Is Dubai Harris the Kamala everyone has been waiting for? Will she convince doubters?

WASHINGTON — When a temporary cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war collapsed, Vice President Kamala Harris found herself in United Arab Emirates city of Dubai, pulling aside sheiks, generals and powerful Middle Eastern leaders.

When she was done, she emphasized the Biden administration’s staunch support for Israel’s right to defend itself after the bloody Oct. 7 Hamas rampage. But she also made clear Washington’s mood had shifted as the civilian death toll surged.

“Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming from Gaza are devastating,” Harris said, raising her right index finger as she delivered the sternest U.S. warning yet to Israel about the Gaza offensive.

"As Israel defends itself," she said. "It matters how."

For more than a century, the one cardinal rule for America's vice presidents has been: Don't get in front of the boss. Had Harris? No, instead, this was the moment the White House united behind her and listened to her concerns about Gaza’s body count as the war roiled global opinion and the Democratic base.

Harris’ remarks that day, her command of the room, were a glimpse of the politician whose potential seemed unlimited just four years ago but whose image and presidential prospects have together dimmed under the intense scrutiny that followed her ascent to the second-highest office in the land.

Her supporters chalk it up to sexism, racism and unfair media coverage of the first Black woman to serve as vice president. Harris’ detractors point to her tendency to laugh through uncomfortable situations and sidestep direct questions with rambling answers. Others can’t seem to get a read on who she is.

Whatever the case, on this aspect, much of America seems to agree: Harris has an uneven record and is not ready to claim the mantle of party leader. More worrisome, are the criticisms that she lacks foreign policy experience and isn’t fit to step into the Oval Office if Joe Biden’s presidency takes an unexpected turn.

At an October stop at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, sophomore Andrew Baxley, who chairs the school’s College Democrats of America chapter, asked about steps the administration is taking to secure reproductive rights ? low-hanging fruit for the former California attorney general.

Baxley actually wanted to ask Harris about knottier topics such as Biden’s decision to allow construction to move ahead on a section of border wall. That did not fly.

The White House advertised the campus appearances as moderated conversations; it didn’t disclose the extent to which the events were scripted. Students were asked to submit questions on abortion, gun violence, climate change, voting and LGBTQ rights. They held a Zoom prior and rehearsed the rundown.

On the day of the event, Harris answered Baxley’s question. Her response drew applause, but Baxley was unsatisfied as he watched Harris handled, scripted and managed in ways that undercut her image as a leader. It was not the same Harris – the unfettered Harris – that wowed a global audience in the UAE. With the election 11 months away, and the presidency on the line, the deciding factor could be whether voters think Harris could really do Biden's job. Sending Dubai Harris to American swing states could be exactly what the ailing campaign needs.

Backstage at the college event, Baxley tried asking Harris his other question. An aide shooed him along.

Baxley felt shortchanged, unable to walk away with a positive opinion of Harris. “And I feel as though, had I been able to really have a more personal connection with her, and possibly speak more in depth with her, that could have been possible.”

The role of the VP ‘sucks most of the time’

Harris' allies have been warning the White House about the severity of her image problems for years.

Part of the issue stems from being number two when she was always a number one, used to accumulating a series of firsts as a Black woman and of South Asian descent: district attorney of San Francisco, California attorney general and U.S. senator. Harris blazed trails, forging her own path and making up her own mind.

Early on, she had to get in line with Biden’s agenda, a quirk of the job that has caused her remarks to frequently come across as stilted. Harris’ positions as a candidate were to the left of Biden's on many issues, and she was not helped by White House assignments that were a poor fit for her skill set.

Biden’s tasking of Harris to solve the root causes of mass migration to the southern border in 2021 was especially egregious. The most experience that Harris had dealing with Central America prior to the arrangement was arresting and prosecuting human and drug traffickers. She would inevitably be compared to Biden, who, perhaps unfairly, had himself been charged with playing migration 'bad cop' by former President Barack Obama.

The test led to a major setback. So, Harris allies pushed for more public appearances in places like South Carolina, in front of voting blocs that are prone to like her.

