There was talk a year ago that it was Harris, not current President Joe Biden, who might run for office. Even then, many doubted Biden's ability to make it to the end of the current term, let alone run again. That's when the question arose: Is Harris ready to be president? The Democratic camp was not enthusiastic about it, but rather despondent. Even the U.S. mainstream media stated that Harris was practically unremembered as vice president, except for her incoherent speech and explosive laughter, which gave rise to speculation about her health.
But is Kamala Harris so hopeless? Can U.S. political technologists turn an office cinderella into a ruling queen in three months?
Betting on the underdog
On the evening of 21 July, Biden announced his decision to withdraw from the race in the election that is only three months away. The statement looked bizarre. Given the situation, it was expected that the U.S. leader would speak from the Oval Office with a video address to the nation. Given that Biden was diagnosed with a coronavirus, the lack of the Oval Office footage can be forgiven. But the social media post looked, to put it mildly, inappropriate.
Then another Biden post was published: “My very first
decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice
President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my
full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this
year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.” 
Once again, there is a feeling of dissonance. It's
unlikely that Biden's team didn't realize that these two posts would fly around
the world, read by millions of people, including voters in the United States.
This is the perfect opportunity to present Harris as a potential leader. But
instead, the post was about Biden's “best decision” and the need to “beat
Trump.” Coincidentally or not, this brief post framed two very different images
as accurately as possible: the strong, go-for-broke image of Trump, the
inarticulate and fuzzy image of Harris.
Here's what the vice president herself said about her run for the presidency: “I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party - and unite our nation - to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda. We have 107 days until Election Day. Together, we will fight. And together, we will win.”
One gets the feeling is that without Trump, neither Biden nor Harris would have any motivation to do anything at all. Then again, everyone knows who Trump is. For some, he's a truth-teller, a nationalist in a good way, and just a “charismatic guy.” For others, he is a threat to liberal order, a criminal, and again a nationalist, but in a bad way.
As for who Harris is, it's hard to say. “"We got a fight ahead of us and we are the underdogs in this race," the vice president said in her first fundraiser. “But this is a people-powered campaign and we have momentum.”
Well, it didn't get any clearer. Either the vice
president hopes to win over voters with ambiguous metaphors. Or she doesn't realize
who she really is and what she has to offer the people. 
The vice president in charge of obscure issues
Last year, when there was talk in certain circles in Washington about Harris' prospects as Biden's successor, The Atlantic staff writer Elaina Calabro tried to understand why the Democrats are so skeptic about the vice president.
The journalist interviewed Harris. Calabro described her interlocutor as an intensely private person who occasionally speaks studied phrases. These qualities may have prevented Harris from communicating properly with Biden's office, as well as with U.S. officials and lawmakers.
Her first year on the job was defined by rhetorical blunders, political missteps, staff turnover. She saw the departure of her chief of staff, communications director, domestic-policy adviser, national security adviser, and other aides. CNN reported at the time “key West Wing aides are exasperated by what they see as entrenched dysfunction and lack of focus from Harris and her staff”.
The New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote the following about Harris's managerial qualities: “From her time as the San Francisco district attorney straight through her time as vice president, Harris has earned a reputation for degrading underlings and burning through staff. Biden has a coterie of people who have been with him for decades, but Harris has no such group. The Substack newsletter Open the Books ran the numbers and calculated that as of March 31 over 90 percent of the staff she had at the beginning of her vice-presidential term had left.”
Many said Harris' responsibilities were obscure. Hence the joke of the vice president being only capable of handling emails. The White House is asking Kamala Harris to monitor emails coming in, Americans joked.
Ultimately, the White House issued a statement insisting that Biden did, in fact, rely on his vice president as a governing partner. But Harris’s reputation has never quite recovered.
In June 2021, the vice president sat down with the NBC anchor to discuss Biden’s immigration agenda. The questions should have been easily anticipated—such as whether Harris had any plans to visit the border itself, where crossings had surged. Yet when Lester Holt did ask that question, Harris threw up her hands in evident frustration. “At some point, you know, I—we are going to the border. We’ve been to the border. So this whole, this whole - this whole thing about the border. We’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border.” Holt corrected her: “You haven’t been to the border.” Harris became defensive. “And I haven’t been to Europe,” she snapped. “I don’t understand the point you’re making.”
