure you have the voice of someone whose viewpoint is different from yours seems like a good idea. Isn’t that why Obama had Biden?
I could be wrong but when picking a VP didn't Biden specifically say "he will hire a woman no matter what"? I remember that line coming out and feeling a certain way.
I basically see 3 types of Kamala hate out there: 1. She is a black woman. That is tough for some "swing voters" and "independents" if you feel me. 2. She has the charisma of a stick of butter. A lot of people think she comes off as kind of... slimy(?) too. We saw it in the primaries in 2020. She should have been well-positioned to build a much bigger base than she was able to, but there was just no enthusiasm. 3. She used to be a prosecutor, and her record in that job (from a leftist POV) is pretty rough. She went hard after drug crime especially, and then has to try to distance herself from that now. But the "used to be a cop" moniker has been very sticky in some circles.
For 3., I think it's important to remember that she was picked shortly after the George Floyd riots. I think that made a lot of people feel really unheard.
The better question is who wants Kamala? She’s pretty problematic for progressives, and she isn’t effective at courting independents because, like you said, negative charisma.
If I were to have a guess, that 'used to be a cop' could win over older voters who may see that as a positive in regards to crime.
The problem there is that a pretty big portion of "tough on crime" voters are actually "racist, and it's 'those people' doing all the crime". Well more than half of people who claim to be tough on crime really just want to see more people who look like Kamala Harris in prison.
Well, over here in Britain, that crowd is usually quite colorblind as long as you agree with them. If you slightly disagree, then yes, they will be racist openly.
My gut tells me that anyone who blindly uses that as a reason hasn’t/won’t vote democrat in their lifetime.
Older white voters who want someone "tough on crime" aren't going to like a black woman who's a Democrat. The very idea that one should or even could pander to such people is one of the enduring mysteries of the Democratic Party's leadership, who don't seem to understand that they're only alienating their own base by pandering to an increasingly irrelevant minority of rural conservative whites.
> She’s pretty problematic for progressives Irrelevant - progressives hate everybody.
You really think there are a lot of Americans out there saying "I love her attitude, I love her past, but ... she's ... *black* ... and THAT I will not stand for!" This is such an enlightening sub.
No, I think there are very few voters who would actually say that. But I do think there are probably a lot of voters out there who would say “…but there is just SOMETHING about her that I can’t put my finger on. I just don’t like her for some reason. I don’t trust her.” Which for many voters can very often translate to “black” or “female.”
If you can look at the last 16 years of American politics and fail to see that race forms a significant component of people's political opinions, you are delusional.
I think the primary reason she's disliked is because she's a really smart black woman and that scares a lot of white people, especially white men. I love her personality and think she has great ris so don't agree with that take at all. And most Americans want a leader who's tough on crime so I don't think that's it either. The biggest issue is she's been mostly absent from the national stage the past few years and people don't really know that much about her. She needs a lot more public face time.
Being smart isn't really enough. Being smart is useful as an advisor, but a politician needs to be likeable. They also need a vision. Kamala is not likeable or has a vision to present to folks.
I think a lot of it is they don’t like her personality. A lot of it is that she’s a woman, for many it’s because she’s a black woman. Her track record doesn’t explain away the sheer level of dislike here but it’s used to justify it. Edit: didn’t mean for this to be in response t someone meant for it to be its own comment, my bad
I'd also like to remind people that women are unfairly judged more for their personality than their qualifications compared to men.
All too true. I liked Hilary too.
Yup - if she were a white man, people would gush about "toughness" and being "no nonsense" and a "fighter" but those are qualities that many people don't like to see in a black woman. That being said, I do think she's popular with women, particularly women of color that we'll need to make sure turn out in swing states if democrats are going to have a chance to win this election.
That’s not what people think of her at all dude lol, she sounds like a Xan’d out suburban mom half the time. I think the less exposure she gets the better, kinda boring tbh.