In early December, Beaufort County Democrats gathered for a gala on St. Helena Island. The function’s speaker was Congressional Black Caucus Chair emerita Joyce Beatty, on behalf of the Biden-Harris reelection campaign.

Beatty pushed aside remarks that Biden’s aides had given her to read and began to riff about the duo’s record with gusto. The Ohio congresswoman told attendees she had recently challenged one of Harris' Democratic detractors to name the last 20 people who’d held her job.

“The vice president’s job sucks most of the time,” Beatty told the crowd to laughter.

Vice presidents run the risk of being too good at their jobs and getting accused of trying to outshine their bosses, she explained. “The role of the vice president is to do what the president tells them to do,” Beatty said.

It was not always this way with Harris. Obama complimented her as brilliant, dedicated and tough. She won a U.S. Senate seat in 2016 on the same night the country elected Donald Trump.

Harris’ supporters are still in awe of how she hammered future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his Senate confirmation hearing.

Among Harris’ die-hard fans are John Glover. A retired IT manager from St. Helena Island, he spent nearly five decades in Berkeley, California, where Harris was raised.

Glover, who turns 80 in January, has a photo of himself standing with Harris as his cellphone background. The picture was taken when she was campaigning for president in 2019.

“I fell in love with her the first time I met her,” he said.

Authentic Harris appears behind closed doors

Riding an adrenaline high after three days of meetings with Asian-Pacific leaders, a more authentic version of Harris was on display at a campaign reception in Piedmont, California, in November.

Her comfort was palpable in a room filled with dear friends and top donors. Together they laughed. They clapped. Harris’ amiable husband, Doug Emhoff, introduced her.

Harris turned her gaze to a small group of reporters standing at the back of the room.

“When people want to talk about the polls, on and on about the polls, let me tell you: Everything we have accomplished is highly, highly popular with the American people,” she said.

Biden and Harris had been hit with a wave of negative surveys that showed them losing to Trump and saying that they were in trouble.

Even now, as her vice presidency has stabilized, she has not entirely restored her credibility, although she has done a better job at making the role her own.

In South Carolina, Lynn Lotz, a Hilton Head Island resident, said Harris “was given tasks that she should not have been given early on, because I think that put her a step back instead of moving her forward.”

“I don’t think she had the support behind her that she needed,” said Lotz, who met Harris at a Democratic convention in 2019.

The vice president's political opponents, such as GOP presidential candidate and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, have turned Harris’ failures into campaign attacks, deriding her more incoherent comments as word salads.

“Sometimes we have to hit rock bottom to know where up is. And we’re there. The one thing I don’t think we can survive is a President Kamala Harris,” Haley told a Bluffton, South Carolina, crowd in late November.

Rep. Dean Phillips, a Democrat from Minnesota who is challenging Biden for president, came under scrutiny last month for repeating critiques he said had been shared with him that Harris is incompetent. He later apologized and suggested that Harris should be running instead of Biden.

Anne Moncure, 67, a retired health care facility administrator from Beaufort County who hoped Democrats would come up with an alternative to Biden this year, doesn’t think Harris is up to the task of commander-in-chief. The role of the vice presidency, she says, should be a mentored one.

“How is Biden preparing her for the role?” she asked.

Harris was unavailable for an interview for this article.

White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement the president views the vice president as a "critical partner" in the successes of the administration including the restoration of America's alliances around the world.

"The President deeply values her counsel, which he seeks often, and her leadership on a wide range of issues from reproductive freedom, to artificial intelligence" Bates said.

Is Harris turning it around?

For the first time in months, Biden and Harris met for a private lunch on Dec. 15. It’s a tradition that Biden began when he was vice president to Obama to help the men of different ages and lived experiences bond.

But the dynamics of the relationship between Biden, 81, and Harris, 59, are starkly different. As vice president, Biden was seen as the adult in the room to a younger president, who possessed far less experience. Harris was chosen as vice president in large measure to excite the party’s progressive base.

