The Democrat National Committee (DNC) is reportedly reducing prices for an opportunity to take a photo with Vice President Kamala Harris.
The price for a photo with the vice president at the Woman’s Leadership Forum fundraiser in May reportedly cost attendees $15,000. But that event was postponed until the fall due to a lack of ticket sales.
Upon postponement, DNC spokesperson Daniel Wessel claimed Kamala Harris is still a huge draw for events but did not give a reason why the event was rescheduled. Only 28 percent of Americans approve of Harris’s job performance, according to polling.
Harris’s lack of popularity is likely negatively impacting her fundraising abilities. According to Puck, the DNC’s June fundraiser in California featuring Harris will only charge $5,000 for a photo, a 66 percent discount from May’s postponed event.
The DNC’s inability to fundraise off the vice president looks devastating for the midterm elections. Midterm congressional races are fueled by large political committees which rely on high-profile politicians to bring in donations. But Harris’s ability to aid the DNC’s fundraising efforts seems insignificant at worst and marginal at best.
Harris’s fundraising failures are unsurprising, since her polling numbers are even worse than President Joe Biden’s. Only 28 percent approved of Harris in April, while 62 percent disapproved. In contrast, Biden’s approval rating is 32 percent with 57 percent disapproving.
Left-wing pundits have blamed Biden for Harris’s diminished popularity. Veteran Democrat strategist Ed Kilgore wrote in New York Magazine,”President Biden Isn’t Making Life Easy for Kamala Harris,” claiming Biden has given Harris the impossible tasks of federalizing elections and securing the southern border via dealing with the “root causes” of refugees.
In May, more migrants illegally crossed the southern border than in any other month in Department of Homeland Security’s history, according to the RNC’s research team. Regarding federalizing elections, Harris has been unable to gain 60 Senate filibuster-proof votes to push radical voting legislation, which includes eliminating voter identification.
“To put it more bluntly, Harris will likely become the public face of a doomed effort to enact major voting-rights legislation that cannot be enacted without the filibuster reform Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema (with a few other Senate Democrats probably quietly abetting them) have made impossible,” Kilgore wrote of Harris.
“And even if conditions on the border improve (which is a development hardly within the full control of the U.S. government), Harris will be identified with an exceptionally fraught issue that divides Democrats and energizes Republicans,” the article continued. “There is already a ‘polling gap’ between the two members of the Biden-Harris ticket.”
Harris’s lack of success has been compounded by communication blunders. In June of 2021, NBC News questioned Harris about why she had not visited the border, as doing so may give her insight into how to stop the border invasion. Harris answered by saying she had not yet visited Europe.
“You haven’t been to the border?” Lester Holt asked.
“And I haven’t been to Europe,” Harris responded laughing.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter and Gettr @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.