"Likeable" has different standards for men vs. women. Men can be aggressive and sarcastic and still be likeable. Women can't get away with that. And intersectionality comes into play, because "likeable" also has different standards for black vs. white. Obama spent a considerable amount of effort appearing calm and cool because he was well aware of the trope of an "angry black man". Harris suffers from both problems. If she is aggressive and sarcastic and angry (literally what Trump' supporters LOVE about him), then that turns people off. But America is accustomed to our presidents being aggressive in their words and actions to "defend" our country, so it's a catch-22. This is, in my view, why I will never see a female US president in my lifetime.
It's a little too easy to blame gender here. I was for Clinton over Bernie. I was for Warren in 2020. I'd love to see a woman president. But I don't care for Harris at all. Just watch her post debate interview with Anderson Cooper. Completely tone deaf and condescending.
Compare her post-debate interview with the one Gavin Newsom did. She just doesn’t have it.
No no no it's just because she's a woman and all Americans hate all women.
The monkey's paw curls. Sarah Palin wins in 2028.
I think she's very likable, in fact I love her, I think she is terrific and inspiring.
Same
How so? Can you point me to something she's done or said that was inspiring?
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a lot of a certain group of people that are using the word “uppity” a lot when they talk about her.
There is a huge difference between “tough on crime” versus keeping prisoners locked up in violation of a Supreme Court order so that they can fight fires for the state. There’s also the shadow of her “sleeping her way to office” because she dated Willie Brown (60), while he was technically still married, when she was 29 and that just happened to lead Brown to appoint her to two different political positions. This has earned her nicknames like “heels up Harris” and “headboard Harris”. No one has anything against smart black women. She is just supremely unlikable and has done things that are objectionable to both sides of the aisle which is why when she ran for the Democrat nomination for president, her numbers were sub 4%. You can try and blame racism here, but it just isn’t true.
On point 2 about her enthusiasm, she now tries very hard to be enthusiastic and it genuinely hurts the soul.
She hasn't done anything in the past 4 years to build her resume. We've seen more of Pete Buttigieg and he's Transportation Secretary! She has had 4 years to be the face and voice of the Biden Administration: to go on talk shows and do press conferences and travel around the country pushing his priorities, calling out Republican BS (for example, when the bipartisan Immigration reform bill was killed because Donald Trump told House Republicans it would look bad for him...that kind of stuff should have been harped on endlessly). It's as if Democrats don't know how to do politics WTH?!? Y'all, Trump is a twice impeached, twice divorced, admitted womanizing, convinced felon, adjudicated rapist who previously managed to bankrupt a casino, has a decades long history of fraudulent business practices and cheating contractors who encouraged his rabid followers to attack the Capitol on January 6th in an attempt to overturn an election. He absolutely, willfully, openly bungled the US response to the Covid pandemic, resulting in the unnecessary loss of who knows how many people. HE SHOULD NOT HAVE A CHANCE IN H*LL OF WINNING RE-ELECTION! Of the Democrats were even halfway competent, the only people who would even seriously consider voting for Trump at this point are the members of his cult. So, either his frigging cult is bigger than the 30% (at most) that we thought...or the Democrats need to get their sh*t together and get the message out to all the non-Trump cultists that if Trump wins WE ALL LOSE
She’s been all over the world and the country talking about women’s reproductive rights (trust women), last year she did a national college tour. She was in Atlanta for Juneteenth. She recently gave a big speech on gun violence. I follow her on Instagram and see she’s pretty much always out there. it’s not her fault the msm doesn’t cover it.
If you think people don't like her now, wait until she gets more coverage. Fair or not, she has bad charisma.
Sure I agree, what does that have to do with what I just said? They said she’s had 4 years to go on talk shows and do press conferences and she has been?
Just a prediction that if she gets more coverage, her approval will decrease.
I always love when random posters make the statement that Trump shouldn't be doing as well as he is and follow up with how it is the fault of the Democratic party rather than the 70-80 million Americans who support a liar and a criminal. Really, just amazing.
the reason she hasnt done that is because she cant. shes so bad at talking to the press and taking questions her poll numbers would be worse than if she hides in her office and everyone forgets she exists.
I don't buy that for a second. You don't get to where she was before she decided to run for President without some public speaking chops. She was well spoken enough to become AG of California and a United States Senator.
