Coons: Harris has struggled to get positive press coverage, credit for work

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) defended Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday as she faces questions amid President Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign, arguing she has not received the credit she deserves for her accomplishments in the administration.

“The vice president, like many vice presidents, has struggled to get positive press coverage and to get the credit she deserves for the hard work that she’s been doing,” Coons said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Harris has faced criticism from the beginning of the Biden administration, with her approval rating usually lagging below the president’s. Her current average approval rating is 42.1 percent, according to an aggregation by FiveThirtyEight, and it has dipped as low as 29 percent over the last two years. And with a chief executive who is in his 80s, the quality of the vice president is under an unusually strong microscope.

But despite the lagging poll numbers, Coons on Sunday praised Harris’s performance in the office.

“The vice president’s ready to run and ready to be president, should that ever happen,” Coons said. “I know our president has great confidence in her and so do I.”

The praise for Harris comes after former Biden Chief of Staff Ron Klain also went to bat for Harris, saying on a podcast last week that Biden is Harris’s biggest supporter in the administration.

“I think she was not as well known in national politics before she became vice president,” Klain said in an interview on the podcast “On with Kara Swisher” released last Thursday. “She hasn’t gotten the credit for all that she’s done; she’s done a lot of very hard work.”