For many Americans, Lester Holt's interview was the first real encounter with Harris as vice president. This dialogue traveled almost all the U.S. media. Harris herself avoided speaking in front of the camera for several months after that. Subsequently, the vice president repeatedly uttered incoherent phrases, which gave rise to many memes. Speculations have emerged that Harris suffers from logorrhea.
“Some politicians have minds like a jukebox,” David Brooks wrote on the subject. “You mention a topic, and they will play whatever record they have stored in their brain that goes with the topic. Harris has seemed less good at handling that kind of spontaneous exchange.”
By the way, the issue of migration has been a particularly painful one for Harris. Back at the beginning of the presidential term, Biden instructed Harris to address the issue. However, the vice president has never succeeded. Under the current administration, the growth of illegal crossings of the U.S. border with Mexico has reached record levels. Governors of the southern states were outraged, which even poured into a conflict with the federal authorities. In order for Harris to “penetrate” the problem, Texas Governor Greg Abbott bused about 100 migrants to her home.
This state of affairs did not add to the popularity of
the vice president. In June 2023, an NBC News poll showed that only 32% of
respondents approved of Harris' performance in office. 49% said they viewed the
vice president negatively, including 39% who were highly negative. Thus, Harris
showed the worst result among U.S. vice presidents in the history of this poll. 
To be the first so as not to be the last
Despite all the failures, it needs to be admitted that Harris managed to achieve a lot by the age of 60. She was born into an immigrant family. Her mother is a native of India, and her father comes from Jamaica. Harris graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C., with a bachelor's degree in economics and political science. Then she graduated from the University of California, where she earned a law degree. Further Harris was steadily going up the career ladder. She became District Attorney of San Francisco in 2004, and Attorney General of the State of California in 2011.
Harris did not stop there. First she was elected to the US Senate, where she actively criticized Trump. In 2019, she announced her participation in the presidential race. Later, however, she withdrew her candidacy, urging supporters to vote for Biden. She did not lose. Biden became president, and Harris became the second most important person in the U.S. political hierarchy.
Harris once said that she aspires to follow her mother's advice: “As my mother used to say, “you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you are not the last.”
In the end, Harris became the first woman to serve as vice president, and also the first black American and the first South Asian American selected for the post. Before that, she was the first woman to become California's attorney general. In November 2021, while Biden was undergoing medical procedures, Harris became the first woman with presidential power in U.S. history.
It is also impossible to say that Harris was out of the loop as vice president. In three and a half years, she has visited several dozen countries - in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. She has held talks with a number of foreign leaders.
U.S. experts note that partly thanks to Harris the
so-called red wave was avoided in the congressional elections in 2022. Many
predicted that Republicans, amid the failures of the Biden administration,
would easily gain a majority in both houses of Congress. However, Harris made a
successful move by convincing Biden to support women's right to abortion - in
opposition to Republicans. The vice president spent much of 2022 traveling and
speaking to voters about abortion in both “red” states (which support Republicans)
and “blue” ones (which favor Democrats). Harris felt very well the mood of the
country and the potential impact of the abortion issue on the campaign.
The journalist for The Atlantic wrote about Harris’
intelligence and diligence. “Those closest to Harris have tried to make sense
of why the vice president’s positive qualities have failed to register with
Americans,” Calabro said.
David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Barack Obama, may have found the answer. “I think it's one of the things that plagued her in the presidential race. It looked as if she didn’t know where to plant her feet. That she wasn’t sort of grounded, that she didn’t know exactly who she was. People can read that. When you’re playing at that level, people can read that,” Axelrod said.
Image crafting mission
One can give credit to Harris' education, her diligence and ambition. Still, this does not make her an interesting and charismatic politician. If Harris and Trump had to participate in the presidential race without any outside help and influence, the former president would have had a much better chance of returning to the White House.
However, it is not that simple. The U.S. election is not a confrontation between candidates, but a battle between the country's two key parties, or even more precisely, a battle between armies of political technologists.
If Harris still does not understand who she is, she will be explained. If needed, she will be grounded, and perhaps get a new image. The main thing Harris has accomplished is the endorsement of “Democratic big brass”. Although a year ago, that seemed unrealistic.