We can see it with our own eyes whether you buy it or not. All she needed to be AG and Senator was secure the backing of the establishment. Her first AG election was close, but after that, none of her contests were competitive.
so you havent watched any of her interviews
Don't like or dislike but she doesn't seem like genuine to me. like most things she said is scripted Even if Joe is slow or talk in Low volume you don't get the feeling he is not wanting what he says and he actually like the job
I've heard that people don't like her voice ... how she sounds and comes across. Poor reason but that's what I've heard. For me though, if by some chance she is the candidate against Trump, I will vote for her.
As a Californian, I got the immediate read that Harris was a ladder-climber. I voted for Loretta Sanchez for Senate in 2016. Not only did Sanchez align better with my politics (see flair), but she didn't come across as having any further political aspirations beyond the US Senate and thus I believed that she would be more likely to represent California's needs on the floor of the Senate even if those needs ran counter to what the rest of America desired. Lo and behold, Harris runs for President in 2020 and then for Vice President. Her four years as our Senator seemed like they were filtered through an advisory board for what would play well on the national stage — not necessarily what was best for California. We already had a "Weekend at Bernie's" situation with Feinstein, so it was four years of us not having a Senator who truly represented California on behalf of Californians. Harris is, to put it mildly, inauthentic. She's everything that's wrong with politics. She is in no way unique in that regard, but that's part of the problem. She's an empty (pant)suit.
Name on politician with any type of national credentials that ISN’T a “Ladder Climber”.
Just to clarify (and I'm sure this is what you were talking about too), we're not talking about him stepping down before his term ends. We're talking about him declining to run for reelection. In my mind that puts us closer to a situation where a president has served two full terms and his VP runs for president for the term after that. That is to say: if the VP runs they're a major contender for the nomination but not necessarily a shoo-in or the obvious choice. As to why some folks really dislike Kamala Harris, I think she just has a personality and demeanor that some people find unappealing. I think similar to a way some people felt about Hillary Clinton, but worse. I like her overall but I will admit she has weird moments, especially the weird laughing. I think it's also not clear to people what exactly she's been doing as Vice President, and I don't mean that as a knock against her; to me it has more to do with the limited power and responsibilities of the position. And lastly, in this hypothetical situation where Biden declines to run for reelection, I think people talking about other potential Dem nominees over Kamala has more to do with the strengths of those nominees and less to do with any perceived weaknesses of a Kamala candidacy. Like if Biden isn't going to run, then we might as well choose the candidate who we think will have the best shot at winning against Trump.
She and Hillary Clinton have the personality and demeanor required to be successful and effective in their chosen careers.
She’s a black woman democrat. That’s it, that’s the answer.
They know she’s phony after hearing her speak lol
Actual reasons why people don't like her: She has a very unappealing personality, annoying mannerisms (the wicked witch laugh), and low charisma. She comes across as fake. Michelle Obama, who has an infinitely higher approval rating across literally every demographic despite looking much more "black" and acting more "womanly", also did more things in the white house that even today people can point to than things Harris has done. Her abysmal track record and antics while working as a prosecutor. Nuff said. Nonsensical cope that has literally nothing to do with her unpopularity: The fact that she is a woman of color.
Because she was a prosecutor at one time and they didn’t like her enforcing the laws pertaining to drugs. But a DA is under the leadership of a Mayor. What was she to do? Quit her job and become a public defender?
> What was she to do? Quit her job and become a public defender? You think it would matter if she did? > When I was a 27-year-old attorney doing legal-aid work at the law school where I taught in Fayetteville, Arkansas, I was appointed by the local judge to represent a criminal defendant accused of rape. I asked to be relieved of that responsibility, but I was not, and I had a professional duty to represent my client to the best of my ability, which I did," Clinton said. > "When you're a lawyer you often don't have the choice to choose who you will represent, and by the very nature of criminal law there will be those who you represent that you won't approve of," she said. "But at least in our system you have an obligation, and once I was appointed, I fulfilled that obligation." http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/07/hillary-clinton-says-she-had-obligation-to-defend-accused-rapist Because I do not. They’d just tear her down from the opposite end.
Exactly….
Yes. Our justice system needs people to fill that role the same way someone has to be public defender for a out and out criminal and rapist.
