Kamala Harris, from enthusiasm to disappointment in her first year as vice president of the United States.

Kamala Harris made history by becoming the first female vice president of U.S.

But his first year in office has not been a bed of roses at all.

His approval ratings have plummeted, the president has tasked him with tasks ranging from the impracticable to the virtually impossible to solve, and his office has been decimated by the resignations of high-profile officials, according to the BBC.

If Harris accepted her party’s nomination thinking of consolidating herself as the future Democratic presidential candidate, this possibility has not been long in being questioned.

Biden assured at a press conference on Wednesday that he will keep her as his number two if he stands for re-election, although it is not clear that speculation about his political future will disappear with that.

So what exactly has gone wrong? Will you be able to fix it? There are no easy explanations and the answers are even less so.

A bump in the polls

According to a survey of USA Today in November, Harris’s citizen approval rating stood at 28%, making her one of the least popular vice presidents in modern US history, trailing even the architect of the Iraq war, Dick Cheney.

If there was a trigger for the avalanche of articles about “what’s wrong with Kamala Harris” in the second half of 2021, it was that survey, “comically perverse”, as the San Francisco Chronicle. The poll, in fact, described the debate over the vice president as a mixture of struggle and disappointment.

However, on closer inspection, the survey seems like an outlier. Twenty-one percent of those polled considered themselves undecided about Harris, while just over half of those polled expressed a negative opinion, which distanced her from Biden’s ratings at the time.

Subsequent polls gave him an approval rating closer to that of Biden, which fits with the usual trend of the polls.

According to Cliff Young, director of US Public Affairs at the Ipsos polling company, the forces weakening Harris are the same ones that threaten his boss: the covid-19 pandemic and the economy.

If Biden’s approval rating improves because Americans feel those issues are being addressed, Young said, the vice president’s popularity will also improve.

The expert points out that there is a positive side for the vice president. Most polls place her at the head of the pack of possible Democratic presidential candidates in 2024.

She still appears to carry political weight, at least among her own party, and particularly among female and minority voters.

Difficult challenges to take on

In office, Harris has taken on two high-profile assignments. The first was to address the roots of undocumented migration to the US from Central American countries.

In the first year of the Biden administration, the number of immigrants crossing into the US from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras increased, and the administration has sought ways to stem the flow while rolling back some of the Trump administration’s most draconian policies. .

The task was considered daunting, though manageable. Biden played a similar role as vice president in the Obama administration.

For some, however, Harris’ responsibilities included the entirety of immigration and border security, challenges that have dragged on for decades and will, in all likelihood, take decades to resolve.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the vice president’s approval ratings plunge into negative territory began when the immigration issue put her on the spot.

He has also been tasked with enacting electoral reform. Following unsubstantiated accusations of fraud by Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, some Republican-controlled states have passed laws making it more difficult for initiatives to make voting easier, such as voting by mail.

Harris assumed the task of leading the reforms that, through Congress, anticipate these actions by the states to prevent them.

However, with the Republican opposition unified and the intransigence of some Democrats, the vice president’s efforts have been doomed to failure.

According to journalist and historian Kate Andersen Brower, it is Biden who has failed his vice president.

“He is giving him tasks that are almost impossible,” he says.

A very ambitious goal

US vice presidents are often seen as political heirs to the presidents they serve, and that conclusion is all but inevitable if the leader reaches the end of his first term at the age of 82.

And it’s clear that Harris, who ran for office in 2019, has presidential ambitions.

When Biden selected her as his vice presidential nominee, she was frequently held up as the epitome of the next generation of Democratic leaders, whose multiethnic background and gender reflect the identity of an increasingly diverse party.

However, this has made Harris an attractive target for political fire. Republicans, who see her as their possible next opponent, are eager to wear her down. And within her own party, rivals with presidential ambitions see her as the main obstacle on their path to glory.

“I think right now there’s a special focus on Vice President Harris because of the uncertainty around Biden and whether he’s going to run again,” Young said.

“I can’t recall another time where we’ve really focused so much on a vice president and his approval ratings.”

doubts persist

Many politicians with successful careers have faced political difficulties and survived.

Supporters of the vice president attribute much of the criticism leveled at her to racism and sexism, as part of the burden that comes with the historic nature of her rise to office.

Thus, they point to critics who write sarcastic columns about her with gender dyes related to her voice, her laugh or the purchase of expensive kitchen utensils.

At a recent event in Maryland, Margaret Hinds-English, president of a local public workers union, said the vice president embodies hope that black women like her can succeed “if we set our minds to it.”

Hinds-English assured to ignore the critics to the vice president. “Let people say what they say,” he said.

However, it is clear that something is wrong.

Harris’s presidential campaign got off to a strong start. His inaugural rally in January 2019 in Oakland, California drew tens of thousands of supporters. He shot almost to the top of the polls after his strong showing in the primary debate in June of that year.

Then he crashed into reality again, with signs of discomfort in his work team, disappointing media interviews and subsequent debates, and without a clear message or massive support in the party.

In other words, all the problems Harris faced during her first year as vice president had also occurred during her presidential campaign.

Staff turnover in his team has been surprisingly high in his first year on the job, with the departure of his director of communications and his press spokesperson.

A particularly harsh blow was the article in the Washington Post in which one of her former employees said anonymously that Harris was unwilling to do the work her position required and took out her frustration on her aides.

“With Kamala you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism, and also her own lack of confidence,” the former staff member recounted. “So you’re constantly giving support to a bullyAnd it’s not really clear why.”

Harris’ problems have often been compounded by mistakes in individual interviews and public appearances. There is talk of friction between his office and the rest of the White House.

And the vice president has been unable to resolve an important political issue that would consolidate her favorable image as a public manager.

Politicians who survive difficulties are usually those who learn from their mistakes and correct their shortcomings.

There are some signs that Harris is headed down this path, as she has recently begun spending more time with Biden at public events, has accepted more media interviews and has hired a veteran communications agent.

It remains to be seen, however, whether this trend will become strong enough to prevent Harris’s historic rise to the vice presidency from being relegated to a mere anecdote in the history books.