Opinion: Kamala Harris is not a liability. She may be Democrats’ best weapon

Opinion by Basil Smikle

(CNN) — Editor’s Note: Basil A. Smikle Jr., PhD, is a professor and director of the Public Policy Program at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute of Hunter College – City University of New York. He is also a former executive director of the New York State Democratic Party. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.

In a more normal world, our national split screen displaying a fractious and fragmented Republican conference, with Democrats fairly united by comparison, might have elevated President Joe Biden’s 2024 re-election prospects.

Instead, he faces downward spiraling poll numbers amid a fixation over a handful of issues that I consider relatively ancillary, among them, the public hand-wringing over his age.

Discussions about whether at 81, Biden is too old to be president, have fed a rancorous debate about the qualifications of his vice president and 2024 running mate Kamala Harris. Biden’s second-in-command, a former US senator and California attorney general, is being dragged down by a barrage of tropes, the kinds of chatter that many women and racial minorities frequently confront in politics.

Much of the tiresome chatter within the Washington beltway in recent months has tried to raise doubts about Harris’ readiness to lead, should she ever be called upon to step in for Biden.

Sadly, some Democrats may be culpable in allowing those narratives to gather steam. That’s especially unfortunate because the nitpicky critiques have only served to obscure the public’s appreciation of what has been a highly successful administration.

Some within the party have complained that Harris is endangering the odds for victory at the ballot box this year. As some Republican trolls suggest that a vote for Biden could be a vote for Harris, who is 59, opponents of the president think they can attack him by aiming barbs at her.

In reality, Democrats have no reason to soft-peddle their support for Harris. In fact, if they’re smart, they’ll put Harris out front and center during the 2024 presidential campaign.

Not only is she not a drag on the ticket, but Harris may prove hugely instrumental in helping clinch a victory in next year’s presidential race. Happily, the Biden campaign seems to finally be coming around and embracing smart ways to make the best use of Harris’ talents and impressive resume. She might just be the party’s secret weapon heading into the 2024 election.

Yes, it’s true that Harris is underwater broadly with voters, as is Biden. A Los Angeles Times average released in December showed that 39% of registered voters had a favorable opinion of Harris and 55% had an unfavorable opinion, roughly in line with the president’s numbers.

But a New York Times/Siena College polls of battleground states released in November showed that Harris was considerably more popular than Biden among nonwhite voters and voters under the age of 30, segments of the American public whose support is indispensable if the president is to win reelection.

The campaign seems to be fully aware of that: The White House announced late last year that Harris will be taking the lead in the administration’s messaging on abortion, which many see as one of the issues most likely to motivate women, young people and progressives to the polls.

And a lot has been said about Biden’s flagging support among Black and brown voters in recent polling. With Harris campaigning by his side, and out on the stump on her own, Biden will have a somewhat easier challenge getting Black voters and voters of color to come home on election day. At a time when the support of people of color is softer than it has been in some time, Harris’ value cannot be overstated.

Her appeal to non-White voters, who vote overwhelmingly Democratic, may in fact be her greatest value to the party’s 2024 prospects. Harris is a woman with Indian and Jamaican parentage who intentionally rooted herself in the Black community by attending Howard University and joining the first black Greek-letter sorority in the nation. Many voters of color are only too aware of that background — and celebrate it.

In contrast to pundits who seem determined to see her as a liability, I’ve been saying for some time that she should be given a stronger public platform as a way of highlighting her successes. After all, a veep who is seen as competent, capable and ready to lead can only be a good thing for any presidential ticket.

But it’s not just about the competence that she exudes: More Americans than ever view themselves with an intersectionality that will soon no longer need the validation of a White male leader to succeed. Harris has changed the permission structure within her party and among the electorate. Her outreach will be particularly important among young voters.

Biden won 60% of voters under 30 in the 2020 election and this group will be critically important again to clinching a victory in 2024. In addition to the campaign’s push on abortion, it is ramping up its outreach to Gen Z voters on various fronts.

In September and October, Harris’ “Fight for Our Freedoms” tour took her to college campuses across eight states, in a bid to continue the administration’s outreach to this vitally important group. Harris’ portfolio of reproductive rights, voting rights and discrimination in education is tailor-made to appeal to this cadre of voters.

Another issue in her portfolio that young people care deeply about is immigration — a historically thorny topic, but one she can address firsthand. In fact, when confronted at a college campus in Flagstaff, Arizona about America’s immigration policies, Harris cited her own “lived experience” as the daughter of an immigrant mother for how she approaches the issue.

Here’s another reason for Democrats to celebrate Kamala: She is the very embodiment of what the party aspires to be — the kind of figure who inspired millions of people like me to enter the political arena. Jesse Jackson’s prime time exhortation at the 1988 Democratic National Convention for the party to embrace the country’s diversity inspired countless GenXers like me to become politically active.

Jackson’s speech also gave us a front row seat to a highly impactful phenomenon: the explosion of women candidates and candidates of color running for seats at multiple levels of government accompanied by the coded language and spurious metrics used to judge their qualifications.

The echoes of the kinds of criticism Harris is facing is all too familiar to me. Similar threads go back to Shirley Chisholm’s race for the White House in 1972, and should have been excised from our national discourse decades ago. It’s the kind of pushback that is vexing and unfortunately not all that unusual when a Black woman reaches the pinnacle of political power.

For leaders of color in the public and private sectors, everything from their speech, clothing and mannerisms are scrutinized. Women in particular navigate a male dominated construct of leadership and stereotypical views of femininity. These pressures also force many Black leaders to decide between race-conscious and race-neutral policymaking with a tendency toward incrementalism that drives more skepticism of motives. For Kamala Harris to have risen to historic heights in our nation, any notion of weak political and substantive bona fides should be outright dismissed.

Given what a potentially important asset she is, one can only ask why she has been so underappreciated and underrated? Criticism of Harris by detractors who question her value on the Democratic 2024 ticket has not abated, despite the increasingly prominent role she has played in the Biden re-election campaign in recent months.

Republicans, only too happy to exploit this opening, can cause irreparable and long-lasting damage — and that wouldn’t just hurt Harris. The Democratic party, and its election prospects in 2024, will suffer if the party doesn’t defend her more forcefully.

Even as Harris ramps up her outreach to Gen Z voters, it seems more than likely that she will face an enormous challenge: unhappiness from some young voters about the administration’s position on Israel. The issue thus far has proven to be a divisive one for the party, as she works to help unify fractious elements of her party, the president’s change of tone on the war notwithstanding.

Meanwhile, the vice president can offer an aspirational economic message to these young voters whose enthusiasm is blunted by an inability to financially plan for their future. It’s not a panacea, but it is an important overture and a lot is riding on her success.

The 2020 ticket of Biden and Harris stemmed the reclamation and retribution movement of Trumpism. The president may be equally important as a transitional leader bridging an old and new electoral coalition. And his administration can tout achievements from investments in infrastructure to increased funding for transportation to reductions in prescription drug costs. These have been bolstered in no small part by the vice president’s contributions.

Democrats must embrace what Republicans have long feared: that this vice presidency is not just about advancing Washington’s parochial policymaking interests. It is also about a bridge to the party’s future, helmed by one of the most unfailing party leaders there is — a Black woman.

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