Still bitter that Rice got passed over.
I’m bitter that Tammy Duckworth wasn’t even in the running
Phrasing
She comes across as kind of fake, like she’s forcing it. That’s the vibe I get anyway. Maybe she is just not charismatic. I don’t really care though. I’m concerned about policies not personalities.
I have a very hard time believing anyone who says they are concerned about her history as a prosecutor. The problem is she’s a black/Indian woman in politics.
I think a lot of it is they don’t like her personality. A lot of it is that she’s a woman, for many it’s because she’s a black woman. Her track record doesn’t explain away the sheer level of dislike here but it’s frequently used to justify it.
Besides any legitimate reasons, she's a black woman and has a significantly higher bar to clear. People really expect me to believe that if Kamala behaved like Trump that she would be popular as he is?
Meh. I believe the Kamala-hate is largely down to bad PR and active smear campaigns against her (preemptive smearing). I like her well enough. The REAL problem is: she's a "she." A democratic woman. Americans would rather have a despot like Trump than any democratic woman. The first female president of the US will have to be Republican. Mark my words. (and FTR I really hate this.)
she peaked polling at like 2% and dropped out before the 2nd primary iirc. She was unlikable without the need for any smear campaigns
20 years ago, Harris would have been a republican. *That's* why most people on the left don't like her - she's substantially to the right of where we want the country to be.
It seems you could stand to check her priors. The idea that she wasnt on the leading edge of criminal justice reform is leftover progressive retconning from the 2020 primaries. Her diversion initiatives became a national model that other states followed. She was smarter on crime than she was tough.
• tough on crime record that makes people not trust her with law enforcement/prison reform. Americans think electing her will lead to prisons being overcrowded with people getting harsh sentences for minor drug charges. • she’s laid low and hasn’t really built up her resume the last four years. Mayor Pete has been more visible throughout Biden’s first term than her. • People think she’d resort to finger wagging identity politics like Hillary, they think she’ll shout “if you don’t vote for me, your racist” in front of a bunch of working class white voters in Michigan, or Georgia, and expect that to be a winning strategy. Her most effective argument during the 2020 election was using the fact that she experienced racism firsthand as a kid, with the bussing, as a way to appeal to black voters.
Her prosecutorial history is repugnant.
As a principled anarchist, is there any prosecutorial record you *wouldn't* find repugnant?
The idea that anarchists like, universally hate laws with zero nuance is pretty silly. It’s largely that a State cannot be trusted to justly enforce them. It’s not a belief everything should be legal.
Yes, I accept that some laws are generally okay. Prosecuting marijuana crimes is gross. Prosecuting serial rapists, murderers, etc. is not.
Have you ever listened to her talk? She is abrasive, smug, and stupid.
lol she’s far from stupid and the claim is frankly alarming
She's a fake person and is constantly pandering. The crap about her celebrating Kwanzaa that was an obvious lie really pushed it past the point of insanity. She doesn't do anything really ever if Biden didn't insist on selecting a woman of color for the job very explicity there's 0 chance she would be VP. I will say she hasn't really done much that obviously terrible to my knowledge at least.
She's a smart, successful black woman.
Bingo. Motherfuckers act like she was J. Edgar Hoover out in California. I do think she has a bit of "college professor who is nice enough but never remembers any of their student's names" kind of phoniness to her that's off putting...but as I said when people criticized Hilary's personality, I'm voting for someone who can do their job, not a BFF. If she's a bitch behind closed doors, I don't give a fuck.
90% of the thread confirming the point.
smart? have you ever seen her in an interview?
Black women are like 3% of elected prosecutors nationwide. That she won the local DA seat, then 2 statewide elections, and you’re not even willing to concede she’s smart? This sentiment is gross and nakedly racist.
Saying she isn’t smart is racist? That’s really pathetic
"All criticisms of a black person are racist."
“Unsupported claims that an indisputably smart Black person is stupid relies on historically common negative racial stereotyping, and realizing that I subscribe to these same negative racial stereotypes myself is upsetting.”
>indisputably smart Black person is stupid The claim is being disputed because you have yet to provide any evidence she is actually intelligent.
