Vice President Kamala Harris and her allies are claiming that race and gender are the true reasons behind growing criticism of her performance as vice president.
Harris is the first woman or person of color to hold the office, and enjoyed widespread praise from the media for being so. In the year following her and President Joe Biden’s inauguration, however, the media has largely soured on her.
Harris has failed to make meaningful progress on voting rights or ending the border crisis, the two issues Biden tapped her to solve earlier this year, and multiple outlets have published articles indicating that she runs a hostile and toxic work environment.
WASHINGTON, DC – DECEMBER 01: U.S. Kamala Harris embraces U.S. President Joe Biden before his remarks at a menorah lighting ceremony in celebration of Hanukkah in the East Room of the White House on December 01, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Democratic Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar has also complained about what he sees as Harris’ lack of interest in solving the border crisis.
“I say this very respectfully to her: I moved on,” Cuellar said of Harris to The New York Times. “She was tasked with that job, it doesn’t look like she’s very interested in this, so we are going to move on to other folks that work on this issue.”
Harris’ allies argue both publicly and privately that the attacks on her performance are due to her race and gender, not a lack of progress and complaints from former staffers.
“There is a double standard; it’s sadly alive and well,” former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the NYT of Harris. “A lot of what is being used to judge her, just like it was to judge me, or the women who ran in 2020, or everybody else, is really colored by that.”
Privately, close allies of Harris reportedly “blame reporters they see as chasing incessantly negative stories and playing into undeniable structural issues of race and gender,” according to CNN.
The White House has a history of defending Harris on the same grounds, with White House press secretary Jen Psaki attributing criticism of Harris to race and gender in November. (RELATED: ‘It Doesn’t Look Like She’s Very Interested’: Democratic Rep Goes After Kamala Harris For Ignoring Him On Border Issues)
“I do think that it has been easier, and harsher, from some in the right wing who have gone after her because she is the first woman, the first woman of color,” Psaki said. “I’m not suggesting anyone will acknowledge that publicly, but I think there’s no question that the type of attacks — the attacks on her that certainly, being the first she is many times over, is part of that.”
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Harris’ history of chalking up criticism to racial or gender bias predates her entrance to the White House. Harris said her race and gender were “elephant in the room” in her 2019 run for president. She also laid the groundwork for the defense, arguing the success or failure of her campaign would answer the question of whether the U.S. was “ready” for a woman of color to be president.
“Essentially, is America ready for a woman and a woman of color to the president of the United States?” she asked. “When there is not a reference point for who can do what, there is a lack of ability or a difficulty in imagining that someone who we have never seen can do a job that has been done, you know, 45 times by someone who is not that person.”