In early 2023, reporters for The New York Times polled Democrats on their attitudes toward Harris. “The painful reality for Ms. Harris is that in private conversations over the last few months, dozens of Democrats in the White House, on Capitol Hill and around the nation — including some who helped put her on the party's 2020 ticket — said she had not risen to the challenge of proving herself as a future leader of the party, much less the country. Even some Democrats whom her own advisers referred reporters to for supportive quotes confided privately that they had lost hope in her,” the article said.
However, Harris has one important advantage, a
virtually non-alternative contest. The Democrats clang to Biden until the last,
although they realized that the president, for obvious reasons, would not be
able to hold on to a second term. When Biden decided to drop out of the race,
it became obvious that there was no one to bet on but Harris.
Among the first to side with Harris was the Clintons.
"Now is the time to support Kamala Harris and fight with everything we
have got to elect her. America's future depends on it," they said in a
joint statement.
Financier George Soros and his son Alex have supported Harris. "It’s time for us all to unite around Kamala Harris and beat Donald Trump. She is the best and most qualified candidate we have," Alex Soros said in social media X.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remained silent at first, provoking rumors of disagreement in the Democratic party over Harris' candidacy. But finally, Pelosi decided to endorse the vice president "with a heart full of gratitude and boundless optimism about the future of the United States."
Another important Democrat, Barack Obama, held off on his reaction for days. "We told her we think she’ll make a fantastic President of the United States... At this critical moment for our country, we’re going to do everything we can to make sure she wins in November," the former president said.
It appears the bets are on. It's only a matter of time before Harris is nominated. Especially since she has already secured the support of the necessary number of Democrats who will vote for her party's presidential nomination.
The reality show on the roll
In the meantime, the media have rolled up their
sleeves to promote Harris. Not only U.S. media, but also European. It seems
that Europe fears Trump more than the U.S. Democratic Party. 
When you open up CNN's website, the top headline is,
"Kamala Harris has energized Democratic voters. But can she expand the
map?" Just below that is an analysis article - "How Harris may win
back a critical group of voters who abandoned Biden". Still below is
"Republican mayor in battleground state is endorsing Kamala Harris. Hear
why".
Somewhere far away is a news item about Republicans as well - "Not just 'cat ladies': A brief history of James David Vance mocking people without children." By the way, this is a dig at the Republican vice presidential candidate, who is being mentioned behind the scenes as a possible successor to Trump in the next election cycle.
Sociologists are in the game too. Last week, Reuters published the results of a public opinion poll conducted jointly with the Ipsos sociological service. It turned out that Harris is ahead of Trump by 2% in terms of support. The vice president is favored by 44% of voters, Trump - 42%.
Everyone has written about Harris' "victory". However, most people missed one point. A report published by Reuters says that 1,241 American adults participated in the poll. However, the Ipsos website has an important correction. The sample includes 1,018 registered voters, of whom 426 identify themselves as Democratic Party supporters and 376 as Republican Party supporters. The 50-person difference is in favor of the Democrats. So much for electoral arithmetic.
Is it any wonder, considering this, that 62% of American voters are concerned that the U.S. presidential election could be rigged? By the way, the results of the poll also show this. This time the American research organization Rasmussen Reports and the analytical center Heartland Institute probed the ground. In fact, the poll also showed that almost a fifth of respondents in the 2020 election received more than one ballot in the mail or received a ballot for a person who did not live at their address.
Democrats will hold a vote on Harris' nomination as a candidate for the top U.S. public office on 1 to 5 August. The Democratic National Committee has already stated that no other candidates but Harris will be considered as part of the voting procedure. As of today, the vice president has secured the support of 3,923 delegates to the upcoming party convention, which is 99% of the votes. Therefore, the upcoming vote is rather a formality.
It is very likely that Harris and Trump will face off in a battle for the presidency in the next three months. Of course, there are other candidates. But they do not have political giants in the form of the Democratic or Republican Party - with their sponsors, influence on the media and armies of political technologists, whose work, by and large, will determine the outcome of the election campaign. In such a scenario, who Kamala Harris is and what she wants is not that important. The only thing that matters is whether they will find the right image for her and whether she will cope with the chosen role.
Vita KHANATAEVA,
BelTA
Photos from AR, Getty Images, Reuters