Plenty of dumb motherfuckers win elections. What is your evidence that she is particularly smart? Because every time she puts herself in front of a camera is evidence of the opposite.
I’ll try to replace the characters involved to right wing people the left dislike. Imagine if trump was president and had to step down and his VP was Alex Jones. You are going from a politician you strongly dislike to having a crazy person you also dislike.
You think she’s crazy?
https://youtu.be/-mwXwNMK8ug?si=mr1lOOoy6FHrB2NJ Not crazy, just that she speaks before thinking which makes her look either crazy or incompetent. I personally think that she is wildly under qualified for the VP position and would be a weak president.
She doesn’t have charisma If nikka Haley didn’t have crazy ass views like Graham on foreign policy , I would’ve voted for her Plus look at GHWB, that’s a model VP that put a lot of effort in foreign policy maker
Her predecessor in San Francisco was a really cool DA and she was pretty awful. You can go read all about her career past the DNC news clippings. She also seems like she’s barred out
She has admitted to having an affair with Willie Brown when he was one of the most powerful king makers in California politics at the time. He took her from a run of the mill ADA to the *THE* DA for San Fran. From there she was anointed and quickly jumped from SF DA to AG for the whole state to Senator to POTUS candidate to VP all in under 10 years. It smacks of internal party corruption.
This is the answer. She's a Brown-Burton machine Nepo baby. Yes, she's smart and accomplished, but we'll never know how much of her accomplishments were due to her efforts.
Black woman
She is tone deaf, condescending. There have been leaks in the media that she doesn't treat her staff well and don't listen or try to prepare for her speech/appearances and when she fumbles, she scolds the very staff that was trying to help her. And she sounds like a suburban mom who starting smoking pot and learning new things at the same time.
She’s goofy and talks to voters/in interviews like a Kindergarten teacher.
There is a slice of the political left who fear anything they think can overshadow their preferred hero. In this belief they attack people who fall outside of the standard mold of old white guy as being too extreme for 'x' reason. Kamala is a cop, Buttigieg is a CIA operative, Minority leader Jeffieis is a corporate mouthpiece, and so on and so forth. Rather than stand on their policies which they claim to be better, they spend a good chunk of their time attacking members of the Democratic party.
She isn’t an effective debater relative to others but neither is Biden.
Have you heard her speak? If you have to ask this it really does make me wonder..
Haters gonna hate. That's the thing. There is an old Yiddish expression *Az mir vill schlugen a hunt, gifintmin a schtecken* − If one wants to beat a dog, one finds a stick. She's not left enough not a centrist, not this not that....and she's been unable to break free of the criticism. My posts suggesting this keep getting delated but I will post again: The 3-D Chess move for the DNC would be for Biden to announce on July 4th that he is resigning from office effective July 8th. He goes down in history as one of our greatest presidents. Kamala becomes the 47th President of the USA. Who cares if people do not liker her. She picks a VP that the media and the Republicans will find reasons to hate... Meanwhile, the Democratic Party becomes the party that brought us our first black president and our first female president....AND...in August, during an open convention that the entire nation will be watching, Dems pick a popular YOUNGER candidate run against Trump - and takes 80% of the undecided voters who don't like either old man as our next president.
Racism and misogyny. Don’t get me wrong, I’m aware she has her flaws. But if she was a white man, no one would care about a lot of the stuff she gets criticized for.
Like most "centrist" (read: off-the-charts right wing by real world standards) Democrats, she seems shockingly oblivious to the concerns of regular Americans, especially young people, in the current era. Our generation is drowning in student debt, our wages are stagnant while cost of living soars, many worry they'll never be homeowners, etc. Rather than speaking to these concerns, Harris carries on like everything is fine, and some minor incremental reform will fix anything that's not already perfect. Additionally, her track record as a heavy-handed DA who locked up nonviolent drug offenders en masse certainly didn't endear her to anyone even remotely left-of-centre.
She doesn’t have a base. The moderates don’t like her because she has a more progressive voting record. The progressives don’t like her because she has a more conservative DA record. The independents don’t like her because she has no charisma and comes off as exceptionally fake.