In recent months, she has demonstrated a keen understanding of the politics of the Israel-Hamas war and of the political peril that she and Biden face as they head into an election year in which they believe American democracy is truly on the line.

The criticisms of Harris have lessened as the White House has gotten better at utilizing her on issues that fire up progressives and on which she and Biden largely agree.

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Harris was responsible for making abortion rights a centerpiece of her and Biden’s midterm elections platform. Supporters had pushed for her to be the one to rally Democrats, effectively marking a turning point for Harris.

In January, Harris will embark on a nationwide tour to promote the abortion rights message. Her first stop? The battleground state of Wisconsin.

National tours have helped Harris reach a critical constituency: voters who are unfamiliar with work she did that took place during the pandemic and behind closed doors.

“I’m always wondering, why am I not hearing about her?” said Julie Raino, a 66-year-old grief counselor who lives on Hilton Head Island. “The fact that I have to look for her is really strange.”

Raino says she admired the way Harris, who is of Indian and Jamaican descent, challenged Biden during a heated Democratic primary debate, telling him she was bused to elementary school during an exchange over integration. Raino says she wants to see more of Harris.

“I really loved her when she was running for office,” Raino said. “And I thought in that debate she was amazing and she could stand up to even Biden.”

Harris lays groundwork in South Carolina

When it was time for Biden’s team to file paperwork to appear on the ballot in South Carolina this year, it turned to campaign co-chair and former Democratic majority leader Jim Clyburn. Harris joined Clyburn in Columbia, the state capital.

Appearing before a small group of supporters, Harris called the influential Democrat a friend. “It was South Carolina that created the path to the White House for Joe Biden and me,” she told them.

Clyburn and Harris were both members of the Congressional Black Caucus. He endorsed Biden for the presidency after Harris left the race at the request of his wife, Emily. It was her dying wish.

He has since become one of Harris’ most vocal defenders. “People walk around and find reasons to criticize, and then every time she has been called to step up to the plate, she's hit a home run,” Clyburn said.

Harris has been paying more frequent visits to the state that will hold the first, sanctioned Democratic presidential primary. She has traveled there twice since mid-October. Harris made a stop at Benedict College, a historically Black university in Columbia, on another trip last February. And she has a trip planned for Jan. 6.

It's only natural she'd want to deepen her relationships in the state with an eye toward a 2028 presidential bid, activists say.

“I think that she gets it. She knows that you have to be here in South Carolina the same way Vice President Biden got it,” says Christale Spain, who chairs the state’s Democratic Party.

Harris’ own political operation in South Carolina was never tested. She shut down her financially struggling campaign on Dec. 3, 2019, a day before the conclusion of the state’s filing period.

“She still has a lot of relationships that she can still tap into when she's going back to South Carolina on the campaign trail,” said Jalisa Washington Price, a senior adviser to the Biden campaign in South Carolina and Harris’ former deputy political director.

One of Harris’ campaign stops at the time was Royal Missionary Baptist Church. Biden later came to the church in the primary. A photo of him with the Rev. Isaac Holt Jr. still hangs on the minister’s wall.

Holt says much of Harris’ political future, her ability to put together a winning coalition in 2028 to land the party’s nomination, will depend on the rest of Biden’s tenure.

“It’s going to be a tough one. I don't think it's going to be a gimme. I don't think it'd be automatic,” said Holt, 70. “But she's in a better position right now than anybody else.”

Potential rivals, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, are already signaling they might challenge her. She must convince voters that she's uniquely suited for the job.

Baxley, the college Democrat, said he’s leaning toward Newsom but hasn’t counted out Harris – yet.

Losing to any of the Republican candidates in this election could be a dealbreaker.

“I'm looking for a strong Democratic candidate, and if she loses in 2024, that's kind of my statement on President Harris,” Baxley said.

It’s a heavy burden for a vice president who would face more far-reaching political damage if the Biden-Harris ticket fails.

But as Harris herself has said, now is not the moment for that conversation.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kamala Harris' time to convince doubters has come