One of Kamala Harris’ most memorable moments during the 2020 presidential election cycle was when, during a Democratic primary debate, she sharply criticized Joe Biden for working with segregationists in the Senate in their shared opposition to busing.
The verbal jab also aligned with the national zeitgeist at a time when calls for racial justice and the Black Lives Matter movement were ascendant. In October, The Atlantic’s Elaina Plott Calabro profiled Harris under the headline “The Kamala Harris Problem,” writing that “Harris’s reputation has never quite recovered” from some early blunders during her term. The article includes a particularly blunt quote from former Obama administration adviser David Axelrod about a perceived risk aversion born of insecurity: “It looked as if she didn’t know where to plant her feet.
And she remains a source of concern, a perceived vulnerability to Biden’s reelection. In March, Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker wrote that Harris should bow out for the sake of the country, absurdly comparing her to Sarah Palin in 2008. In a February speech in Savannah, Georgia, she said that she decided to specialize in prosecuting crimes of violence against women and children because in high school she learned that one of her best friends was being molested by her stepfather. Harris told that story as a way to underscore the repressive nature of abortion laws that don’t have exceptions for rape or incest.