When past presidents have seen their approval numbers take a dive, they went on foreign trips. Sometimes this works, but more often it doesn’t, because failure at home often follows them abroad. World leaders can sense failure and its twin, weakness.
Vice President Kamala Harris, whose poll numbers and favorability among the public and even her fellow Democrats have sunk faster than a rock thrown in the River Seine, left for Paris last week where she is attending a five-day meeting “to focus on the plight of migrants and refugees.”
That’s a laugh, because she has done such a terrible job focusing on stopping the flow of migrants into the United States across what used to be called our Southern border. It was the first assignment given to her by President Biden, and she has literally done nothing about it, leading even a casual observer to conclude neither she, nor the president, are interested in stemming the flow. That may be because President Biden – and former President Barack Obama – have repeatedly said they want to “fundamentally transform America.”
A USA Today/Suffolk survey conducted among 1,000 registered voters from Nov. 3 to Nov. 5 found Biden has an approval rating of 38%, and Harris has an even worse 28% approval rating. The poll, as reported by SFGATE.com, found that “Harris is more unpopular than both congressional Democrats (29% approval) and congressional Republicans (35% approval), which is pretty hard to do as members of Congress often receive low marks in public opinion polls (overall congressional approval is at 12%).” SFGATE topped the story with this devastating headline: “Kamala Harris has a comically bad approval rating.”
Comically? Will she now be a target of late-night comedians and “Saturday Night Live” skits? In the event she is, the treatment will likely be gentler than the mean-spiritedness directed at Sarah Palin.