Kamala Harris polls better in foreign countries than in the US where she is under attack by the GOP

SCREEN CAPTURE /60 MINUTES

Vice President Kamala Harris is under constant attack from right-wing media.

ANALYSIS

I'm not sure what Vice President Kamala Harris has to do to overcome the negativity heaped upon her by the radical right media machine and the tendency for mainstream media to repeat those conservative talking points as if they were valid criticisms.

The demonization of Harris has had an impact, especially in the polls where she has scored low ratings. "I don't remember another time when we really focused so much on the vice president and their polling numbers," said Clifford Young, vice president of Public Affairs & Public Opinion Research at Ipsos, BBC.

Harris is not perfect, but as Vice President, she is doing what Vice Presidents are supposed to do: Support the President and tout his agenda and his administration's accomplishments. As the second-in-command, it is not Harris' job to create her own policies.

"I hear from a lot of different people a lot of different things. But let me just tell you, I'm focused on the job. I truly am. Our democracy is on the line," Harris said in a "60 Minutes" interview, Oct. 29. "And I frankly, in my head, do not have time for parlor games."

Really! Can you honestly cite the accomplishments of Mike Pence when he was Vice President. Even Joe Biden as President Barack Obama's Vice President stayed in the background and cheered on the President But neither of those recent Vice President's have received the vitriol and negative attention given to Harris.

That hasn't stopped conservative media. Every chance they get, Fox News, the NY Post, Washington Examiner and their like-minded pundits in the far-flung network of conservative news outlets try to make the first Black and Asian American vice president appear unlikeable and ineffective. In their minds, Harris has three strikes against her: 

1. She's a woman.

2. She's a woman of color, whose parents, Jamaican and Indian, were immigrants.

3. She's "pushy," an attribute that would be seen as admirable if she was a man.

However, internationally, Harris fares far better in the public view because the poll respondents were less likely to hear from the US far right's propaganda bullhorns.

Entering office in 2020, foreign affairs was seen as the area in which Harris has had the least experience. You wouldn't know that looking at a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. Since she took office, she's visited over 100 countries as the President's representative.

A median of 55% of adults in these countries have confidence in Harris to do the right thing regarding world affairs, including half or more who hold that view in 14 countries, according to Pew. Confidence in Harris is particularly high in Sweden, where 77% of adults view her positively.

Confidence in Harris is roughly comparable to international confidence in President Biden, as well as French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. A median of about six-in-ten have confidence in each of those three leaders to do the right thing regarding world affairs – slightly more than the median of 55% who have confidence in the U.S. vice president.

Harris’s ratings far outpace those of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is seen positively by a median of 18% of adults, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is seen positively by a median of just 9% across the surveyed countries.

Harris has taken on a variety of internationally focused responsibilities during her time as vice president. Those responsibilities have included a high-profile trip to Europe at the beginning of the war in Ukraine and coordination of relations with Central American leaders to stem the flow of migrants coming to the southern border of the United States.

Confidence in Harris is tied to gender in some countries, with women significantly more likely than men to express confidence in her handling of world affairs. 

For example, 68% of Canadian women have a positive view of Harris, while only about half of Canadian men (51%) say the same. Significant differences between men and women also appear in Singapore, Australia, Italy, Malaysia, Sweden and the Netherlands.

Ideology is also related to views of Harris in some places. In six countries, those who place themselves on the ideological left are significantly more likely than those on the right to have confidence in Harris. Greece is the only country where the reverse is true: 54% of Greeks on the ideological right are confident in Harris, compared with just 32% of those on the left.

“Polls are a snapshot of the time, they certainly do not define the time,” Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist, told Yahoo News. “And no poll can measure the effectiveness of Vice President Harris and how consequential she is not just to the Democratic Party, and to this administration, but to the country.”

Low ratings for vice presidents is not unique to Harris. By comparison, in October of 2019, then-Vice President Pence had a 38% negative favorability and 34% positive, according to NBC polls, and in December 2010, then-Vice President Biden had a 33% negative view and 34% positive view.

Jonathan Hanson, political scientist and lecturer at the University of Michigan, says Harris is so unique, the US has never had a Vice President who has made history in so many fronts because of her race and gender, it is perhaps unfair to compare her to past vice presidents.

“So we would need to consider the additional possibility that her numbers are being weighed down, due to either gender-related bias or race/ethnicity-related [bias],” Hanson told Yahoo News. “That's something that's kind of hard to disentangle from the broader picture. But there is research out there that suggests that, for some people, her gender and race are positive, and for other people, it might work in more of a negative direction.”

“I do think it speaks to the higher level of scrutiny that [Harris has] faced throughout her time as both a candidate and now an officeholder,” Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the Center for American Women and Politics, told Yahoo News.

Experts say Harris’s tenure has been filled with difficult assignments. “She was asked to focus on immigration as an issue, which is, of course, a very politically sensitive and difficult issue to work on. So one could make the argument that she wasn't given a very favorable opportunity to really carve out a set of positive, highly visible public accomplishments,” Hanson said.

In a recent NPR interview, Harris said, “I think about my role as vice president of the United States and what that means both in terms of the bully pulpit that I have, and the responsibility that comes with that, to hopefully inform folks of things I might be aware of, but also to elevate public discourse and hopefully cut through the misinformation.”

Dittmar says there is a concerted Republican effort to throw the spotlight on Harris in order to reduce her poll numbers. If you constantly continue to misrepresent, repeat lies or attack a victim often enough in the conservative megaphones compounded by unfiltered social media, people start believing the BS.

Just ask Hillary Clinton and the questioning about her emails, an issue that haunted her throughout her unsuccessful 2016 Presidential campaign.

One of the reasons there is so much vitriol against Harris is because there is the likely possibility that she might succeed Biden as President. in 2028. “A vote for President Biden, it’s actually a vote for President Harris," said Nikki Haley, who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination, told “Fox and Friends” in June. "We are running against Kamala Harris. Make no bones about it.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow me at Threads.net/eduardodiok, @DioknoEd on Twitter or at the blog Views From the Edge.