Harris under more scrutiny after Biden’s 2024 bid

Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, was featured heavily throughout a video that President Joe Biden used to announce his 2024 campaign on Tuesday, a strong signal that she will be a central part of his reelection efforts.

Somehow, both her harshest critics and her staunchest allies see this as a good thing.

To her supporters, Harris, 58, represents broad swathes of the American electorate that Biden does not: She is a woman, she is biracial and she is decades younger than the 80-year-old president, who would be 86 at the end of a second term. She is seen as the administration’s most visible advocate on issues including voting rights, access to abortion and combating climate change.

But her detractors — who include both Republicans and Democrats — say she is unprepared for the scrutiny that is sure to come her way as she positions herself as the potential heir apparent to a Biden presidency. And some do not think the issues in her portfolio will appeal to the independent and moderate voters who tend to decide presidential elections.

“What swing voter wakes up and says, ‘Boy, Kamala Harris is going to move me?’” said Mike Murphy, a political strategist who was a longtime adviser to John McCain, the Republican senator and presidential candidate.

Biden and Harris are still betting that the case they are making to America — that their administration represents the protection of civil liberties and the return of stable governing — will have broad appeal. Hours after Biden announced his reelection bid on Tuesday, Harris participated in events that were designed to present her as an emissary of the president but also showcase the ways in which their roles will differ on the campaign trail.

On Tuesday afternoon, she appeared alongside President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea, who is in Washington this week for a state visit, at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. There, the two promoted joint projects between the South Korean and US governments and said they would work together to monitor the threat of climate change.

Later in the evening, the vice-president previewed a fiery and polished campaign style as she attended an event promoting abortion rights, an issue that is likely to define the 2024 race and one that Republicans are struggling to build a unified platform around.

She spent her first night on the trail visiting Howard University, a historically Black college and her alma mater, to participate in a rally co-hosted by Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America. Howard students chanted “Four More Years” and gave Harris a standing ovation as she took the stage.

“We are living, I do believe, in a moment in time where so many of our hard-won freedoms are under attack,” Harris said. “And this is a moment for us to stand and fight.”

She criticised the Supreme Court for taking a constitutional right “from the women of America” and assailed “extremist” Republicans around the country for passing restrictive abortion laws, including those that outlaw the procedure in cases of rape and incest — “clearly, most of them don’t even know how a woman’s body works,” she remarked at one point.

“Immoral, outrageous, that people who dare to walk around expecting you to respect them, and elect them, would do these kinds of things to other human beings and strip them of their right and entitlement to dignity and autonomy,” Harris said.

An increased number of appearances by Harris will mean that conservative media outlets such as Fox News will have more opportunities to scrutinise everything from the substance of her remarks to her body language, a practice that the vice-president’s allies say is rooted in sexism and racism.

Some conservative critics have tried make the case that a vote for Biden is really a vote for President Harris. On Tuesday, a campaign ad released by the Republican National Committee juxtaposed an image of the president and vice-president against artificially generated doomsday scenes.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times